Courts and Trump

NPR -   A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to resume hundreds of millions of dollars in payments for U.S. Agency for International Development projects across the globe. U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali gave the government until the end of Wednesday to comply.

The defendants, USAID and the State Department, have appealed the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Ali first ordered Trump officials to reopen the flow of funding to thousands of aid projects on Feb.13. But in a telephone hearing Tuesday, he said the Trump administration has provided no evidence it has done so.

During the hearing, a Justice Department attorney said he was not in a position to answer whether the government had resumed payments.

"I don't know why I can't get a straight answer from you," said Ali, who has grown increasingly impatient with the government.

Daily Kos - A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday on Donald Trump’s push for a federal funding freeze, calling it “arbitrary and capricious” as well as likely in violation of the First Amendment. U.S. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan issued her ruling barring the White House Office of Management and Budget’s rescission of congressionally appropriated funds. The injunction continues to block the OMB directive that threatened essential social safety net programs that benefit millions of Americans when it was issued in late January. 

“In the simplest terms, the freeze was ill-conceived from the beginning,” AliKhan wrote in her ruling on Tuesday. “Defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than twenty-four hours. The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable.”