US President Trump's spending freeze bid thwarted by appeals court decision

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump lost the latest round in a legal battle over his administration’s effort to freeze federal spending when an appeals court refused to halt a court order mandating the agency to continue providing funding.

The US Department of Justice asked the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals late on Monday to stay an order issued earlier that day by a Rhode Island federal judge, who found that the administration had violated his January 31 ruling by continuing to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding.

In a two-page judgement, the 1st Circuit expressed confidence that the lower court will promptly clarify the issues raised by the government in its petition, particularly the fact that the injunction prohibits the president from using his legitimate power.

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The injunction does not prevent the government from trying again, and the appeals court stated that the government may file new documents supporting its case by the end of the day Thursday.

Monday’s judgement was the first time since Trump took office on January 20 that a court found his administration in violation of a court order barring part of the Republican president’s agenda.

The Justice Department said US District Judge John McConnell had improperly attempted to wrest power from Trump, whose authority to direct agencies to carry out actions consistent with his policy preferences was “well-settled.”

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“This state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist for one more day,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote. “A stay pending appeal is warranted.”

But a group of Democratic state attorneys general argued that if McConnell’s order was paused, Trump “would immediately be free to resume this sweeping and illegal policy,” harming those who rely on federal funding.

The appeal came as Trump, key members of his administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk have been criticizing judges who have blocked major pieces of the president’s agenda, in some cases arguing that judges have no power to intrude on the president’s authority.

Trump said on social media on Tuesday that “certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop,” the administration’s efforts to eliminate federal government waste.

“Democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup,” Musk, the world’s richest man, wrote on social media on Tuesday, after calling for the impeachment of a judge in New York who barred his Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department systems.

Such comments have fueled concerns about whether the Trump administration would abide by court rulings. The American Bar Association, in a statement on Monday, raised concerns about “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself” under Trump.

The lawsuit before McConnell was filed by Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, who sued after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo announcing a freeze that implicated trillions of dollars in spending.

OMB later withdrew that memo. But McConnell had concluded that a temporary restraining order was still necessary because of evidence that a funding freeze remained in effect and that OMB’s rescission of the memo was in “name-only.”

The case is one of dozens of lawsuits in which Democratic-led states, civil rights groups and progressive advocacy organizations have obtained court orders blocking for now Trump’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal government, cut spending and crack down on immigration.

The Democratic state attorneys general on Friday urged McConnell to enforce his funding freeze order, saying the administration had taken the position that it could still withhold billions of dollars in infrastructure and environmental funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act.

McConnell, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, said on Monday his earlier order was “clear and unambiguous” and barred all categorical pauses or freezes in federal funding.