Trump reignites legal fight over freezing billions in federal funding
Aaron Schwartz/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is reigniting a legal fight over whether it can unilaterally freeze billions of dollars in funding in loans, grants and financial assistance.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice asked the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay a decision by a federal judge in Rhode Island who determined that the Trump administration likely violated the Constitution when it tried to block trillions in federal funding through a now-rescinded directive of the Office of Management and Budget.
That Rhode Island judge on Monday issued an order finding that the Trump administration, in its effort to “root out fraud,” was still cutting off funding in defiance of the court order. DOJ lawyers are now arguing that the district court is overstepping its ability to rein in the power of the president.
“This appeal arises from an extraordinary and unprecedented assertion of power by a single district court judge to superintend and control the Executive Branch’s spending of federal funds, in clear violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers,” they wrote in an emergency application to the 1st Circuit.
DOJ attorneys argued the court’s decision effectively requires the federal government to get “preclearance” from the district court for any decision relating to funding.
“It is self-evidently unworkable for the defendant agencies to be required to seek targeted relief from the district court every time they wish to withhold funds based on their own authorities,” they said in the filing.
Lawyers representing the 23 state attorneys general are aggressively pushing back on the appeal, arguing that allowing the funding freeze will irreparably harm millions of people who rely on federal money.
“This case challenges defendants’ implementation of a policy imposing across-the-board blanket freezes on payments to all recipients of federal funding associated with nearly all federal programs across the Nation, ranging from (for example) healthcare funding to education funding to critical energy and infrastructure grants — a policy that had severe and destabilizing consequences for Plaintiff States and their residents,” they said in the lawsuit.
The attorneys general also argued it is procedurally improper for the Trump administration to appeal a temporary restraining order, which generally can’t be stayed.
“If the Court were to issue an administrative stay, defendants would immediately be free to resume this sweeping and illegal policy, harming Plaintiff States and the many recipients of federal funding that reside within their jurisdictions,” they said.
The Trump administration is asking for an immediate administrative pause as well as a stay pending appeal by Friday.
(MADISON, WI) — A closely watched Wisconsin Supreme Court election takes center stage as Republican-backed Brad Schimel and Democratic-backed Susan Crawford are set to debate on Wednesday, locked in a race for a seat that is technically nonpartisan but has become the center of a political firestorm.
The April 1 election will determine which of the candidates, vying to replace retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, will help determine the ideological bent of the court, which currently leans liberal. The winner will join the bench as the court grapples with hot-button issues such as abortion access and redistricting.
The race could also preview how voters in the battleground state feel a few months into President Donald Trump’s second term.
“They’re using it as a test as to President Trump’s popularity,” Janine Geske, a law professor at Marquette University and a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, told ABC News. “He took Wisconsin in the election. And the question is, how will this election go?”
The debate, hosted by ABC affiliate WISN-TV and the Marquette University Law School, will air online and on ABC News affiliates across Wisconsin at 7 p.m. Central time on Wednesday.
Schimel, the candidate backed by Republicans, is a former state attorney general who is a circuit court judge in Waukesha County.
“I got in this race 16 months before Election Day because I recognize … you gotta meet voters where they are,” Schimel told WISN in February.
Crawford, backed by Democrats, is a Dane County circuit court judge and a former private attorney. She at points represented Democratic-aligned groups such as Planned Parenthood, an organization supporting abortion access.
“I have spent a lot of time talking about my record, my background as a prosecutor, as a lawyer representing people in court and standing up for their rights,” Crawford told WISN in February.
Over $40 million has been spent on ad reservations, both aired already and for future reservations, in the race, according to advertisement tracking firm AdImpact. (Recent polling from the Marquette University Law School showed a sizable percentage of voters do not have an opinion on either candidate.)
The election is also seen as one indication of Elon Musk’s influence beyond Washington, where he has overseen major cuts to the federal government.
A conservative group affiliated with Musk, Building America’s Future, has spent more than $1.6 million on television ads in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, while another one Musk backs, America PAC, has spent over $6 million on get-out-the-vote efforts and digital media, according to state campaign finance records. The expenditures are marked as either opposing Crawford or supporting Schimel.
Musk himself has not weighed in much directly about the race, but he posted on X last month urging people to “vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!” Schimel has said he has never spoken to Musk and told reporters in February, “I don’t have any agenda that I’m working alongside anyone.”
These groups’ investment in the race has sparked pushback from Democrats.
“Wisconsin voters don’t like Elon Musk running our federal government and they don’t want him buying elections in Wisconsin either,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement on Monday.
