Politics
Federal judge blocks White House freeze on 'financial assistance' amid anger, confusion
WASHINGTON — A federal judge Tuesday temporarily blocked a Trump administration directive that would have frozen an array of federal financial aid while the administration assessed whether it comported with the new president’s agenda, finding the directive had the potential to cause “irreparable harm” to Americans.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan delayed the Office of Management and Budget memorandum from taking effect until at least 5 p.m. Monday, while a legal challenge to it by a coalition of nonprofit organizations plays out.
The ruling by AliKhan, an appointee of President Biden, followed a rush of confusion and anger among Democratic leaders, state officials and federal program managers over the directive’s vagueness, as well as efforts by the White House to walk back its scope after first issuing the memo late Monday.
Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. — part of the coalition that sued — said the directive had the potential to cause “a lot of dysfunction and the loss of services,” and welcomed the judge’s decision to halt it while the litigation proceeds.
“When you run a nonprofit or a small business, and basically your bank account has been, in effect, closed … you have no sense of whether you’re going to get reimbursed for that work — that’s a big problem,” he said.
The administration’s order was also facing a separate legal challenge from California and other states, where officials argued the directive was an unconstitutional power grab by President Trump that would harm vulnerable populations.
“We will not stand by while the president attempts to disrupt vital programs that feed our kids, provide medical care to our families and support housing in our communities,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said at a news conference. “We won’t stand by while the president breaks the law and oversteps his authority, as outlined in our Constitution.”
Bonta said the order threatens trillions of dollars in federal funding, and was “reckless, it is dangerous, unprecedented in scope and devastating in its intended effect.”
New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who is leading the effort with Bonta, called the memo “plainly unconstitutional.”
“The president does not get to decide which laws to enforce and for whom,” James said. “When Congress dedicates funding for a program, the president cannot pull that funding on a whim.”
Bonta and James spoke after a day of swirling speculation about the scope of the order — which the White House downplayed even as it worked to specify the order’s reach.
The White House issued an updated memo Tuesday that expanded a list of programs exempted from the funding pause, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the food assistance program known as SNAP. Also exempted would be federal funding for small businesses, farmers, Pell Grant recipients, Head Start, rental assistance “and other similar programs,” the White House said.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, said that the directive was “not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs” and that anyone receiving “individual assistance from the federal government” would continue receiving that aid. She also noted that the cuts, which were meant to take effect Tuesday afternoon, were temporary, and that leaders of federal programs were free to call Trump budget officials to make the case that their programs should not be frozen.
She also suggested the administration was clear on the order’s scope, and confusion on that front was limited to the media.
Both James and Bonta said the White House’s attempts to minimize the scope of the order after confusing program managers and terrifying benefit recipients across the country did not resolve their concerns or negate the need for their lawsuit.
On the contrary, Bonta said that the initial order had “thrown state programs into chaos,” and the White House’s attempts to clarify it had “further fueled” the confusion.
James said some states were already reporting that funds had been frozen, including for programs that the White House said would not be affected. Many states had been shut out of their Medicaid reimbursement systems, she said. Other programs affected in different states included Head Start and child development block grants, she said.
California is expected to distribute $168.3 billion in federal funds and grants through the fiscal year that ends June 30. Officials are assessing what of that funding is at risk. Los Angeles officials were also scrambling to make sense of the order, which could affect housing vouchers and homeless assistance grants, according to internal emails.
Bonta said he is coordinating with other state officials, and believes that federal disaster relief funding for the recovery from L.A.’s devastating wildfires remains at risk under the order.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he remained confident in the state’s partnership with the federal government to meet fire-related needs, but also said the directive on financial aid was “completely inconsistent with the law.”
“It’s unconstitutional and I think any objective observer sees that,” he said.
The uproar began late Monday, after Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, issued a memo announcing a “temporary pause” on grants, loans and other financial assistance.
Vaeth wrote that voters had given Trump a “mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar,” and Trump needed to determine which spending by the government aligned with his agenda.
“Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” he wrote. “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”
Democrats immediately began sounding alarms and calling the directive unconstitutional and far beyond the scope of Trump’s power as president, given that Congress, not the White House, generally appropriates funding.
Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the fact that “Congress holds the power of the purse” is “very clear in the Constitution.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, called the White House move “a constitutional crisis.” His committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on Trump’s nomination of Russ Vought as White House budget chief. Vought is the architect of the spending freeze.
The original memorandum ordered all federal agencies to conduct a “comprehensive analysis” of their spending to determine which of it is “consistent with the President’s policies” and the raft of executive orders that Trump has issued.
In the interim, it said, federal agencies must — to “the extent permissible under applicable laws” — pause all disbursements of funds or “other relevant agency activities” that may be covered by Trump’s orders, “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” Vaeth wrote.
The pause, the memo said, will give the Trump administration time to “determine the best uses of the funding” moving forward.
Leading Republicans largely defended the move — suggesting it was a normal act for an incoming administration.
“I think that’s a normal practice at the beginning of administration, until they have an opportunity to review how the money is being spent,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday morning.
Democrats disagreed — issuing especially critical reactions prior to the White House’s clarifications.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the directive “outrageous” and “a dagger at the heart of the average American family in red states and blue states, in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) wrote that Trump’s “illegal scheme will raise costs, hurt working families and deny critical resources for Americans in need.” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) said the order will cause Americans to suffer.
A coalition including the American Public Health Assn. and the National Council of Nonprofits is independently challenging the memo in court, as well.
The order followed a separate directive by the Trump administration to halt a range of foreign aid.
Mark Peterson, a UCLA professor who studies public policy and political science, said the original memo was without precedent and left “extreme ambiguity as to what it affects and how it applies,” as well as its duration.
“Anything that has, from the point of view of the Trump administration, the aroma of dealing with equity or inclusion issues could be put under threat,” Peterson said — and “there’s so much misunderstanding about what those issues are.”
Times staff writers Pinho reported from Washington, Rector from San Francisco and Alpert Reyes from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.
Politics
Rubio sanctions Cuban groups with ties to US nonprofit network funded by communist donor Neville Roy Singham
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Secretary of State Marco Rubio put U.S. organizations on notice: they can no longer do business with a key Cuban organization that has spent over six decades – since the launch of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959 – cultivating relationships with U.S. activists and groups, many of them now funded by communist American tycoon Neville Roy Singham.
The sanctions target the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, known by its Spanish acronym ICAP, an organization founded by Castro in 1960 to spread Marxist ideology and support for Cuba. Long ago, U.S. officials and intelligence assessments concluded ICAP is a key component of Cuba’s intelligence apparatus.
“For decades, Cuba has been the world capital for radical left-wing terrorism,” Rubio said. “The regime in Havana has recruited, trained and backed violent Marxist and third-worldist movements across our hemisphere and beyond.”
REVOLUTIONARY TOURISM: INSIDE THE $600M MARRIAGE OF DARK MONEY AND FAR-LEFT AGITPROP
Marco Rubio moves to put sanctions on a group that Fidel Castro established in 1960 to spread Cuba’s communist influence in the world. (Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photography/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, ICAP worked with U.S. nonprofits, including the People’s Forum, Progressive International and CodePink, to organize a March “convoy” that included controversial Marxist streamer Hasan Piker landing in Cuba to support Cuba’s communist party.
The trip has since attracted federal scrutiny, with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin confirming she received questions from federal officials about the trip, investigating whether she violated sanctions.
Late last month, Fox News Digital published a three-part series, reporting that federal investigators are examining Cuba’s alleged malign foreign influence operation in the U.S., investigating a network of 145 groups with collective revenues of about $1 billion, promoting Cuba’s agenda and communist ideology.
“Today, we are targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba’s subversive and radical operations,” Rubio said.
The groups working closely with ICAP include the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, funded by Singham, a Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai. As reported, Singham has pumped $285 million into nonprofits since 2017 that have built very close relationships with ICAP and the communist government of Cuba.
Singham is married to CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans.
INSIDE CUBA’S FOREIGN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN: FROM THE VENCEREMOS BRIGADE OF THE 1960S TO SATURDAY IN A UNION HALL
ICAP is today led by Fernando González Llort, one of five former Cuban intelligence officers, known as the “Cuban Five,” convicted in the U.S. years ago on espionage-related charges and released after spending time in jail.
Critics say ICAP acts as a gateway for revolutionaries from around the world to get embedded in the propaganda, organizing tactics and strategic goals of the Communist Party of Cuba. ICAP has denied wrongdoing and says it’s a civil society organization.
