Judge Orders Trump to “Stop Violating the Law!” Already

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Monday issued an opinion for our times, ordering the Trump administration “to stop violating the law!”

Specifically, the Clinton-appointed judge ruled that Trump’s Office of Management and Budget broke the law by taking down the public apportionment website where, under a 2022 law that Congress made permanent in 2023, it’s mandated to report executive decisions on federal spending within two business days.

The administration removed the website in March, and, soon after, OMB Director Russell Vought sent a letter to lawmakers saying the office decided to flout Congress and scrap the database due to the purportedly “sensitive,” “pre-decisional,” and “deliberative” nature of the information it is required to reveal.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Protect Democracy—watchdog organizations that rely on the OMB database—challenged the move, and Sullivan on Monday issued a partial summary judgment ordering that the administration comply with the law and bring back the website.

According to Sullivan, Trump and Vought relied on “an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power” to “claim that their apportionment decisions—which are legally binding and result in the actual spending of public funds—cannot be publicly disclosed because they are not final decisions about how to administer the spending of public funds.”

While the Trump administration argued that the 2022 law encroaches on the executive branch’s authority, its objections amount to “a policy disagreement” with no “constitutional foundation,” Sullivan wrote.

“Defendants are complaining about the extra work the 2022 and 2023 Acts require. This is a management issue; not a constitutional one,” he wrote. And the fact that the office had previously maintained the database for nearly three years “further diminish[es] any argument that complying with the disclosure requirement is overly cumbersome or places an impossible burden.”

“The law is clear,” said Sullivan: “Congress has sweeping authority to require public disclosure of how the Executive Branch is apportioning the funds appropriated by Congress,” and “there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money. Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!”