An aerial view of the White House. Photo: Joyce N. Boghosian / White House
WASHINGTON — A federal judge will decide in “due course” whether to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from implementing the type of freeze on funding for grants and loans that it attempted to carry out in late January, before a separate court order blocked it from taking effect.
District Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, who first issued an administrative stay in the case before filing a temporary restraining order, didn’t give an exact timeline for when she’ll issue her next ruling following the Thursday hearing. AliKhan’s TRO will remain in effect until she issues a ruling on the preliminary injunction.
A temporary restraining order generally lasts for a shorter period than a preliminary injunction, which can continue for months or years.
Kevin Friedl, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, and one of the attorneys representing the organizations that filed the lawsuit, argued during the hearing AliKhan should issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the Trump administration from moving forward with its plans to block funding to organizations throughout the country.
Friedl said that injunction should apply broadly, not just to the four organizations that filed the lawsuit and their members. Those organizations include the National Council of Nonprofits, American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance and SAGE.
Those organizations, Friedl said, experienced an infringement on their First Amendment rights as a result of the Office of Management and Budget’s funding freeze. The groups now worry that if they “don’t adopt the policy positions of” the Trump administration, they could be blocked from receiving federal grants and loans in the future.
Justice Department attorney Daniel Schwei urged the judge not to issue a preliminary injunction, noting that OMB rescinded the original memo shortly after the judge issued the short-term administrative stay.
Any preliminary injunction, Schwei said, would be an “inherently speculative proposition” that OMB would issue another memo seeking to freeze funding on grants and loans. He added that, in the DOJ’s opinion, the entire case is moot since OMB rescinded the memo.
Schwei said the only question the judge should consider is whether the court should continue to block the executive branch from “potential future actions.”
There was also some debate during the hearing about the intent of the OMB memo, including how its grammar and comma placement might have influenced someone’s understanding of its effects.
The case began in late January, when the Office of Management and Budget issued a two-page memo directing federal departments and agencies to pause funding for some grants and loans.
The OMB decision, which was to be implemented within 24 hours, sent organizations throughout the country and members of Congress scrambling to understand how many organizations would be hit by the proposed funding freeze and how long it would last.
The Trump administration exempted Social Security and Medicare from the freeze in a footnote in the original memo. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was unable to say during an initial press briefing whether Medicaid would have been affected or to provide a list of what specific programs were subject to the funding freeze.
OMB later released another document seeking to clarify which programs weren’t included, though it didn’t provide a list of exactly which programs were supposed to have their funding paused by the OMB memo.
A separate, lengthy document from OMB appeared to show thousands of programs affected by the original memo totaling trillions of dollars in federal aid.
Two lawsuits were quickly filed in response to OMB’s proposed funding freeze — National Council of Nonprofits v. Office of Management and Budget, which is being overseen by AliKhan, and State of New York v. Trump, which was filed by Democratic attorneys general and is overseen by a federal judge in Rhode Island.
Both judges have issued their own temporary restraining orders in the cases.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island has scheduled a hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction in that case for Friday.
Thursday’s hearing also included debate about whether a potential preliminary injunction should come with a requirement for bond, or financial guarantee, from the organizations that filed the case.
Friedl said the Justice Department’s request for bond was “frankly absurd” and an attempt by the Trump administration to “retaliate” against the organizations that filed the lawsuit.
“I would characterize it as a disturbing new development,” Friedl said.
AliKhan didn’t comment much on the request for bond during the hearing, other than to say she found it “curious.”
Schwei argued the bond was necessary if the court enters a preliminary injunction since the Trump administration could end up spending federal dollars on programs it doesn’t want to.
He didn’t provide a dollar amount for how much he wanted the judge to require in bond, but said that would depend on how broad the judge writes a potential preliminary injunction.
Last updated 5:22 p.m., February 20, 2025
This story originally appeared on Georgia Recorder on February 20, 2025. It is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 4.0).
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.
