Judge indefinitely pauses Trump spending freeze (The Hill, February 25, 2025)

My brilliant late friend and mentor, retired USDOL Chief Judge Nahum Litt (1979-1995), once called a federal advisory committee then overpopulated by corporate lawyers, the Administrative Conference of the United States "the Heritage Foundation metastasized." Now, has the second Trump Administration has become worse than that?   You tell me.  Federal courts and well-represented plaintiffs are seemingly on top of it. By the way, Congress defunded ACUS for fifteen years as a result of its worthless studies and recommendations to destroy administrative law judge independence and to gut FOIA and Sunshine. See my article in Common Cause Magazine, "Business As Usual," Common Cause Magazine January 1989. From The Hill:

The Big Story

Judge indefinitely pauses Trump spending freeze

A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked the Trump administration’s freeze of federal funding, dealing a stark blow to President Trump’s sweeping efforts to realign government spending with his agenda.

© Rebecca Blackwell, Associated Press

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan enjoined the government from “implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name” the White House budget office’s directive to freeze federal assistance while the court reviews the spending.    A number of grants funding environmentally focused projects have remained frozen. “In the simplest terms, the freeze was ill-conceived from the beginning,” AliKhan wrote. “Defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than twenty-four hours. The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable.”  AliKhan, who was nominated by former President Biden, previously blocked the current administration from keeping disbursements paused while she weighed whether to issue a preliminary injunction.   On Tuesday, she said the plaintiffs had “more than met their burden” for further relief.   The Justice Department (DOJ), however, said the case is moot because the memo was rescinded.   “A general interest in carrying out a policy is not enough to keep a case alive,” DOJ lawyer Daniel Schwei said at the hearing.    The DOJ has also argued the administration still plans to freeze some funds in accordance with Trump’s executive orders.