One thing can be said for certain, President Donald Trump’s election to the Oval Office for a second term has assured the federal judiciary of job security.
Dozens, even hundreds, of lawsuits have been filed by individuals, groups, entities, states and nations over his agenda points.
From the work of the Department of Government Efficiency in making budget cutbacks, to his foreign policy, to his economics, to his appointments, no part of the executive branch’s constitutional responsibilities that Trump has exercised has escaped being named in some court filing somewhere.
But now instead of waiting for some “offense” to come out of the Trump administration, leftist states that largely voted against the 2024 landslide election victory for Trump and supported the word-salad pro Kamala Harris are suing.
They want court orders to prevent Trump from acting, not just to reverse his orders.
“We can’t just sit back and wait for the next set of cuts,” Mathew Platkin, the attorney general for New Jersey, claimed.
At issue is a federal OMB ruling that cash handouts set up by Washington can be canceled, “pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Federal award, including, to the extent authorized by law, if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”
Today, I’m suing the Trump Administration alongside 19 other states and Washington DC to stop them from arbitrarily canceling funding owed to Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/tXp6Ews3a3
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) June 24, 2025
That last phrase suddenly has become important, as the priorities of federal agencies under the executive branch have changed dramatically from the tenure of Joe Biden, whose goals included abortion for all and transgenderism for children.
For instance, where Biden’s Department of Justice persecuted pro-life activists who even entered those “bubble zones” around abortion businesses, Trump’s DOJ is investigating the vandalism at pro-life centers and churches.
Where Biden openly pushed transgenderism on Americans and their organizations and churches, often despite outraged opposition, Trump’s order states that the federal government recognizes two genders, male and female.
Biden openly promoted transgenderism in the military; Trump is working to remove those individuals, whose medical conditions are incredibly costly to taxpayers, from the ranks.
Biden insisted on open borders that allowed in millions of illegal aliens, including criminals and even terrorists; Trump has sealed the border and is working to deport those criminals.
Each issue has, at some point, generated legal conflict.
The new lawsuit has been filed in Massachusetts, where the plaintiff states of New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, are more likely to obtain a leftist, activist judge than in many other states.
Named are an entire list of federal departments and their managers, mostly appointed by Trump
The states claim that President Trump has launched “an unprecedented and unlawful campaign to terminate billions of dollars in critical federal funding appropriated by Congress.”
The complaint doesn’t immediately cite that that agenda is exactly what Americans voted for in the 2024 presidential race.
The states complain about the executive branch’s decisions to end grants that the Biden administration had awarded, including billions of dollars handed out during the lame-duck part of Biden’s term, like, as one commentator explained, dumping gold bars from the Titanic.
While Biden’s agencies obviously “approved” those grants, the bureaucracies now under the administration of President Trump no longer support the goals.
“Federal agencies have engaged in this nationwide slash-and-burn campaign by unlawfully invoking a single subclause buried in federal regulations promulgated by the Office of Manage of Budget,” the plaintiffs claim.
That, of course, is the permission for agencies to terminate grants “if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”
The plaintiff states, in fact, are demanding those billions of dollars adopted by Biden bureaucrats be delivered by the Trump administration. They claim without the money, hurt will be programs to fight crime, educate students, safeguard public health, protect clean drinking water, conduct medical and scientific research, address food insecurity, ensure unemployment benefits and more.
They claim the states’ sole offense is to be doing just what the Biden bureaucrats demanded, even though those grants are under the auspices of the administration of Trump now, often with complete opposite priorities.
The states claim that the OMB “never suggested … that a grant could be terminated even though the grant was continuing to serve the very goals for which the monies had initially be awarded, merely because the agency’s priorities shifted midway during the use of the grant…”
The leftists, including some of those who orchestrated a years-long lawfare campaign against Trump, complained that federal agencies, when Trump took office, “abruptly shifted course.”
Trump had, in fact, told agencies and DOGE to “review all existing covered contracts and grants and, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, terminate or modify” them.
The states complain that the Trump administration now is invoking the clause to terminate grants “based on newly identified agency priorities.”
The states complain that the OMB itself allows “no support for a broad power to terminate grants on a whim based on newly identified agency priorities.”
And they complaint that no longer being in the pipeline for federal cash handouts has hurt them.
Their solution is for a court to disallow permanently the termination of grants “on the basis that the grant ‘no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities’ if the award terms and conditions do not ‘clearly and unambiguously specify’ that the award can be terminated.”
That ruling, if made and eventually affirmed, essentially would lock in each new presidential administration into the funding priorities that the previous administration demanded, meaning a president elected in 2028, should that be a Democrat, could be locked into hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Trump could authorizes during his final months of his second term.
They also demand that the court set aside existing federal regulations and practice.
Among the signatures on the document was Letitia James, attorney general for New York who currently is under investigation for federal mortgage fraud; Philip Weiser, of Colorado, whose all-Democrat state Supreme Court vainly tried to bar Trump from the state’s 2024 election ballot, the far-left Dana Nessel whose activities in Michigan have had extremiust overtones for several years, Keith Ellison, the extremist from Minnesota, and more.
