* Background is here if you need it. From ABC News…

A federal judge on Thursday issued a nationwide injunction blocking the Trump administration from freezing federal funding without going through Congress — offering a scathing critique of what he said was the White House’s attempt to disrupt the separation of powers.

The judge, U.S. District Judge John McConnell, had already issued a temporary order in January blocking the freeze. Thursday’s injunction effectively finalized that order and will allow the Trump administration to appeal the ruling — though they had already tried to do so and were denied.

The injunction prohibits the Trump administration from “reissuing, adopting, implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name” a short-lived directive issued by the Office of Management and Budget that froze billions in funds.

“The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” McConnell wrote in Thursday’s ruling. “The interaction of the three co-equal branches of government is an intricate, delicate, and sophisticated balance — but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance. Here, the Executive put itself above Congress.”

* From the injunction…

The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government. The interaction of the three co-equal branches of government is an intricate, delicate, and sophisticated balance—but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance. Here, the Executive put itself above Congress. It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending. Federal agencies and departments can spend, award, or suspend money based only on the power Congress has given to them–they have no other spending power. The Executive has not pointed to any constitutional or statutory authority that would allow them to impose this type of categorical freeze. The Court is not limiting the Executive’s discretion or micromanaging the administration of federal funds. Rather, consistent with the Constitution, statutes, and caselaw, the Court is simply holding that the Executive’s discretion to impose its own policy preferences on appropriated funds can be exercised only if it is authorized by the congressionally approved appropriations statutes. Accordingly, based on these principles and the reasons stated below, the Court grants the States’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction.

* Oof…

Even if the States’ claims were targeted at these “thousands” of funding streams, their inability to feasibly take a program-by-program, grant-by-grant approach to raising their challenges is the consequence of the Defendants’ broad, sweeping efforts to indefinitely stop nearly all faucets of federal funding from flowing to carry out the President’s policy priorities, without regard to Congressional authorizations. One cannot set one’s house on fire and then complain that the firefighters smashed all the windows and put a hole in the roof trying to put it out.

* More…

The Court found at the TRO stage that the States would suffer irreparable harm if the Defendants’ blanket freeze of appropriated and obligated funds, which currently has no end date, were not enjoined. After a full briefing and hearing on the merits where the Defendants presented no answer, no evidence, and no counter to the States’ extensive evidence of still frozen funds and the harm resulting, the Court finds that the unrefuted evidence shows irreparable and continuing harm.

In their Complaint, preliminary injunction motion, and during the argument thereon, the States laid out scores of examples of obligated funding and the harm that withholding such funding has caused. It is so obvious that it almost need not be stated that when money is obligated and therefore expected (particularly money that has been spent and reimbursement is sought) and is not paid as promised, harm follows—debt is incurred, debt is unpaid, essential health and safety services stop, and budgets are upended. And when there is no end in sight to the Defendants’ funding freeze, that harm is amplified because those served by the expected but frozen funds have no idea when the promised monies will flow again. ]…]

The States have presented unrebutted evidence of the harm they are suffering and will continue to suffer due to this categorical funding freeze. The Court will not recount each instance but will summarize the “highlights” and note that while the States are the plaintiffs in this Court, it is their citizens, often our most vulnerable citizens, who are enduring much of the harm resulting from these arbitrary and capricious acts. The Court makes the following factual findings based on the record evidence.

And then he goes on to list Head Start and other childcare programs, federal funding for education, Medicaid programs, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (“CHIP”), and other health care programs, law enforcement and public safety agencies, emergency management and preparedness, job training, workforce development, and unemployment programs, ” critical transportation infrastructure, such as the $60 million in promised reimbursement for the costs of removal and salvage of debris from the Francis Scott Key Bridge for which Maryland is awaiting,” etc.

“Congress enacted these statutes and appropriated these funds for legitimate reasons, and the Defendants’ categorical freeze, untethered to any statute, regulation, or grant term, frustrates those reasons, and causes significant and irreparable harms to the States.”

* Back to the opinion…

Even with the Court’s TRO in place, state agencies continue to experience interruptions to access and inconsistent ability to draw down funds from grants funded by IIJA and IRA appropriations. Some funding has been restored in federal funding portals, but others appear to have been removed. … And nothing in the Defendants’ briefing or oral presentation reassures the States that federal agencies, under the Executive’s directives, will fulfill their funding obligations in the future. … This litany of struggles experienced in the last seven weeks unquestionably constitute irreparable harm to the States. […]

An agency is not harmed by an order prohibiting it from violating the law.

On the other hand, without injunctive relief to pause the categorical freeze, the funding that the States are due and owed creates an indefinite limbo. Without the injunction, Congressional control of spending will have been usurped by the Executive without constitutional or statutory authority.

In light of the unrebutted evidence that the States and their citizens are currently facing and will continue to face a significant disruption in health, education, and other public services that are integral to their daily lives due to this overly broad pause in federal funding, the Court finds that the public interest lies in maintaining the status quo and enjoining any categorical funding freeze.

* The preliminary injunction…

The Agency Defendants are enjoined from reissuing, adopting, implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name the directives in OMB Memorandum M-25-13 (the “OMB Directive”) with respect to the disbursement and transmission of appropriated federal funds to the States under awarded grants, executed contracts, or other executed financial obligations.

The Agency Defendants are enjoined from pausing, freezing, blocking, canceling, suspending, terminating, or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds to the States under awarded grants, executed contracts, or other executed financial obligations based on the OMB Directive, including funding freezes dictated, described, or implied by Executive Orders issued by the President before rescission of the OMB Directive or any other materially similar order, memorandum, directive, policy, or practice under which the federal government imposes or applies a categorical pause or freeze of funding appropriated by Congress. This includes, but is by no means not limited to, Section 7(a) of Executive Order 14154, Unleashing American Energy.

he Defendants must provide written notice of this Order to all federal departments and agencies to which the OMB Directive was addressed. The written notice shall instruct those departments and agencies that they may not take any steps to implement, give effect to, or reinstate under a different name or through other means the directives in the OMB Directive with respect to the disbursement or transmission of appropriated federal funds to the States under awarded grants, executed contracts, or other executed financial obligations.

There’s more to the preliminary injunction, so click here. But here’s the kicker…

Additionally, based on its findings that the States: (1) are entitled to a preliminary injunction; and (2) will be irreparably harmed without this Order, the Court DENIES the Defendants’ request to stay this Order pending appeal to the First Circuit.