A judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s move to freeze funding for all federal grants and loans.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered a brief administrative stay on the Office of Management and Budget’s effort to stop funding to federal grant contracts.
AliKhan’s order, which landed just as the freeze was to begin at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, will go into effect immediately and last until 5:00 p.m. on February 3—little less than a week.
A hearing for further arguments has been scheduled for Monday morning.
“I think there is the specter of irreparable harm,” said AliKhan, according to Politico.
The Trump administration’s decision to pause all funding caused widespread chaos and confusion Tuesday as officials across the country reported that they’d been locked out of essential government services, such as Medicaid and Head Start.
The sweeping memo from OMB will affect 2,600 accounts across government, holding hostage the funding for essential government agencies, programs, and nonprofits until they’re willing to answer questions about their commitments to environmental justice, “gender ideology,” and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Lawmakers from across the country warned Tuesday that the systems for crucial programs such as Head Start were shut down as a direct result of the funding freeze, forcing the organizations to grind to a halt. Medicaid portals were down in every single state.
But OMB insisted that certain programs would not be affected by the order. The White House claimed that the Medicaid portal had experienced an “outage” and that they expected it to be up and running “soon.”
Attorneys general from at least 23 states joined a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Trump to oppose his freeze on vital health services.
This story has been updated.
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