Judge directs Trump administration to comply with order to unfreeze federal grants

A federal judge in Rhode Island on Monday ordered the Trump administration to comply with his order to unfreeze federal grants, after attorneys general for several Democratic states claimed the directive was not being fulfilled.

In a short order, U.S. District Judge John McConnell directed the Trump administration to "immediately" end any federal funding pause until he decides whether to indefinitely block the freeze while litigation is ongoing.

The judge said specifically that the withheld funds that must be restored include those appropriated under two laws championed by former President Biden — the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act — and those intended for institutes and other agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"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," McConnell wrote.

In a memo last month, the Office of Management and Budget directed federal agencies to pause the disbursement of grants while the administration assessed its spending to assure it aligned with Trump’s agenda, sparking legal challenges and widespread confusion.

Though the memo was later withdrawn, McConnell said the reversal was “in name only” after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cautioned on social media that the administration’s rescission only referred to the memo itself, not the entire freeze.

The rescission “may have been issued simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts. The substantive effect of the directive carries on,” McConnell wrote in his previous order.

McConnell's new order came after Democratic attorneys general in 22 states and Washington, D.C., who challenged the freeze said the Trump administration was not complying with the judge's initial command.

The states said the government failed to resume disbursing federal funds in multiple respects, specifically pointing to programs funded by the two Biden-backed laws and NIH's still-suspended funding.

"While it is imaginable that a certain amount of machinery would need to be re-tooled in order to undo the breadth of the Federal Funding Freeze, there is no world in which these scattershot outages, which as of this writing impact billions of dollars in federal funding across the Plaintiff States, can constitute compliance with this Court’s Order," the attorneys general wrote.

The government opposed the states' motion to force its abidance, writing in court filings that it had made "good-faith, diligent efforts" to comply.

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