The Trump administration is systematically exploiting loopholes to effectively keep much of the president’s blanket spending freezes in place, accounts by officials and court filings show, despite restraining orders from judges who have told agencies to disregard the directives.
The administration’s strategy is to have political appointees embedded in various agencies invoke other legal authorities to pause spending, while posturing as if those officials had undertaken the efforts independent of President Trump’s original directives.
In short, critics say, administration officials are paying lip service to complying with the letter of the court orders while violating their spirit. The tactic shows how aggressively and nimbly the Trump administration is working to keep funds jammed up, and the complexity judges face if they want to compel the administration to unblock the money.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.
The clearest explanation of this tactic emerged from the administration itself, in a declaration filed late Tuesday by Pete Marocco, the Trump appointee who has been leading the president’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. The disclosure came in a lawsuit over Mr. Trump’s executive order imposing a freeze on nearly all foreign aid spending.
In the declaration to Judge Amir H. Ali of the Federal District Court in Washington, Mr. Marocco said U.S.A.I.D. officials were told not to enforce a directive, issued under Mr. Trump’s freeze order, that had required them to suspend paying out contracts and awards.
But that does not mean the money is flowing again. The agency’s payments system, known as Phoenix, is still nonfunctional, according to more than a dozen employees of the agency and the aid organizations that rely on its funding. That means it has been impossible in practice to fulfill the administration’s stated policy of allowing programs that provide lifesaving humanitarian aid to keep functioning, they said.