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Pause and Effect

Plus: Highlights from Election Deniers’ confirmation hearings, and more. 🗳️

State officials this week did what they were elected to do—follow the law and look out for their constituents.

On Monday night, with no warning and few details, the Trump administration directed all federal agencies to abruptly freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans through a memo from the Office of Management and Budget.

What followed was fear and confusion across the country. Veterans, hurricane and wildfire victims, Medicaid recipients, and parents of schoolchildren were just some of the Americans who suddenly faced uncertainty.

That’s why a group of state attorneys general went to court to protect the people they represent. Citing the Constitution and federal law, they argued that the president can’t simply strip away funding that’s been legally appropriated by Congress.

The administration rescinded the memo and claimed the matter was resolved, but the judge wasn’t persuaded. On Friday, he issued a temporary restraining order blocking the spending freeze.

We’ve seen this previously in the new administration: When the president tried to rewrite the Constitution’s rules for citizenship, it was state officials who sued to stop it. Those same state officials, mindful of the law and their duty to the people, will be ready the next time, too.


This Week in Democracy

  • The White House budget office issued a directive that could have temporarily stopped $3 trillion in federal money from being disbursed to state and federal programs. Multiple lawsuits were quickly filed seeking to block the directive, including one by a group of 23 state attorneys general from across the country. Two federal judges then blocked the directive from going into effect. The directive was rescinded on Wednesday, although reports of challenges accessing funding have continued.

    ➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Trump’s Attempt to Pause Federal Financial Assistance

  • At their confirmation hearings, two of President Trump’s nominees refused to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Kash Patel, nominated for FBI director, said only that “President Biden’s election was certified” and that Biden “was the president of the United States.” Russell Vought, nominated for director of the White House budget office, said that he believed the 2020 election was “rigged.”
  • Acting U.S. Attorney General James McHenry fired more than a dozen Justice Department prosecutors who had worked on the federal criminal investigations into Trump.

    The ranking members of the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees wrote to McHenry demanding an explanation for the firings. “By removing them from their positions in this hasty and unprincipled way, you have very likely violated longstanding federal laws,” they wrote.

    The Trump administration is also preparing to fire FBI agents who worked on the investigations into Trump.

  • Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for D.C., launched an internal review of how his office had prosecuted some cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Martin went to the Capitol with the rioters on Jan. 6 after giving a speech calling them to “stop the steal.” He was also on the board of an organization that raises money for Jan. 6 defendants.

State of the States

In Nevada, Attorney General Aaron Ford’s case against six people involved in the 2020 “fake electors” scheme will continue. Back in July, Ford appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court after a judge in Clark County dismissed case for improper venue. The defendants asked the Nevada Supreme Court to dismiss the appeal, but this week the court declined to do so.

In December, Ford also filed charges against the six individuals in Carson City. In a statement, he said the new charges were a “preemptive measure to ensure that the statute of limitations on this charge does not lapse.”

“The actions the fake electors undertook in 2020 violated Nevada criminal law and were direct attempts to both sow doubt in our democracy and undermine the results of a free and fair election,” Ford said. “Justice requires that these actions not go unpunished. This is not going away.”