Hopium PM - Judges Block NIH Cuts, Rule White House Failed To Comply W/Court Order - Good News All
New Morning Consult tracking poll shows more erosion for Trump
Evening, afternoon all. Got some encouraging late afternoon court rulings on things we’ve been working on and thought you might you might be interested.
From The NYTimes (gift link):
A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate.
The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called “the plain text” of an edict he issued on Jan. 29.
That order, he wrote, was “clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance with” it.
Judge McConnell’s ruling marked a step toward what could quickly evolve into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after a social media post by Vice President JD Vance claimed that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis.
“It’s very rare for a president not to comply with an order,” said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who served during the Obama and Biden administrations. “This is part of a pattern where President Trump appears to be asserting authority that he doesn’t have.”
and….
Already, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration challenging Mr. Trump’s brazen moves, which have included revoking birthright citizenship and giving Elon Musk’s teams access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. Judges have already ruled that many of these executive actions may violate existing statutes.
Judge McConnell previously ordered the White House to unfreeze federal funds locked up by a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that demanded that billions of dollars in federal grants be held back until they were determined to comply with President Trump’s priorities, including with ideological litmus tests.
On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday that money for clean energy projects and transportation infrastructure, allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was exempt from the initial order because it had been paused under a different memo than the one that prompted the lawsuit.
Judge McConnell’s ruling on Monday explicitly rejected that argument.
The judge granted the attorneys generals’ request for a “motion for enforcement” — essentially a nudge. It did not find that the Trump administration was in contempt of court or specify any penalties for failing to comply.
However, the judge was straightforward in his finding that an initial temporary restraining order that he issued Jan. 29 was not being followed.
“These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the T.R.O.,” Judge McConnell wrote. That earlier ruling ordered the administration not to “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate” money that had already been allocated by Congress to the states to pay for Medicaid, school lunches, low-income housing subsidies and other essential services.
Here’s the breaking story from the Washington Post on a Massachusetts judge blocking the NIH grant rate cuts in the 22 states that brought the suit (unless the Administration changes it’s position the rate cuts will proceed in the 28 states not party to the suit like Florida and Texas): (gift link)
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to cap what the National Institutes of Health pays universities and research organizations to cover their administrative costs.
The NIH’s move, announced Friday, represented a multibillion-dollar cut to those organizations. It sparked alarm among academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers.
The Massachusetts judge, Angel Kelley, ordered Monday that the Trump administration’s rate changes be stalled in the 22 states that brought a lawsuit, giving the administration until Friday to file an opposition to her decision, according to a copy of the decision obtained by The Washington Post.
She scheduled a hearing on the motion for Feb. 21.
On Friday, the White House announced indirect rate changes at the NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services, a move that would cut billions of dollars in biomedical research funding. The announcement sparked alarm among academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers.
Trump’s move effectively cut funding for “indirect” costs related to research, which are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans claim are superfluous. Twenty-two states on Monday sued the administration over the cuts, arguing that the effect of the indirect rate changes would be “immediate and devastating.”
The White House has maintained that the funding change would cut unnecessary spending on administrative costs and should not be viewed as cuts to biomedical funding. But university leaders, scientists and even some Republicans said that the abrupt policy shift, which removes billions of dollars that research organizations had been expecting, would be a damaging blow to America’s biomedical research organizations.
In a statement earlier Monday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the “arbitrary cuts” would be “devastating, stopping vital biomedical research and leading to the loss of jobs” in her state.
Folks in the 28 states with the asshole AGs should be calling them tomorrow and letting them have it for letting the medical communities and the people of your states down, big time.
Finally, Morning Consult’s weekly tracking poll just came out and Trump’s approval numbers are now officially worse right now than they were 8 years ago at this point in their polling. Here’s their summary (behind a paywall) and I will have more in tomorrow’s main post. To repeat - Trump’s disapproval rating in most (not CBS) independent public polling is higher at this point than any Presidency since polling became widely used in the 1950s. He is not off to a good start:
Trump’s popularity slips: Three weeks into his presidency, voters are only slightly more likely to approve than disapprove of Trump’s job performance, 49% to 48%. He’s slightly worse off than he was at this point in his first term, when 49% of voters also approved but only 45% disapproved. The president’s net favorability rating is also back in the red: Voters are 3 percentage points more likely to have an unfavorable than favorable view of Trump. Those are his worst numbers since November, and also worse than they were at this time eight years ago.
Millennials fuel declines: Trump’s disapproval and unfavorable ratings have increased from44% to 48% and 47% to 50% since he took office in January. In each case, this movement was driven largely by millennials, who have become 11 points more likely (36% to 47%) to disapprove of his job performance, and 7 points more likely to view him unfavorably over that time frame.
Voters are turning on Trump’s economic approach: More voters than not still approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, trade and taxes, but his net approval rating has nonetheless fallen by 9 points on all three issues. In a similar vein, Republicans in Congress remain more trusted by voters than Democrats on these issues, but those advantages have also slipped a bit in recent weeks.
Trade salience increases: On the issue front, it’s clear that trade is weighing heavier on voters’ minds: 67% said they’d heard something about the topic over the past week, a share only surpassed by immigration.
Rising egg prices are breaking through: Almost half of voters (47%) said they had seen, read or heard “a lot” about a spike in egg prices as farmers deal with a bird flu outbreak, more than the roughly 2 in 5 who heard the same about Trump’s pledge to “take over” Gaza or the president’s proposed tariffs on imports from China, Canada and Mexico.
Will have more on polling in tomorrow’s post.
Comments are off for this post. Paid subscribers who want to join our very vigorous chat today should head back to this morning’s post. Look at our good friend Jane Kleeb, the Dem Party Chair of Nebraska, working it today:
Keep working hard all. We’ve had some good wins these last few days and need to celebrate them when they come - Simon