Judge busts Trump’s illegal freeze on state money with 'The Simpsons' quote

U.S. District Judge Tana Lin granted a partial injunction to 14 states suing the Department of Transportation over frozen funds for new vehicle chargers.

“In a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, Homer must cut short a tearful goodbye with his long-lost mother after her traveling companions protest that their ‘electric van only has 20 minutes of juice left,’" Lin wrote. “Some 26 years later, Congress sought to address … ‘range anxiety’: the unease experienced by electric vehicle (“EV”) drivers when they are unsure where the next charging station might be, and whether their car’s battery has sufficient charge to get them there.”

To that end, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, appropriating $5 billion to fund a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (“NEVI”) Formula Program “to build an electric vehicle charging infrastructure and to establish 'an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability.'” Congress then directed the Secretary of Transportation to distribute that money to the states and the District of Columbia between 2022 and 2026.

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But that’s not what Trump’s secretary of state did, the judge notes. States did their part by building infrastructure along highways and convenience centers, but in 2025, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation disregarded Congress’s mandate. In February, the administration ordered states to stop spending NEVI money and halted new funding for EV charging stations. Newsweek reports this led 16 states to sue the administration, arguing that it was illegally withholding the funds and that the freeze had halted projects mid-progress.

Lin ruled the administration had overstepped its constitutional authority by ignoring a Congressional mandate and ordered funding be released for 14 of the states that sued.

“When the Executive Branch treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch, and when an administrative agency acts contrary to law, it is the Court's responsibility to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power," Lin wrote.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta cheered the decision, saying “it is no secret that the Trump Administration is beholden to the fossil fuel agenda.”

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“The administration cannot dismiss programs illegally, like the bipartisan Electric Vehicle Infrastructure formula program, just so that the President’s Big Oil friends can continue basking in record-breaking profits,” Bonta said in a press statement.

Read the full Newsweek report at this link.