The Trump administration is violating a court mandated restraining order prohibiting it from freezing federal funds in accordance with the Office of Management and Budget memo authorizing a broad freeze on Jan. 27, a federal judge said on Monday.
Judge John McConnell, the chief judge of the District Court of Rhode Island, ordered the administration to “immediately restore frozen funding” in order to comply with the temporary restraining order he issued blocking the implementation of the OMB memo on Jan. 31.
“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” McConnell wrote in an order released on Monday.
McConnell’s order for the administration to follow the law and obey the court’s decisions comes as high-level officials from Vice President JD Vance to domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller publicly argued that courts have no authority to block policies implemented by the president. It is not immediately clear whether the administration’s failure to comply with McConnell’s order is an intentional effort to disobey the court or an attempt to circumvent its order by claiming authority to freeze funds from presidential directives other than the OMB memo.
When OMB issued its funding freeze memo on Jan. 27 it caused a whirlwind of confusion and chaos as the vaguely worded memo seemingly applied to all federal grants, contracts and financial assistance. Payments portals for Medicaid, Head Start and housing, among others, went down. Health centers, day cares and support programs for the disabled were thrown into uncertainty.
The administration rescinded the memo two days after its public release, but publicly stated that the orders laid out in the memo were still in effect. The memo was rescinded in order to get around another court restraining order blocking its implementation, administration spokespeople said. McConnell’s temporary restraining order soon followed suit.
But funding remains frozen for numerous grantees and providers of federal financial assistance, according to the states who brought the suit. National Institutes of Health grant recipients reported that their funding was still frozen. Head Start providers and rural health centers similarly reported being unable to access their funds. Same with funding authorized by Congress through the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law.
The National Head Start Association told HuffPost last week that dozens of providers across the country were unable to access the online portal they used to withdraw funds, leading some to begin ceasing operations. The Democratic attorneys general told the court last week that “many Head Start providers are considering layoffs, reduction of services, and even closure, because they do not have access to federal funds.” If the federal government doesn’t resume paying Head Start providers, the AGs said, states could wind up having to pay more for child care costs.
On Monday, however, the National Head Start Association said it believed the holdup had been mostly resolved, and that only 10 providers had been having a problem as of Monday morning.
The administration insisted in public statements and in a court filing that it wasn’t actively blocking the funds, and that the government’s payment management system “was continuing to work through a backlog of payment requests.” The administration also argued it should be able to pause other funds if the president said it should do so in an executive order that preceded the “pause” memo.
McConnell ordered these funds be unfrozen immediately in order to comply with his original restraining order, while dismissing the administration’s “plea that they are just trying to root out fraud.”
“[T]he freezes in effect now were a result of the broad categorical order, not a specific finding of possible fraud,” McConnell wrote. “The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”
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Therefore, “The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding during the pendency of the [temporary restraining order] until the Court hears and decides the Preliminary Injunction request,” McConnell said in his order.
He specifically stated that the administration “must immediately restore withheld funds, including those federal funds appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act” and “resume the funding of institutes and other agencies of the Defendants (for example the National Institute for Health).”