President Donald Trump's administration has asked an appeals court to put on hold a US judge's decision forcing it to comply with his order barring it from freezing federal grants, loans and other financial assistance, saying the decision constituted "intolerable judicial overreach".
The US Department of Justice asked the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday to put on hold an order that a Rhode Island federal judge issued earlier that day, after finding the administration had defied his 31 January ruling by continuing to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding.
Yesterday's order marked the first time since Mr Trump returned to office on 20 January that a court had found his administration was violating a court order blocking part of the Republican president's agenda.
The Justice Department said US District Judge John McConnell had improperly attempted to wrest power from Mr Trump, whose authority to direct agencies to carry out actions consistent with his policy preferences was "well-settled".
"This state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist for one more day," the Justice Department lawyers wrote. "A stay pending appeal is warranted."
But a group of Democratic state attorneys general argued that if Judge McConnell's order was paused, Mr Trump "would immediately be free to resume this sweeping and illegal policy," harming those who rely on federal funding.
The appeal came as Mr Trump, key members of his administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk have been criticising judges who have blocked major pieces of the president's agenda, in some cases arguing that judges have no power to intrude on the president's authority.
Mr Trump said on social media that "certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop," the administration's efforts to eliminate federal government waste.
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Such comments have fueled concerns about whether the Trump administration would abide by court rulings. The American Bar Association, in a statement yesterday, raised concerns about "wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself" under Mr Trump.
The lawsuit before Judge McConnell was filed by Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, who sued after the White House's Office of Management and Budget issued a memo announcing a freeze that implicated trillions of dollars in spending.
OMB later withdrew that memo. But Judge McConnell had concluded that a temporary restraining order was still necessary because of evidence that a funding freeze remained in effect and that OMB's recision of the memo was in "name-only".
The case is one of dozens of lawsuits in which Democratic-led states, civil rights groups and progressive advocacy organisations have obtained court orders blocking for now Mr Trump's efforts to reduce the size of the federal government, cut spending and crack down on immigration.
The Democratic state attorneys general on Friday urged Judge McConnell to enforce his funding freeze order, saying the administration had taken the position that it could still withhold billions of dollars in infrastructure and environmental funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act.
Judge McConnell, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, said yesterday his earlier order was "clear and unambiguous" and barred all categorical pauses or freezes in federal funding.
