‘No deference is warranted’: Transgender woman wins temporary restraining order after mocking Trump admin for declining to defend ‘gender ideology’ policy ‘on the merits’

Donald Trump sighs during a press conference.

US President Donald Trump arrives before signing the Laken Riley Act into law in the East Room at the White House in Washington on January 29, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA/Sipa AP Images).

A federal judge in Rhode Island has determined that the Trump administration is in violation of a court order barring the federal government from implementing a policy that would freeze funding on distributions to federal grant programs.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell on Monday granted a “motion for enforcement,” ordering the administration to “immediately restore frozen funding” and “end any federal funding pause” during the pendency of the temporary restraining order he first issued on Jan. 31. In that order, the Barack Obama-appointed judge reasoned that the spending freeze was both unconstitutional and in violation of a federal law that blocks government action deemed “arbitrary and capricious.”

“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” McConnell wrote in the five-page order. “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. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.”

The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by 23 Democratic state attorneys general, led by New York AG Letitia James.

The memo at the heart of the litigation — issued on Jan. 27, by the Office of Management and Budget — purported to make good on a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump outlining the administration’s spending priorities.

The memo required federal agencies to “pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

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