WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge in the nation's capital will likely keep a temporary block on a Trump administration plan for a freeze on federal funding after lawyers for nonprofit groups said they're still struggling to get promised grants and loans.
U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan in Washington expressed concern about nonprofit groups at risk of shutting down, even after judges ordered a halt to funding freezes.
President Donald Trump’s plan to halt federal grants and loans originally targeted a wide range of funding totaling potentially trillions of dollars. While the memo outlining it has since been rescinded, the Republican administration has said some kind of funding freeze is still planned as part of his blitz of executive orders.
AliKhan temporarily blocked the sweeping freeze last week, and a second judge in Rhode Island also blocked any federal spending pause in a separate lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen Democratic states.
In the Washington lawsuit, several groups still reported being unable to access promised federal funding after the memo was rescinded. They ranged from childcare in Wisconsin to disability services in West Virginia to a small business research project on neutron generation and detection.
The Trump administration argues a brief pause in funding to align federal spending with the president's agenda is within the law, and the court lacks constitutional authority to block it. Trump’s executive orders have sought to increase fossil fuel production, remove protections for transgender people and end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Lawyers with the advocacy group Democracy Forward are representing the nonprofits. They say the sweeping funding pause breaks federal law, puts nonprofits at risk of shuttering and violates their First Amendment rights.
AliKhan ordered a short-term pause minutes before the Trump administration plan was set to go into effect last week, and said Monday she's inclined to grant a longer temporary order.
