- A judge Monday found Trump is flouting his order from last week that paused a freeze on spending.
- The judge ordered the administration to restore and resume all frozen funding immediately.
- The order was by the federal judge in Rhode Island overseeing a lawsuit brought by 22 states and DC.
The Trump administration is violating a federal court order by continuing to freeze funding for federal programs, a judge in Rhode Island found on Monday.
In a sharply worded response, US District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., who is overseeing a lawsuit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia, ordered the administration to immediately restore and resume the funding.
The order is the first major challenge to recent suggestions that if President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and DOGE director Elon Musk don’t like what a judge orders, one option is to ignore it, said Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School.
Over the past few days, Vance posted on X that, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” and Musk posted his support of an X user’s suggestion that Trump openly defy the courts. Trump, meanwhile, complained over the weekend that judges shouldn’t be “allowed” to challenge recent DOGE actions.
“That’s some tough language. The judge is not messing around,” Paradis told Business Insider of Monday’s order by the Rhode Island jurist.
“It’s return fire, to the extent that the Trump administration has declared that neither Congress nor the courts are allowed to question his authority.”
McConnell’s order comes in response to evidence from the plaintiff states showing that the freeze — which he said was causing “irreparable harm” and was “likely unconstitutional” — is being flouted, the judge wrote.
“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” the judge wrote.
That evidence included affidavits detailing the ongoing distruption of funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, the National Institutes for Health, and Health and Human Services, including for the Head Start program.
“The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding” while the court weighs the state’s claims and the government’s arguments on behalf of the freeze, the judge wrote.
Asked if the Trump administration would comply with the latest order, a White House spokesperson responded by criticizing the legal challenges to the president’s recent executive orders.
“Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful,” Harrison Fields, the principal White House deputy press secretary, said.
“Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people, who overwhelming elected President Trump to secure the border, revitalize the economy, and restore common-sense policies.”
Paradis said McConnell can find the defendants — who include Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Matthew Vaeth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — in contempt if his court order continues to be ignored.
Trump is also a defendant in the AGs’ lawsuit. But holding a sitting president in contempt — is a “constitutionally complex issue,” and a “totally open question,” Paradis said.
“There are plenty of people who say that just as you can’t prosecute the president, you can’t hold them in contempt because it creates a separation of powers problem,” he explained.
“But there’s no question whatsoever that you can hold his subordinates, including Cabinet secretaries, very much in contempt of court and that he could do nothing about that,” Paradis said of Trump. Contempt can be punishable by fines or jail as the judge sees fit, Paradis added.
February 10, 2025: This story was updated to include more details from the order.
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