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Democratic attorneys general from states including New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are moving to keep funds flowing to state governments and cities.
- Jan. 28, 2025Updated 12:24 p.m. ET
A coalition of state attorneys general plans to file suit on Tuesday afternoon to block an order from the White House budget office that would freeze all federal grant programs by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
The move was announced by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, at a news conference in the Capitol on Tuesday morning. Among the states joining the suit are New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
“My office will be taking imminent legal action against this administration’s unconstitutional pause on federal funding,” the New York attorney general, Letitia James, wrote on social media on Tuesday. “We won’t sit idly by while this administration harms our families.”
The freeze order, a two-page memo from Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, directs federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance,” specifically citing “D.E.I., woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal.” The meaning of the directive was unclear and has plunged state agencies, city governments and nonprofit organizations into confusion.
The lawsuit opens up another front in what will be a long legal fight led by Democrat-led states and progressive activists to stop President Trump’s aggressive second-term agenda in the federal courts. Mr. Trump’s efforts to make it easier to fire federal employees, accelerate deportations, and reverse the 14th Amendment’s guarantee to birthright citizenship, are all already facing court challenges.
Since 1974, a federal law passed to rein in what Congress saw as abuses of power by Richard M. Nixon has required the executive branch to spend money allocated by Congress and signed by the president. Democrats contend that money approved by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. through the infrastructure law, routine congressional appropriations and other measures cannot be summarily blocked without an act of Congress. To do so, they say would be an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislative branch’s power of the purse
