Attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia sued President Trump on Tuesday to try to block an order from the White House budget office that would freeze billions of dollars of federal money for programs across the country, calling the order a flagrant breach of the Constitution’s separation of powers and a violation of federal law.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Providence, R.I., came as federal money began drying up for programs large and small, causing chaos across the country. State health agencies said they had been locked out of their Medicaid reimbursement portals. State officials said funding for preschools, community health centers, food for low-income families, housing assistance, and disaster relief was at risk. Universities were freezing new research grants.
And the attorneys general — all Democrats — said Mr. Trump had gone far beyond his legal powers when he moved to “pause” trillions of dollars in funding already allocated by Congress in order to review whether lawfully financed programs were consistent with his priorities.
“What a ham-handed way to run the government,” said Rhode Island’s attorney general, Peter Neronha, when the lawsuit was announced.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
With even Republican states pleading for guidance, the White House and its Office of Management and Budget tried on Tuesday afternoon to dial back perceptions about the order’s scope, saying the funding pause “does not apply across-the-board” and limiting it to programs implicated by the president’s executive orders, including those on D.E.I. efforts and funding for nongovernmental organizations “that undermine the national interest.”
A question-and-answer document released by O.M.B. as a follow-up said that the freeze was limited to those programs “implicated by the President’s Executive Orders” and that “mandatory programs like Medicaid” would “continue without pause.”
But Democrats said the White House was downplaying a freeze that had already impacted programs that officials insisted had been held harmless.
The funding freeze followed other unilateral moves by Mr. Trump in his first days that have already yielded lawsuits. An executive order that tried to reverse the 14th Amendment’s longstanding guarantee to birthright citizenship was stayed by a federal judge in Seattle. Other orders to make it easier to fire federal employees, ban transgender Americans from serving in the military, and create a new federal department from scratch will also end up in court, where judges — some nominated by Mr. Trump — will decide whether the president’s expansive interpretation of his own powers comports with the law and the Constitution.
In the view of the attorneys general who filed the suit, one thing is clear: the president cannot assume the power of the purse that the Constitution confers on Congress.
“Jan. 20 was an inauguration, not a coronation,” said Illinois’ attorney general, Kwame Raoul. “Congress is given the power to appropriate the funding.”
The lawsuit is being led by the attorneys general from New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia are also plaintiffs.
The Trump administration’s freeze order came on Monday in the form of a two-page memo from Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. It directed federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance.” The meaning of the directive was unclear and has plunged state agencies, city governments and nonprofit organizations into confusion.
Attorney General Rob Bonta of California said the order’s ambiguous wording was “by design” and intended to provoke uncertainty. In an interview, he called the order “reckless and dangerous.”
The memo was also challenged on Tuesday by a second lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia by Democracy Forward, a legal nonprofit, on behalf of four progressive groups. That suit claims the memo’s specific targeting of what it calls “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies” violates the First Amendment by replacing legal eligibility for congressionally authorized programs with an ideological test. The memo states that funding programs will be reviewed for consistency not only with the law but also with “the President’s priorities.”
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.
Samuel R. Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor and former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services under President Biden, said Monday’s memo was “inflammatory with basically zero analysis, and it is leaning into the weakest part of the argument that the Trump administration would have.”
Mr. Bagenstos said that might explain some of the clarifications Trump officials provided Tuesday. Still this lawsuit lays the groundwork for a challenge by Trump officials to the Impoundment Control Act, Mr. Bagenstos said, based on the argument that “the president has an inherent constitutional power to decide whether to spend money that’s been appropriated.”
“That is an argument that may resonate with a very conservative court that is very supportive of executive power when Republicans are in office and has delivered Donald Trump some wins as a result,” he said.
“If the court looks at its prior case law, there’s not a lot of it. But it does make clear that Congress gets to decide how to spend the money.”
The budget office’s memo said that “assistance received directly by individuals,” as well as Medicare and Social Security benefits, would not be impacted by the pause. The scale though of the pause in funding was causing confusion all over the country.
For example, New York State is expected to receive about $90 billion in federal funding this year, according to the state’s budget office. Of that about $60 billion would be directed to Medicaid, which provides care to about seven million New Yorkers. The State Budget Office also expects to receive about $4.7 billion in education funding and nearly $3 billion for transportation infrastructure investments. Much of that money could now be vulnerable.
On Tuesday, a second memo from the Office of Management and Budget said funding would not be paused for Medicaid, a federally financed program where the money flows first to states and then care is provided to low-income residents. Still, state officials across the country reported that they were struggling to access the website used to file for funds from the program.
Throughout the day state officials and organizations that receive federal financing were grappling with the scale and consequences of the action. Many had learned about the freeze the night before, when the memo was posted on social media.
“This order is a potential five-alarm fire for nonprofit organizations and the people and communities they serve,” Diane Yentel, the chief executive of the National Council of Nonprofits, said in a statement.
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