US states ask judge to enforce order blocking Trump funding freeze

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By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia on Friday asked a federal judge to enforce his order blocking U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from freezing federal grants, loans and other funding.

Their emergency motion came the day after the states told U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island that the administration was not fully complying with the order and that billions of dollars in funding remained unavailable.

McConnell, an appointee of Democratic former president Barack Obama, ordered the administration to respond to the states’ motion by Sunday. He had said at a Thursday hearing that he stood ready to enforce his January 31 temporary restraining order blocking the funding freeze.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The states originally sued the administration over a memorandum from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget announcing a wide-ranging freeze of federal spending. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, OMB rescinded that memo.

According to the states’ motion, the Trump administration has claimed that McConnell’s restraining order does not apply to certain infrastructure and environmental funding that was frozen by a different OMB memo, which the states had not directly challenged.

It has also said that some funding has been delayed for “operational and administrative reasons,” according to the motion.

The still-frozen funds include $4.5 billion for a home electrification rebate program, at least some of $7 billion for rooftop solar panels, $5 billion supporting state, local and Native American tribal governments’ greenhouse gas reduction measures and $117.5 million for air quality monitoring, the motion said.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and David Gregorio)