'Trump’s not a king': Internet erupts after Biden-appointed judge halts federal funding freeze

28 January

A recent decision from President Donald Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that caused mass hysteria among federal agencies and those who depend on them has now been put on pause by a federal judge.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan — who former President Joe Biden appointed to the bench in 2023 — announced that she was pausing the Trump administration's freeze on federal grants and loans until at least Monday, February 3. Khan's administrative stay doesn't permanently strike down the Trump OMB's decision, but rather allows for pending litigation challenging the freeze to be heard in the federal judiciary.

Judge AliKhan announced the temporary stay minutes before the freeze was due to go into effect, and Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney wrote that it came roughly 45 minutes after she convened a hearing between litigants and the Trump administration. This is the second time in less a week that a judge has halted one of the president's executive actions from going into effect, after a federal judge in Washington state imposed a temporary stay on Trump's executive order attempting to revoke birthright citizenship from children in the United States born to undocumented immigrants.

After Judge AliKhan's ruling, Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck posted to Bluesky: "That was fast." Pediatrician Michael O'Brien tweeted that AliKhan's delay will "save children's lives." Though City University of New York journalism professor emeritus Jeff Jarvis was less enthusiastic about the decision.

"He will violate the law and then claim immunity," Jarvis wrote. "Just watch."

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote that he "called it," referencing a post he made after the funding freeze was announced in which he predicted that the likelihood "a temporary administrative stay seems high" given the lack of clarity in the OMB's memo. University of Massachusetts-Lowell associate professor Spencer M. Ross had a different take, writing that agencies would now "have to rebuild decades of progress lost in less than a week" due to the chaos that Trump's OMB created. And X user Michigan GOP Watch observed: "A Federal Judge agrees: Trump's not a king."

Click here to read Politico's article on Judge AliKhan's decision.

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