By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday extended an order blocking President Donald Trump’s administration from instituting a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding by pausing grants, loans and other financial support.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington wrote that while some funds had become unfrozen since she first temporarily blocked the administration’s spending pause, there remained a risk the administration might again try to shut off funding.
The judge, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, said for those reasons she agreed with groups representing nonprofits and small business that a preliminary injunction was necessary blocking a further funding freeze.
“The injunctive relief that defendants fought so hard to deny is the only thing in this case holding potentially catastrophic harm at bay,” she wrote.
Those groups sued after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on January 27 issued a memo directing federal agencies to temporarily pause spending on federal financial assistance programs.
That memo said the freeze was necessary while the administration reviewed grants and loans to ensure they are aligned with Trump’s executive orders, including ones ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and directing a pause on spending on projects seeking to combat climate change.
OMB later withdrew that memo after it became the subject of two lawsuits, one before AliKhan and another before a judge in Rhode Island by Democratic state attorneys general. But the plaintiffs argued the memo’s withdrawal did not mean the end of the policy itself.
They pointed to a social media post on X by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shortly after the memo was withdawn saying: “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Nick Zieminski)
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