(CN) — A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration had violated his order to halt sweeping freezes to federal funding by withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to at least 19 states.
It seemed to be a “covert” effort to punish states with so-called sanctuary laws for immigrants, the judge said.
In March, U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued a preliminary injunction in favor of 23 states that sued the government over its plan to implement a broad pause to state aid. The Barack Obama appointee ruled that the plan “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” and ordered the Trump administration to “immediately end any funding pause” until further notice.
But on Friday, McConnell found the Trump administration in breach of the court’s order. At least 19 states — all with Democratic attorney generals, and all of which had sued to stop the funding cuts — “presented undisputed evidence” that they were not receiving congressionally approved FEMA funding from the federal government, the judge ruled.
Oregon claimed that more than $120 million in disaster relief assistance for winter storms, flooding, landslides, wildfires and flood mitigation remains frozen by FEMA. Hawaii said that the agency still hasn’t answered a roughly $6 million request for aid to rebuild after the 2023 wildfires in Maui.
The Trump administration had claimed that FEMA was merely implementing a new manual review process for allocated funding, which it says is allowed under the court’s injunction.
However, the states countered that they were missing a “substantial disbursement of funds” on the critical grants “since early February.” And McConnell ruled that, in effect, this amounts to an “indefinite pause.”
“Thus, FEMA’s manual review process violates the court’s preliminary injunction order,” the judge wrote in a 15-page order.
McConnell added the government appears to be withholding the funds “covertly” in accordance with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order that, in part, ensures that sanctuary states don’t receive federal aid.
“The states have presented evidence that strongly suggests that FEMA is implementing this manual review process based, covertly, on the president’s Jan. 20, 2025 executive order’ — ‘Protecting the American People Against Invasions,’” the judge found.
He ordered FEMA to “immediately cease” its manual review process and to comply with his original court order. The states didn’t yet seek to hold the Trump administration defendants in contempt, but McConnell used the same factors to determine whether he should order enforcement of his preliminary injunction, he said in his ruling.
The states initially sued the Trump administration in January after a leaked memo from the White House’s budget office ordered federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal.”
“The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the memo said.
The scope of the letter caused widespread panic among organizations and households around the nation that require federal aid to survive. It also spawned several lawsuits from plaintiffs who claimed that the Trump administration was breaching separation of powers to withhold funding that had already been approved by Congress.
The Trump administration later rescinded the language of the memo, but held that sweeping cuts to federal grant funding would still occur as part of the president’s broader directive to drastically reduce federal spending, as well as punish state-level leaders who disagree with his policy.