President Donald Trump continues to test the limits of his authority via ongoing efforts to slash the size of government and entirely dismantle large portions of it. Trump’s actions have set up a series of legal fights — and questions about whether the administration will abide by court rulings.
Among the latest issues: A federal judge said Monday that the Trump administration violated his order temporarily blocking a White House freeze on federal grants and loans.
In a case brought by 22 states, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island late last month blocked a White House pause on some federal funding. McConnell on Monday ruled that the administration continued to improperly freeze some funds in keeping with a broad White House directive. The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country,” the judge wrote. “These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the [temporary restraining order].”
McConnell rejected an argument by the Justice Department that the administration’s actions had not run afoul of his injunction, suggesting that there may have been some ambiguity in his order and that some of the funding in question was paused under Trump orders issued before the White House funding freeze at the heart of the lawsuit.
The judge ordered the government to immediately restore the frozen funding and emphasized that the administration must comply with his order even if it is intent on challenging it and believes it will ultimately be reversed.
A Battle Over Access to the Treasury Payment System
The administration is pushing back vigorously against a court order Saturday blocking members of Elon Musk’s DOGE Services team from accessing the Treasury Department’s payments and data systems.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and 18 other attorneys general sued to block Musk and DOGE from having access to Treasury’s central payment system and the data it holds, arguing that they are illegally jeopardizing private information, including Social Security numbers and tax records, and could improperly freeze certain federal funding in violation of the constitutional separation of powers. A federal judge in New York on Saturday granted a temporary restraining order, set a hearing on the issue for Friday and said that any records Musk or his team obtained should be immediately destroyed. “We knew the Trump administration’s choice to give this access to unauthorized individuals was illegal, and this morning, a federal court agreed,” James said in a statement after the court issued its order.
Lawyers for the administration argued in a court filing yesterday that the court order itself violated the separation of powers, undercutting presidential authority over the executive branch and making an unfounded distinction between civil servants and political appointees. They also wrote that the court order was overly broad and “could be read to cover all political leadership within Treasury,” including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“This is a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with Article II of the Constitution, and the unitary structure it provides,” they wrote. “To the extent the Order applies to senior political appointees at Treasury, it is an extraordinary and unprecedented judicial interference with a Cabinet Secretary’s ability to oversee the Department he was constitutionally appointed to lead.”
The administration filing came after Trump on Saturday called the judge’s order a “disgrace” and said no judge should be allowed to issue such a decision. Vice President JD Vance then wrote in a Sunday morning post on social media that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
In an op-ed for The New York Times, five former Democratic Treasury secretaries — Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Jack Lew and Janet Yellen — warn that allowing political actors who lack the proper training and experience to access the Treasury payments system risks exposing sensitive information — and presents a threat to American democracy. “While significant data privacy, cybersecurity and national security threats are gravely concerning, the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming,” they write. “We take the extraordinary step of writing this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.”
Why it matters: The Trump administration has said and demonstrated that it is looking to push the constitutional limits on presidential power and test Congress’s power over spending decisions. As The New York Times reports: “The lawsuit against DOGE in New York could pose a fundamental test of America’s rule of law and the power of the executive against the checks and balances — like the courts and Congress — at the core of U.S. government.”