Judge Rules Trump Officials Are Defying Order to Reverse Funding Freeze

A federal judge has admonished the Trump administration for failing to follow to the letter a temporary restraining order on a White House policy to freeze federal funds as the administration, including Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), rips through federal agencies examining their spending priorities.

Ostensibly to ensure that spending is in line with President Donald Trump’s far right agenda, the spending freeze had halted a number of important payments, including to Medicaid, to state governments, and to federal grant programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels, to name a few. U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell issued a ruling last week halting that spending freeze in response to a complaint filed by state Democratic administrations across the country.

However, funding freezes for some programs continued, with new freezes popping up as well. The states sued again, asking for McConnell to reiterate his initial ruling.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), arguing on behalf of Trump, had stated to the court that the original order wasn’t violated because it was supposedly limited in scope. Freezes on spending for agencies like the National Institutes of Health, spending relating to the climate crisis, health care spending and more could continue, the DOJ claimed.

McConnell issued a forceful order on Monday, disagreeing with the Trump administration’s arguments.

“The plain language of the TRO [temporary restraining order] entered in this case prohibits all categorical pauses or freezes in obligations or disbursements based on the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] Directive or based on the President’s 2025 Executive Orders,” McConnell wrote in his ruling. “The Defendants received notice of the TRO, the Order is clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance with the Order.”

McConnell also found that the states had “presented evidence” showing that the Trump administration had “continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds.”

“The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country,” McConnell said, adding that the “pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.”

McConnell ordered that all funding freezes stop immediately, and for funding that was missed to be restored. He also suggested that individuals within the Trump White House who continued to violate his ruling could be found in contempt of court.

The initial defiance by the Trump administration is alarming, especially given that members of the White House have indicated that Trump may ignore such orders in the future — an action that would upend the federal government’s three-branch system of checks and balances.

Musk, responding to an order from a different judge who also placed a restraining order on his work with DOGE, criticized the ruling as “corrupt” and stated that the jurist in question “needs to be impeached.”

“Something super shady is going to protect scammers,” Musk said in a separate post about the judge, providing no evidence to justify his claim.

Musk also shared a post on Saturday that had been written by a right-wing account on X. In that post, the user wrote that they didn’t “like the precedent it sets when you defy a judicial ruling, but I’m just wondering what other options are these judges leaving us if they’re going to blatantly disregard the constitution for their own partisan political goals?” The billionaire indicated that he agreed with the user’s statement.

And in response to McConnell’s latest order on Monday, Musk again derided the judge on X, falsely characterizing his ruling as an “undemocratic and unconstitutional power grab” and calling McConnell an “activist judge.”

Vice President J.D. Vance expressed similar views in posts on Sunday, wrongly saying that it is “illegal” for judges to impose limits on executive branch officials.

“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance wrote — an errant claim that ignores centuries of precedent regarding judicial review in the United States, including rulings that benefited Vance and Trump when former President Joe Biden was in office.

At least 10 federal judges have issued rulings blocking Trump’s executive orders or other actions undertaken by his administration or by individuals within DOGE. If the Trump administration chooses to ignore just one of them, it would set off a constitutional crisis in this country, demonstrating in definite terms Trump’s intent to expand his presidential powers to the line of dictatorship.