Crawford’s own support has not been free of scrutiny. Schimel and his supporters have pointed to major donors seemingly supporting Crawford, including liberal billionaire George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat. According to state campaign finance records, those individuals donated to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and the state party has donated $2 million to Crawford.
Crawford has said she has made no promises to any donors and has also emphasized her independence.
While this election is being eyed nationally as the first major race of 2025, experts and supporters of either candidate say it also could have major impacts for the state of Wisconsin, including on issues such as redistricting, voting rights and abortion access.
For example, there is a Wisconsin Supreme Court case regarding if the Wisconsin Constitution protects the right to an abortion, which the court might consider after the new justice is seated.
Wisconsin has an 1849 statute on the books that would effectively limit all abortions in the state, although the law is not enforced.
If the court were to determine in a different case that the statute is still in effect and later that abortion access is not protected by the Wisconsin Constitution, it could mean abortion is determined illegal in Wisconsin, Chad Oldfather, another law professor at Marquette University, told ABC News.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Schimel had previously indicated support for leaving the 1849 law in place. More recently, Schimel told WISN that on abortion access cases, “I treasure life even when it’s not planned, but I respect that the law puts this in the hands of voters, and I will respect their will. … [My] personal opinions? No, they don’t have any role.”
Crawford, on her end, told WISN she has made no promises to any abortion access advocacy groups but said she is proud of the work she did as a lawyer “fighting for people’s rights,” including when representing Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.
Women Speak Out PAC, a group that is affiliated with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that opposes abortion access, launched canvassers and volunteers to get out the vote for Schimel. SBA has made a six-figure investment in the race.
“Lives are literally on the line in this race, and they depend upon Wisconsin voters showing up for Brad Schimel. … If Schimel doesn’t win, the court will be a tool of the Left,” Kelsey Pritchard, political communications director for SBA, told ABC News in an interview.
EMILY’s List, a political group that supports female candidates who support abortion access, has donated to Crawford and ran a digital fundraising campaign to encourage others to donate.
“As Trump, MAGA Republicans, and unelected billionaires like Elon Musk try to rip away the freedoms we’ve fought so hard for, electing Judge Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin state Supreme Court means protecting these rights that are under attack,” EMILY’s List President Jessica Mackler said in a statement to ABC News.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie, Soorin Kim and Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee peppered director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard with questions about her controversial rhetoric on Russian aggression, Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and government surveillance programs at her high-stakes confirmation hearing on Thursday.
But it was her statements about Edward Snowden, the prolific leaker of national secrets, that generated the most colorful moments of her three hours of public testimony.
Senators from both sides offered Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, countless opportunities to withdraw her past support of Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who fled the country with more than 1 million classified records.
And while she acknowledged on multiple occasions that Snowden broke the law, she stood firm in ways that seemed at times to frustrate even some Republicans on the panel.
Gabbard has in the past called Snowden a “brave” whistleblower who uncovered damning civil liberties violations by the intelligence community. As a lawmaker, she introduced legislation supporting a grant of clemency.
On Thursday, she repeatedly refused to withdraw that characterization of him. And she repeatedly refused to call him a “traitor.”
“This is where the rubber hits the road,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet boomed inside the hearing room. “This is not a moment for social media, this is not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories … this is when you need to answer the questions of people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation.”
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America This is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high,” he continued.
She declined to say. Instead, Gabbard repeated that she felt his acts were illegal and that she disagreed with his methods.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said. “I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it.”
But, she added, he “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs.”
Gabbard faces perhaps the most difficult route to confirmation of all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. She cannot afford to lose any Republican votes in the committee, and at least two members of the panel, Susan Collins and Todd Young, declined to offer their support after the open portion of the hearing concluded.
While she stood firm on Snowden, Gabbard backtracked on other matters, including her suggestion in 2022 that U.S. and NATO forces had provoked Russia into its war with Ukraine. Asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who bore responsibility for Moscow’s aggression, Gabbard was unequivocal: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin started the war in Ukraine.”
She also said that she “shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime,” referring to Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator who fled Damascus late last year. Gabbard was chastised in 2017 for meeting with Assad in person and later casting doubt on intelligence tying his regime to the use of chemical weapons.
Several senators also raised Gabbard’s past criticism of government surveillance programs, including the FISA 702 authority, which allows the U.S. government to collect electronic communications of non-Americans located outside the country without a warrant.
Gabbard expressed support for FISA 702 and explained her vote as a congresswoman against its reauthorization as a reflection of her stance on defending civil liberties.
