Update on the funding freeze
As could be predicted, a federal judge in DC freezes the freeze (or is it unfreezes the freeze?):
A federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump’s plan to freeze federal aid minutes before it was set to go into effect late Tuesday afternoon.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan said she was granting a “brief administrative stay” that preserves federal disbursements at least until Monday at 5 p.m. EST after a group of nonprofit and public health organizations filed a lawsuit.
The judge will hold another hearing Monday on whether to grant a longer pause.
AliKhan, an appointee of former President Biden who was randomly assigned to the case, issued the order at the conclusion of a hastily scheduled video conference Tuesday that began just an hour before the freeze.
It’s no surprise that this was a judge in DC appointed by Biden and company. However, I don’t object to a temporary freeze on the freeze in order to assess what’s what. I doubt the assessment will be objective, however. But we’ll see.
This will almost certainly be the pattern for a great many of Trump’s moves: a big hue and cry from Democrats, and then immediate lawsuits leading to decisions from left-leaning judges imposing a temporary halt on whatever he’s ordered. Some of these cases will be going to SCOTUS. Some of the cases will ultimately be decided in his favor and some won’t, and for some issues Congress will try to pass statutes on the subject.
I would think that Trump’s people would be knocking on Scotus’ door right now.
It is time to end the unconstitutional addiction that Federal Judge’s have to try to run the Executive Branch.
I have not seen the details of the complaint that this Biden appointee is responding to, but if it does not present as a matter of law, it should not be given lip service.
I well remember SCOTUS refusing to even hear the petition by some 16 State Attorney’s General with respect to the 2020 election on the grounds that they lacked standing. So, who exactly holds standing on this matter before this hack, excuse me, Judge?
Of course Trump could just pull a Biden and ignore the rulings of the Judiciary, including those of SCOTUS, that he doesn’t like. What a bruhaha.
Federal judges cannot force the spending of money. Trump should put out an executive order that anyone who obeys this judge will be arrested and dropped in a CIA blacksite.
Hard pounding by both sides. We’ll see who pounds the hardest.
@ IrishOtter49 > “We’ll see who pounds the hardest.”
There is an old trial lawyers’ saying “When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.”
AesopSpouse heard that from several of his law professors in the seventies.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/04/legal-adage/
Strictly by coincidence, the next article at QI was this one.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/06/never-interfere/
Jumping to the end, as they always follow the track in reverse-chronological order:
The point being, that the years of lawfare against Trump-the-man in many ways backfired on the Democrats, and it may be that similar lawfare against Trump-the-president will be the same.
However the (now deposed) regime media will do their best to misinform the public about what is being done.
The judges may have a valid position if they are judging whether or not one of Trump’s order conforms to any relevant statutes.
When they are imposing their own partisan druthers, which too many of them feel is their bounden duty, then they need to be smacked down as soon as possible.
I wonder if SCOTUS could develop some kind of rule like “strict scrutiny” that has to be applied to any case challenging a presidential EO before it can be docketed: do you, Judge, actually have a right to rule on this case?
If people think it would have been fair to give the orgs who routinely “access federal funds” a little notice that they won’t be able to pull their next “paycheck,” so that they could fold their tents in some kind of order, that just gives them more time to file lawsuits and clamor to the media.
Remember that many of the grants and programs are for things that we shouldn’t be doing in the first place, and shutting down a failing business is usually done fairly abruptly — a lot of private employees get surprise pink slips.
This Red State post answers some questions I had about the implementation of the funding freeze, while generally praising the new press secretary.
All of Trump’s spokes-women (I don’t remember any men in his first term) have been outstandingly competent. The decline of Biden’s abilities was definitely shown in the decline in quality of his staff.
https://redstate.com/bradslager/2025/01/28/the-1st-white-house-press-briefing-for-karoline-leavitt-has-the-press-off-balance-dealing-with-competency-n2184922
King’s Law – ‘It’s good to be King’.
America’s Beloved Rule of Law – Psychological Horror involving various sides all fighting over the Control of Law in order to use the power of *BIG* Govt to shove the winner’s views down the throats of the other sides…
Sadly I am not a Constitutional scholar so don’t remember it saying everything spelled out what each branch has to do first has go through a judge to be approved.
Oh noes not the dread
because everyone knows
is far better.
He’s got time on his hands.
Here in MT we are trying to pass a law that would require judges to state their party, i.e. Democrat or Republican. Might as well because all of our judges are pure leftists even the ones at the top level. They have refused most laws passed during the last R legislature and even edited some of the laws they did let pass!
They are supposed to be running as Independent minded legal scholars and practitioners. Of course, that is not possible. The Democrats ran this state for 20 years before 2020. However, we even had a R governor before that who was led by the Democratic women in the legislature to “collaborate”.
In 2022 the judge running in our district was a woman proud of her Scandinavian heritage–you can guess where that leads you politically.
However, her handlers were very tricky. A young man campaigning for the Democratic candidate in our district for the legislature knocked on our door, and when my DH answered, the kid held out a flyer to hand to DH.The flyer for the Democrat legislator. HOWEVER, before he actually put the flyer into my DH’s hand a young woman standing behind the kid stuck out her arm with a slightly smaller flyer. Her flyer had sticky stuff on the back so that when the young woman slapped her flyer on top of the flyer the first kid was handing to hubby it was clear they were both working for the D party, and the campaigning judge was a democrat! The flyer with the sticky stuff that stuck to the Democratic party candidate was the flyer for the “nonpartisan” judge!
These young college kids had been trained in this two-step (twp arm) maneuver!
The young woman and young man will never consider integrity important.
The very funding that fueled the rise of the Hamasidals and Israeli Spring. Well, that, and Obama’s release of over 100 hundred billion in disputed funds to Iran that found its way to a second Iraq war, over Israel, and to the sea.
” The clucking hens should be careful, they might lay an egg”
Skip:
In the post it says that the judge’s ruling was issued “after a group of nonprofit and public health organizations filed a lawsuit.”