The Trump administration is appealing a temporary restraining order against its plans to withhold federal funds — a first step toward teeing up a showdown over the issue at the nation’s highest bench.
In an emergency motion filed Monday in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Department attorneys argued that a federal judge in Rhode Island unlawfully ordered agencies to restore funds, even after the Office of Management and Budget rescinded a wide-reaching memo that laid out the freeze and was the original target of a challenge by Democratic state attorneys general.
“A single district court judge has attempted to wrest from the President the power to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’” DOJ lawyers wrote in their request for a stay pending appeal. “This state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist for one more day. A stay pending appeal is warranted.”
They asked the 1st Circuit to grant their emergency stay by 10 a.m. Tuesday. The court had not acted by publication time.
