A federal judge said Wednesday he intends to halt the Trump administration from freezing federal grant funding, despite officials rescinding an initial Office of Management and Budget memo on that effort earlier in the day.
Judge Jack McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island said during a hearing Wednesday he was concerned the states that filed a legal challenge to the order Tuesday were still dealing with problems accessing funds mandated by Congress.
The judge sought to sort through the fallout from the initial memo, which blocked disbursement of all federal grants and loans other than for Social Security, Medicare, and other programs providing direct aid to individuals. The White House clarified on Tuesday that other sensitive programs including Medicaid and food stamps wouldn’t be affected either.
A judge in a separate legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ordered a temporary halt to implementation of the original memo until Feb. 3. Acting White House budget director Matthew J. Vaeth rescinded that memo Wednesday with a new memo sent to agencies.
McConnell said attorneys for the states had convinced him “while the piece of paper may not exist, that there is sufficient evidence that the defendants collectively are acting consistent with that directive.”
However, McConnell said he was concerned about how to word the ruling, given the fact that the OMB had withdrawn the specific memo that was the basis of the legal challenge filed by a coalition of nearly two dozen states and the District of Columbia. In their complaint, the states argued the memorandum violated federal administrative law, which is normally subject to public notice and rulemaking.
The judge ordered the states to file a proposed restraining order and said the Trump administration would have 24 hours to respond before he made a ruling.
Sarah Rice, representing Rhode Island and the states, told McConnell that state agencies were still having trouble accessing federal funds despite the administration’s reversal on the OMB memo.
“This is just a voluntary cessation of a specific piece of paper that constituted the OMB memorandum but not the policy implementation behind it,” Rice said.
Rice said that although the White House announced that it had rescinded the memo, chaos continued at state agencies, and the recission was effectively meaningless since the administration is still freezing funds.
“The policy has not changed and that policy to sum it up is freeze first, ask questions later,” Rice said.
Daniel Schwei, representing the Justice Department, told McConnell that the states should not be able to obtain a ruling against the government because the states challenged a specific memo that has since been withdrawn.
Schwei argued that the states are trying to use the suit to shoehorn in broader efforts to oppose Trump’s policies. “It is a fundamentally different thing for them to seek relief against the potential effect of an executive order,” Schwei said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the recission of the memo was to prevent “confusion” because of the ruling in the Washington lawsuit.
“In light of the injunction, OMB has rescinded the memo to end any confusion on federal policy created by the court ruling and the dishonest media coverage,” Leavitt’s statement said.
The OMB memo said it was meant to help the implementation of several Trump executive orders on immigration, foreign aid, rolling back diversity efforts and antidiscrimination protections and other policies.
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