“I will just note that my actions in legislation in Congress were done to draw attention to the egregious civil liberties violations that were occurring at that time,” Gabbard said.
But on Snowden, Gabbard refused to back down. Republican Sens. James Lankford and Todd Young presented her with several opportunities to clarify her views on the government leaker. Each time, she equivocated.
“Did [Snowden] betray the trust of the American people?” Young asked.
“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, “and he released this information in a way that he should not have.”
Gabbard did at one point back off her support of a presidential pardon for Snowden, who now resides in Moscow, where he is not subject to extradition treaties. In an exchange with Collins, she said the DNI does not have a role in advocating for clemency actions.
“My responsibility would be to ensure the security of our nation’s secrets,” Gabbard said. “And would not take actions to advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”
Collins said after the hearing that she has not made up her mind on whether she will support Gabbard’s nomination and was still reviewing portions of her testimony that she missed while attending a concurrent hearing.
But when asked if the jury was still out on her support, she said, “that’s correct, I want to make a careful decision.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, the committee chairman, said he would move to a vote on Gabbard’s nomination soon. The closed-door portion of the hearing continued on Thursday afternoon.
-ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
As Donald Trump seeks to reshape the federal government at breakneck speed, his administration has encountered a flood of litigation challenging the legality of its early actions in office.
With more than 100 federal lawsuits filed since the inauguration, Trump and his administration have effectively been sued three times for every business day he has occupied the Oval Office.
Approximately 30 of the 100 lawsuits relate to Trump’s immigration policies, while more than 20 of the cases directly challenge the actions of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Ten of the cases challenge Trump policies relating to transgender people, and more than 20 cases oppose the president’s unilateral changes to federal funding, government hiring and the structure of agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
With Trump signing more than 75 executive orders since taking office, the unprecedented flood of litigation has yielded mixed results in blocking the president’s unilateral efforts to reshape the federal government. His attempts to freeze funding or rewrite longstanding laws have generally been blocked, but some federal judges have implicitly given him the green light to carry out part of his plan to reshape the federal workforce.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour — who was nominated to the bench by Ronald Reagan — handed the Trump administration one of its first legal defeats by blocking Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship and offered one of the fiercest criticisms of his presidency’s early actions.
“It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Judge Coughenour said. “There are moments in the world’s history when people look back and ask, ‘Where were the lawyers, where were the judges? In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today.”
But other judges have stopped short of fully blocking policies they believe might be unlawful, demonstrating how a slower-moving judiciary can be outpaced by a rapidly moving administration. In a case challenging the Trump administration’s effort to fire thousands of probationary employees, U.S. District Judge William Alsup rebuked the administration’s actions but did not step in to stop the indiscriminate firing of employees, despite acknowledging its ongoing harm.
“That’s just not right in our country – that we run our agencies with lies like that and stain somebody’s record for the rest of their life? Who is going to want to work in a government that would do that to them? Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government,” he said.
The number of lawsuits appear to have tested the limits of the court’s ability to hear emergency applications, particularly in the District Court in D.C., where 51 of the cases have been brought. During one contentious hearing, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes threatened to sanction a lawyer who pushed the court to accept an emergency appeal while court staff had been “working around the clock on really monumental time sensitive issues,” Reyes said.
“Why on earth could you not have figured that out with the defendants before coming and burdening me and burdening the defendants and burning my staff on this issue?” Reyes told Seth Waxman, a former U.S. Solicitor General under President Bill Clinton who is now representing eight former inspectors general fired by Trump.
Lawsuits challenging the Trump administration have reached the Supreme Court twice, and the Department of Justice has begun their appeals to the Circuit Court in approximately a dozen cases.
While no judge has found that the president has openly defied a court order, the Trump administration has found itself in hot water for failing to comply with multiple court orders, including orders to stop unilaterally freezing funding to states and holding back more than $1.9 billion in foreign aid.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court narrowly denied the Trump administration’s request to block that payment, marking the first time during this administration that the Supreme Court ruled against the president who nominated three of the court’s nine justices. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito remarked that he was “stunned” by the decision.
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise,” Alito said.
Alito’s criticism comes as Trump’s allies including Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have criticized the power of judiciary to slow some of the administration’s agenda. Vance publicly suggested defying a court order, and Musk is increasingly calling for the judges who block the administration to be impeached.
“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges. No one is above the law, including judges,” Musk said in a recent post on X.
While the first two months of the Trump administration has yielded a torrent of lawsuits, the cases themselves are expected to take months and potentially years to play out as the courts weigh the limits of Trump’s authority.