ICAP was one of five entities that Rubio designated as off-limits under sanctions authorities established by President Donald Trump’s Cuba executive order. The sanctions also target Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), Minera La Victoria S.A. and the state-run tourism company Amistur Cuba S.A., which has arranged trips to Cuba with U.S. nonprofits in the Singham network.
Experts said the move signals that the Trump administration is focused not only on the Cuban government but also on U.S. institutions that U.S. officials believe help project Cuban influence internationally.
A declassified CIA report from the Cold War era, “Cuba: Castro’s Propaganda Apparatus and Foreign Policy,” described Cuba’s international propaganda and influence activities as a central component of Castro’s foreign policy strategy. The report named ICAP among organizations that act as important instruments for cultivating sympathetic political movements abroad and extending Cuban influence beyond the island.
DOJ, TREASURY INVESTIGATE NONPROFITS AND LEADERS ALLEGEDLY COORDINATING WITH CUBA IN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN
One of the most notable examples was the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuba solidarity program established in 1969 that brought generations of American activists to the island through exchanges organized with Cuban authorities and institutions including ICAP.
The program became one of the most visible pipelines connecting American activists to the Cuban revolutionary government.
Today, the Venceremos Brigade operates as a fiscally-sponsored project of the People’s Forum.
Lawmakers and federal authorities are examining whether organizations funded by Singham have acted on behalf of foreign interests without properly registering and have helped amplify messaging favorable to the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Cuba.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel (C) listens to Progressive International’s general coordinator, David Adler, during an event at the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) in Havana, on March 21, 2026. (Ernesto Mastrascusa/AFP via Getty Images)
HOW A RHODES SCHOLAR WITH TIES TO CUBA’S PRESIDENT ORGANIZED THE CONVOY THAT BROUGHT HASAN PIKER TO HAVANA
During the recent convoy in March, Progressive International co-founder David Adler appeared alongside Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and ICAP President González at an official event hosted by ICAP.
Years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass participated in Venceremos Brigade trips, a connection that her mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt resurfaced during her campaign. Bass has denied any wrongdoing.
Supporters of such exchanges describe them as educational and humanitarian programs intended to foster international understanding. Critics argue they function as political influence operations designed to build support for the Cuban regime and its ideological objectives.
The Cuban government condemned Rubio’s sanctions shortly after the announcement.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the United States of escalating economic pressure against Cuba and attempting to intensify tensions between the two countries.
Hasan Piker, a Democratic Socialists of America member, and CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans meet in Havana, Cuba, as part of a “United Front” supporting the communist regime. (CodePink via Storyful)
“The Treasury Department has added new names of Cuban leaders, organizations and companies to an illegitimate sanctions list,” Díaz-Canel wrote on social media. “They are aimed at reinforcing the blockade measures and the scenario of conflict between Cuba and the United States.”
Rubio’s warning extended beyond the sanctioned entities.
The action signals that the administration is increasingly focused on the networks, partnerships and influence channels that U.S. officials believe have helped advance Cuban interests abroad long after the Cold War officially ended.
“Anyone providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of sanctions themselves,” he said. “Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to these entities should freeze those activities.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News Digital’s Reagan Schroeder contributed to this report.
Politics
Commentary: No, Mr. Hilton, our elections are not ‘a joke.’ It’s time for you to stand up to Trump
Well, that didn’t take long.
A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.
“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote in one post.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote in another, apparently enamored of his latest juvenile slur.
Never mind that his candidate, Steve Hilton, is in the lead — for now anyway.
California has once again become the main dish on Trump’s buffet of bull-hockey as he continues to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian power, using this disingenuous and patently untrue narrative that American elections are rigged by shadowy Democratic forces working in collusion with illegal immigrants.
That last part is called the Great Replacement Theory, the idea that “elites” are replacing white people — and white voters — with Black and brown immigrants in a bid to destroy white culture. It’s at the heart of Trump’s voter fraud allegations.
The twist this time is that Hilton, the man who wants to represent all Californians, seems to be jumping on the election fraud conspiracy train with the president. I get it, there’s the MAGA base to feed, and it’s a base that feasts on outrage and fakery. Serving up resentment glazed with lies and propaganda has been the MAGA playbook for years under Trump, a strategy that no one can deny has been heartbreakingly effective.
