Key points
- Judge ordered funding to continue until a hearing on February 3rd
- Democrats have described President Trump’s actions as capricious and illegal
- The judge’s decision came after hours of panic around the country
- AliKhan’s judicial intervention was a response to a lawsuit filed by advocacy groups
ISLAMABAD: Minutes before it was scheduled to go into effect on Tuesday, a federal judged stopped United States (US) President Donald Trump’s plan to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to federal programmes.
According to Financial Times, Loren AliKhan, a judge in the Washington, DC, district court, temporarily halted part of the Trump White House’s order to pause federal financial assistance, and ordered the funding to continue until a hearing on February 3.
According to AP, the White House did not immediately comment on the order, which leaves unresolved a potential constitutional clash over control of taxpayer money. Democrats who have struggled to gain a foothold during Trump’s second term unleashed on the Republican president, describing his actions as capricious and illegal.
Panic around the country
According to Financial Times, the judge’s decision came after hours of confusion, recrimination and panic around the country as recipients of federal loans and grants — including medical programmes for the poor and elderly — grappled with the scale of the president’s sweeping order to halt the assistance.
As a backlash to Trump’s impending freeze built in Republican and Democratic states on Tuesday, the White House scrambled to clarify its message and contain the fallout, saying the scope of disruption would be narrower than feared.
Judicial intervention
AliKhan’s judicial intervention was a response to a lawsuit filed by advocacy groups, including the American Public Health Association, which sought a temporary restraining order until the court had assessed the alleged “illegality” of the Trump freeze. The plan would have a “devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of grant recipients . . . to fulfil their missions, pay their employees, pay their rent”, the groups said in their lawsuit.
The freeze on federal financial assistance was intended to give the White House time to align the grants and loans with Trump’s conservative agenda. But it triggered a broad explosion of bipartisan confusion and opposition, as politicians from both parties assessed the scale of the potential funding hit on scientific and medical research, and communities that depend heavily on federal support, according to Financial Times.
All 50 US states receive federal grants, which accounted for 36.4 per cent, or $1.1tn, of their combined revenue in fiscal 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
To file a lawsuit
A group of 23 state attorneys-general led by California and New York said they would file a separate lawsuit seeking to block the plan. The online Medicaid portal used by states stopped working on Tuesday, which the White House said it was aware of.
Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said on X that “no payments have been affected”.
The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage.
We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent.
We expect the portal will be back online shortly.
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) January 28, 2025
Tuesday’s move by the president came after he ordered a halt to funding for clean energy projects and virtually all foreign aid. In the first memo ordering the freeze, the administration told agencies to submit information about their grants and loans to the White House by February 10, leaving many programmes in limbo until at least then.
Project 2025
The administration said the US spent $3tn in the 2024 fiscal year on federal financial assistance, but it is unclear how much of that would ultimately be cut.
A radical revamp of the federal government has long been sought by Russell Vought, the president’s pick to be White House budget director, and the authors of Project 2025.