A US federal district judge granted an administrative stay in a case challenging the Trump administration’s planned freeze of federal aid on Tuesday, pausing the plan for a week and setting a hearing for further arguments next Monday morning.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a memo directing federal agencies to temporarily pause activities associated with the obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance and other activities that are included in Trump’s executive orders such as financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI programs, “woke gender ideology” and the “Green New Deal.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt briefly addressed the memo’s release in her first press release. She criticized the Biden administration for “spending money like drunken sailors” while praising Trump for the “responsible measure.”

Additionally, the White House released a fact sheet consisting of a Q&A of the OMB memo, which elaborates that the pause only concerns programs, projects, and activities included in the president’s Executive Orders “that undermine the national interest.”

In response, to the memo Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, filed a complaint on behalf of the National Council of Nonprofits, the American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance, and Sage. The complaint claims:

The Memo fails to explain the source of OMB’s purported legal authority to gut every grant program in the federal government; it fails to consider the reliance interest of the many grant recipients, including those to whom money had already been promised; and it announces a policy of targeting grant recipients based in part on those recipients’ First Amendment rights and with no bearing on the recipients’ eligibility to receive federal funds.

As a result, US District Judge Loren AliKhan granted a brief administrative stay until next Monday, where she will determine whether to grant a longer pause. Democracy Forward released the following statement:

This is a sigh of relief for millions of people who have been in limbo over the last twenty-four hours as the result of the Trump Administration’s callous attempt to wholesale shutter federal assistance and grant programs that people across this country rely on. We are grateful for this administrative stay to allow our clients time to sort through the chaos created by the Trump Administration’s hasty and ill-advised actions and bring more fulsome briefing to the court.

The stay will also allow Attorney Generals and other attorneys, who have filed lawsuits to block the OMB directive, more time to prepare a case and form more complete arguments.