FEMA Steals $80M From NYC, Dares Courts To Do One thing About It

The Trump administration had a nasty evening in Boston adopted by a awful morning in Windfall, as two courts gave main aspect eye to the DOJ’s newest authorized stylings.

Many individuals are saying these pleadings are rubbish! They arrive with tears of their eyes and say, Sir, we’ve by no means seen the Justice Division demand a right away interlocutory enchantment and administrative keep of a TRO that’s been in place lower than two weeks.

The newest benchslaps arose within the blue states’ case to dam the freeze on meting out federal funds to folks President Trump and Grand Vizier Musk don’t like.

“The Govt Department has an obligation to align federal spending and motion with the need of the folks as expressed via congressional appropriations, not via ‘Presidential priorities,’” Rhode Island federal Choose John McConnell scolded within the January 31 TRO, reminding the feds that really Congress has the ability of the purse.

And he reiterated that “the plain language of the TRO entered on this case prohibits all categorical pauses or freezes in obligations or disbursements” when he granted the plaintiffs’ emergency movement to implement after the federal government was caught blatantly defying the primary order. Choose McConnell pointedly famous that events who defy a court docket order are risking legal contempt, even when the order is later reversed.

This seems to have gotten the eye of the DOJ attorneys, who first seen an enchantment of the TRO to the First Circuit, after which threw themselves histrionically onto the courthouse steps in Boston, howling a couple of “broad incursion on the orderly operation of presidency and the President’s Article II authority to manage the Govt Department.”

The appellate panel expressed excessive puzzlement as to whether or not they would even have jurisdiction to impose an administrative keep, however then, assuming that they did, denied it.

“We observe on this regard the plaintiffs’ assertion of their Opposition to Defendants’ Movement for Administrative Keep Pending Attraction that, in line with the TRO, the February 10 Order “doesn’t cease defendants from limiting entry to funds with none ‘preclearance’ from the district court docket ‘on the idea of the relevant authorizing statutes, rules, and phrases,’” they wrote.

In the meantime again in Windfall, the federal government was in a little bit of a sticky wicket. As a result of Elon Musk and his military of DOGE bros claimed to have found FEMA paying to place unlawful immigrants up in luxurious resorts. That was bullshit — should you may even imagine it! — however the brother in douche over at FEMA instantly promised to place an finish to it and fireplace the accountable events.

Darn you Congress together with your filthy BILLS!

This compelled the DOJ to tiptoe again to Choose McConnell and “request that the Court docket present ‘focused reduction’ from its Orders, confirming that FEMA could proceed ‘withholding funds because of particular authority.’”

This was accompanied by a declaration from FEMA bro Hamilton which unusually made no point out of Musk’s false claims. As a substitute it referred to “media studies, the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua has taken over the lodge [being used to house migrants] and is utilizing it as a recruiting middle and base of operations to plan quite a lot of crimes.”

That declare is sourced to a New York Publish article based mostly on Spanish language TikToks and a report from a neighborhood ABC affiliate which quotes one NYPD detective claiming that there are a handful of juvenile and tween pickpockets who dwell at Roosevelt Lodge in midtown Manhattan the place migrants in search of asylum are being housed beneath FEMA’s Shelter and Service Packages.

“In keeping with these identical studies, these crimes embody gun and drug gross sales in addition to intercourse trafficking, which might fairly be presumed to be performed within the lodge itself,” Cameron assures the court docket, citing as proof articles from the Nationwide Assessment and Fox Information.

Cameron presupposed to have “paused funding shortly on this matter to guard that funding from the potential for its misuse for the criminal activity described above.” However in truth it seems that he’d carried out one higher than that.

In keeping with a assertion from New York Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander, the Trump administration siphoned off $80 million from the Metropolis’s checking account, retroactively defunding the contract:

This morning, my monetary staff shockingly uncovered that President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York Metropolis’s financial institution accounts late yesterday afternoon. That is cash that the federal authorities beforehand disbursed for shelter and providers and is now lacking. This freeway theft of our funds straight out of our checking account is a betrayal of everybody who calls New York Metropolis house.

Lander referred to as on Mayor Eric Adams to do one thing about it. Adams, who simply so occurs to have had his bribery expenses dropped with out prejudice this week, has stated that it might be higher to not criticize the Trump administration publicly.

And within the meantime, Choose McConnell denied the DOJ’s request to bless FEMA’s actions retroactively, noting that the federal government is completely entitled to cancel contracts if, because it warrants, it intends to offer “discover to New York Metropolis concerning the funding pause and can present the knowledge and course of required by regulation and the phrases and circumstances of the award.”

Gonna take a wild shot at the hours of darkness that stealing $80 million from a business checking account and unilaterally slicing off funding is not the “routine course of” specified by the settlement.

Anyway, take pleasure in your constitutional disaster courtesy of “our judicial department.”