Maine’s attorney general on Tuesday joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s federal funding freeze.
The lawsuit seeks a judicial declaration that a Monday directive from the federal Office of Management and Budget’s to temporarily pause agency grants, loans and other financial assistance programs is unconstitutional. It seeks to vacate the directive, which was issued to allow the administration to conduct an across-the-board ideological review of its spending.
States named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are New York, California, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey in a statement said the withholding of federal funding “demands legal action.”
“The disruption that will flow from this unconstitutional pause will disadvantage so many Mainers and compromise the services they are lawfully entitled to,” Frey said. “This overreach by the president to unlawfully withhold congressionally-directed funding cannot, and will not, go unchallenged.”
