When Donald Trump started to threaten to freeze funds to states and colleges, he was using leverage he really did not have.
Trump was holding the funding over their heads to get his way, but the fact of the matter is he does not have the authority to freeze any funding, and now the administration just caved in one of its more high-profile battles against Maine.
This all got started when Trump threatened to freeze funding to Maine via the USDA.
Trump wanted Maine to stop allowing transgenders to compete in sports, and the funding from the USDA was the leverage he was trying to use.
After the administration announced the freezing of the funds, Maine’s Attorney General, Aaron Frey, filed suit to challenge, stating, “Under the banner of keeping children safe, the Trump administration is illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed.”
Again, for those of you that do not know, this issue has been litigated before, and it was ruled that congressionally approved funds that a sitting president has signed off on cannot be held back by anyone, including the sitting president, unless Congress moves to strip the funding.
In April, the above case came to fruition, and Trump, as expected, lost.
District Court Judge John Woodcock ordered a TRO to block the funding freeze, which then gave Maine access to the funds again.
At stake were $1.8 million in funds for the current fiscal year and $900,000 from the previous fiscal year, which the Trump administration had frozen.
Maine’s governor has never buckled in this fight, knowing full well that while Trump’s freeze made for a great headline, precedent heavily favored Maine in this fight.
There was no win here for Trump at all in agreeing to release the funding to Maine.
According to reports, the administration agreed to unfreeze the funds in exchange for Maine dropping its lawsuit against the administration.
Frey stated, “It’s unfortunate that my office had to resort to federal court just to get USDA to comply with the law and its own regulations. But we are pleased that the lawsuit has now been resolved and that Maine will continue to receive funds as directed by Congress to feed children and vulnerable adults.”
This is a major source of frustration for me with this administration because even though Trump knows he will not win these cases, he continues to announce the freezing of funds, as he just did again with Harvard. Moving forward, the GOP can remove funding, but if it was approved prior, it has to be given to these schools. So, my question is, is there funding in the upcoming “big, beautiful bill” for Ivy League schools, and if so, why?
