By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to fully comply with a previous order lifting its broad freeze on federal spending, after a group of 23 Democratic state attorneys general last week said that some funds remained frozen.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, ruled that all funding must be restored at least until he can hold a hearing on the states’ motion for a longer-term order.
The Trump administration had told states that it believed the order did not apply to certain environmental and infrastructure spending, and that some payments were delayed for “operational and administrative reasons.”
However, McConnell said that his order had been “clear and unambiguous” in applying to all funding frozen in response to sweeping executive orders by President Donald Trump.
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 Soon after the lawsuit was filed, OMB rescinded that memo.
The states said last week that the still-frozen funds included $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.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Mark Porter, Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)
Comments