With Order to Unfreeze Climate and Infrastructure Billions, Trump Gets Another Shot at Defying the Courts (2025)

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze the billions of dollars in funding already promised to a variety of groups and projects under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The order, issued by District Judge Mary McElroy on Tuesday, would restart an array of stalled or stopped climate and infrastructure projects — if the guy in charge doesn’t feel like wiping his ass with the Constitution again.

A collection of nonprofits filed a lawsuit over the funding freeze, which stems from an executive order Trump issued early on halting payments under the two laws. They claim that the government has violated the Administrative Procedures Act, and Judge McElroy — a Trump appointee — agreed in issuing a temporary injunction on the freeze, writing that the plaintiffs have a strong chance of success in the case. The freeze, she wrote, was in fact “arbitrary and capricious: it was neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.” By showing the impacts of the freeze on everything from projects to reduce wildfire risks to improving air quality, the plaintiffs showed that “the balance of the equities and the public interest weigh heavily in their favor.”

The order applies to the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and the EPA. “Agencies do not have unlimited authority to further a President’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration,” McElroy wrote. Those agencies, of course, are now run by Trump toadies of varying degrees of humiliating servility; whether they will follow the court’s order or the boss’s is an open question with a relatively grim history behind it.

The dark irony here that many have pointed out is that Trump could have just let these two laws continue functioning as they were, and in a couple years claim a massive victory on the all the manufacturing and infrastructure he had “created.” The “made in America” boom he claims his trade war will usher in was, in a real sense, already on its way; instead he now will likely stare down another judge in unconstitutional defiance, since admitting fault or accepting defeat literally ever are not allowed in his worldview, and continue with his economy-destroying tariffs plans.

“By blocking these investments in local communities and projects, the administration is jeopardizing public health initiatives, environmental protections, and economic stability,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represents the nonprofits in the case. “Today’s ruling marks a crucial victory for the rule of law and ensures these vital resources will flow to the people and projects Congress intended to support.”