BREAKING: U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued an order Friday afternoon blocking Trump administration temporarily from blocking grants or loans to 22 states and DC that sued over the funding "pause" announced by the Office of Management and Budget.

McConnell, an Obama appointee, held a virtual hearing on the states’ temporary restraining order request on Wednesday, January 29.

The formal rescission of the OMB memo, McConnell wrote, did not make the case moot — as the Justice Department argued at a hearing earlier this week — because “the evidence shows that the alleged rescission of the OMB Directive was in name-only and may have been issued simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts. The substantive effect of the directive carries on.”

Under the terms of the temporary restraining order, the federal government must give notice of the TRO to employees, contractors, and grantees affected by 9 a.m. Monday. The federal government is also prohibited from reissuing the memo or "otherwise giving effect" to it by any other means "such as the continued implementation identified by the White House Press Secretary's statement of January 29, 2025" — a reference to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s tweet.

Subscribe to Law Dork for more of my independent legal journalism: