D.C. federal judge temporarily blocks Trump plan to pause federal aid spending
WASHINGTON — A federal district judge on Tuesday granted an administrative stay in a case challenging the Trump administration’s planned freeze of federal aid, pausing the plan for a week and setting a hearing for further arguments Monday morning.
WASHINGTON — A federal district judge on Tuesday granted an administrative stay in a case challenging the Trump administration’s planned freeze of federal aid, pausing the plan for a week and setting a hearing for further arguments Monday morning.
The order applies only to the pause of disbursements in open grants, Judge Loren AliKhan said. And it doesn't get into the legality of the freeze; instead, it gives her time to hear more fleshed-out arguments from a coalition of nonprofit groups about why she should issue a temporary restraining order that could block the freeze for an additional two weeks. The hearing will take place at 11 a.m. Monday.
AliKhan issued the stay only minutes before the freeze was scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
During a hastily assembled hearing late Tuesday afternoon, AliKhan heard brief arguments from lawyers for the Justice Department and the National Council of Nonprofits, which sued earlier in the day alleging the funding freeze would cause irreparable harm to its members.
“This is the end of the month. Nonprofits and grant recipients are facing down payroll, they’re facing down rent payments, and there are people who depend on these services, not just my clients and their members, but also members of the public who are downstream from this,” Jessica Morton, a lawyer for the nonprofit groups, said during the hearing. “The chaos caused by the complexity and the ambiguity of OMB’s supposed guidance has already caused questions in the public.”
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