WASHINGTON (AP) — A planned Trump administration freeze on federal funding is heading back to a Washington courtroom on Monday.
A judge is expected to consider extending her temporary block on President Donald Trump’s plan to halt federal grants and loans, which originally targeted a wide range of funding totaling potentially trillions of dollars.
U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan in Washington blocked the funding freeze minutes before it was scheduled to take effect. A memo outlining a sweeping federal funding pause was later rescinded, but Trump’s Republican administration says a funding freeze is still in line with his blitz of executive orders.
Those have included Trump’s efforts to increase fossil fuel production, remove protections for transgender people and end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
A second judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary order on Friday blocking the administration from halting any federal funding. That order came in a separate lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen Democratic states.
The Washington lawsuit, meanwhile, was filed by nonprofit groups that stand to lose federal funding.
One group that helps the elderly and people with disabilities in West Virginia said it lost access last week to promised federal grant money that makes up the majority of its budget. The group’s services include helping people with intellectual disabilities live on their own and giving essential transportation to elderly people, like an 86-year-old woman who needs dialysis.
If the funding freeze isn’t stopped, the group will shut down and the people it serves will be helpless, the group, which was not publicly named, wrote in court documents. It said the people it helps could wind up in nursing homes or group homes or even homeless.
The Trump administration said that a brief pause would be in line with federal law and that the court lacks constitutional authority to block it. The administration had said it wouldn’t affect payments to individuals like Medicare, Social Security or Medicaid.