But Hilton is a smart man and must certainly know that voter fraud is rare, to the point of being inconsequential to election outcomes. Hilton by his own admission understands voting patterns, and that in this cycle, Republicans have voted early and often by mail, despite Trump’s claims that all vote-by-mail should be suspect. So Hilton understands that early votes have skewed his way, and that later vote tallies will likely favor Democrats.
And Hilton is definitely intelligent enough to expect that in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one, he will not keep the top spot in this primary, and a slim chance remains that he will not make it into the top two. That’s just simple math.
So if Hilton truly seeks to represent this state as its top elected executive, now is the time to renounce election fraud myths and stand up to Trump’s lies. If Hilton can’t say that he believes our recent election was free and fair, then he has no business being our governor.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the path he’s taking, even as it seems increasingly likely that he will advance to the general election.
This week, speaking with far-right podcaster and former Turning Point USA creative director Benny Johnson (who was allegedly duped into working for a Russian influence operation), Hilton said that while “so far we’re not seeing any signs” of cheating, “we’re going to be all over it. We’re not going to let them do that.”
Hilton was responding to a question from Johnson on whether Hilton will sue over “cheating.”
On a post-election appearance with Laura Ingraham, the conservative Fox News host who has repeatedly promoted the Great Replacement Theory, Hilton delved into more conspiracy.
“Just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption,” he told Ingraham an anecdote about supposed fraud in a previous election cycle when a “whistleblower” at the post office told him that they were instructed that a handwritten postmark was acceptable when sorting ballots to deliver to the county registrar.
“It’s just unbelievable, and of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results, but it just undermines confidence,” he told Ingraham, certainly knowing that the post office forwarding a ballot on to a county registrar in no way means it will be certified or counted. Would we really want the USPS deciding which ballots to deliver? Disingenuous on Hilton’s part at best.
“The whole thing is a joke,” Hilton went on to say of California elections, which of course, is absurd.
Thursday, when I asked Hilton’s team to speak with him about his views on voter fraud, they sent back a response that focused on the slowness of the California vote count; voter rolls Hilton has described as “wildly inaccurate,” which is a wildly inaccurate claim; and two instances of actual fraud with voter registration — not examples of votes that were counted.
To be sure, all those items are important. Any malfeasance should be punished, and the system should always strive to improve.
But how hard is it to simply be against fraud, while accurately acknowledging that it is rare and our current system provides accurate results?
I am against voter registration fraud. I am against vote fraud. I am absolutely pro-democracy, including policies such as mail-in voting that increase participation.
I do not believe that there is widespread fraud in the California primary, or in American elections in general, because the evidence does not support that conspiracy. I do not believe that Democrats are running a decades-long, nationwide conspiracy to replace white voters with votes from Black and brown undocumented immigrants, because that is both false and racist.
Pretty basic stuff, and statements in line with the values and common sense of the majority of Californians Hilton says he will represent.
If Hilton can’t come out and clearly say that Trump is wrong — about fraud and about the Great Replacement Theory — can he really be trusted to represent the values of the Golden State?
new video loaded: Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
transcript
transcript
Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
Elias Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to climbing through a broken window at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, now works for an office responsible for uncovering and defending against terrorism plots at the Pentagon.
-
“Full pardon or commutation?” “Full pardon.”
By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 4, 2026
-
World19 seconds agoMap: 3.8-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Las Vegas
-
News7 minutes agoHow Trump’s Proposed Arch Could Complicate D.C.’s Congested Airspace
-
Lifestyle40 minutes agoA new ‘Cape Fear’ remake rolls out one surprise after another
-
Technology52 minutes agoValve says it’s ready to launch the Steam Machine this summer
-
World55 minutes agoAs Hezbollah rejects truce, families on Israel’s northern border describe life under fire
-
Politics1 hour agoRubio sanctions Cuban groups with ties to US nonprofit network funded by communist donor Neville Roy Singham
-
Health1 hour agoPeople taking common sleep drug may not realize they’re too impaired to drive, study finds
-
Sports1 hour agoSeth Jarvis scores overtime game-winner as Hurricanes storm back from 2-0 deficit to even Stanley Cup Final
