President Donald Trump’s attempt to freeze all federal grants and loans hit a brick wall Monday, with a federal judge ordering the government to keep cutting checks to those programs.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan extended her one-week restraining order on the Office of Management and Budget for the foreseeable future, putting several of Trump’s rapid-fire cost-cutting executive orders on the slow track of litigation in federal court.
The Trump administration was widely criticized for throwing the country into chaos with the OMB order freezing all federal grants. The White House later rescinded the memo but said the underlying policy was still in effect. But when Justice Department lawyers tried to use that pullback as an excuse to stop the judge from intervening, AliKhan wasn’t buying it.