Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump’s federal funds freeze

A lawsuit by the National Council of Nonprofits led to a federal judge pausing an order by President Donald Trump to freeze some federal funds in order to root out ideological spending from the budget.

U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan issued the temporary pause in the spending freeze just minutes before it was set to go into effect at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. The administrative stay only applies to already existing programs and will only last until Monday afternoon.

‘The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars.’

“It seems like the federal government currently doesn’t actually know the full extent of the programs that are going to be subject to the pause,” said AliKhan in her ruling.

The freeze was communicated to federal departments through a memo from the Office of Management and Budget that explained it was necessary to ensure funds were no longer being used for ideological purposes.

“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,” read the memo.

Earlier in the day, Democrats claimed the spending freeze led to a “constitutional crisis” after payments to the Medicare website portal were reportedly down. The White House later said that there was an unrelated outage at the website portal.

“We must state the truth: this is a constitutional crisis. It’s a massive, illegal power grab that the House and Senate have a sworn duty to stop,” responded Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio praised the ruling on social media.

“Democracy is under attack. President Trump’s unlawful EO to freeze federal funds is an overreach of executive power and a deliberate attack on our nation’s democracy,” she wrote. “A federal judge has already temporarily blocked his efforts, keeping our checks and balances in place for just a little longer. But make no mistake: this sets a dangerous precedent for our country.”

AliKhan was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

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