Laura Ingraham judges

Fox News, 2/11/25

Fox News lashes out at judge who ruled that the Trump administration lawlessly disregarded his order

Written by Helena Hind & Alicia Sadowski

Published

On February 10, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. ruled that the Trump administration failed to comply with his previous order temporarily blocking a federal funding freeze and ordering the administration to release billions of dollars in federal grants.

McConnell’s ruling is the latest in a string of legal setbacks for Trump’s executive actions. Fox News has reacted to the rulings by attacking individual judges and claiming that the judicial branch is subverting the will of voters.

  • Federal judge says that the Trump administration had not complied with his order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal grants

    Federal judge John McConnell rules that the Trump administration is disobeying his order:

    A federal judge said on Monday that the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.

    The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered administration officials to comply with what the judge called “the plain text” of a ruling he issued on Jan. 29.

    That order, he wrote, was “clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance." [The NY Times, 2/10/25]

  • Fox News criticized Judge McConnell and his ruling

    • Guest and former George W. Bush administration official John Yoo characterized McConnell’s ruling as “another example of the courts trying to get into the middle of a fight between the president and the Congress.” Yoo described Trump’s actions as those of an “energetic executive,” claiming, “There is nothing wrong with the president saying, ‘I want to freeze spending now that I’ve come into office and see what's going on.’” [Fox News, America Reports, 2/10/25]
    • Laura Ingraham complained that McConnell, “an unelected Obama judge in Rhode Island,” ordered Trump to unfreeze federal spending “and stop a duly elected president from doing what the voters elected him to do. It is a scandal.” Ingraham said McConnell’s background is “as bad as you would imagine. McConnell once served as treasurer of the Rhode Island Democratic state committee and he donated more than $100k to liberal Democrats.” Later in the segment, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) suggested Trump “seek an extraordinary writ of mandamus” to stop “abusive action by a district judge midstream.” He urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to “consider all of these options because these judges are out of line. They don’t have the authority to go in and commandeer the presidency and undo the election of November 2024.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 2/10/25]

  • Fox News personalities launched attacks on other judges who have ruled on Trump’s executive actions

    • Kayleigh McEnany claimed that the “Obama judge” who restricted access to Treasury Department data made the decision without precedent. She continued that the legal challenges prove Democrats “depend on bureaucracy” which is a “cash cow” for the party. [Fox News, Outnumbered, 2/10/25]
    • Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner asked if the challenges to Trump’s executive orders represented the “new lawfare.” Guest Phil Holloway claimed the rulings are an “anti-constitutional effort by the courts, in many of these cases, to simply substitute the judgment of an unelected judge for that of the duly elected president of the United States.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 2/10/15]
    • In response to host Will Cain’s question about the “legal challenges,” The Federalist’s Sean Davis attacked the “backwater judge in some blue enclave somewhere” arguing against presidential powers. [Fox News, The Will Cain Show, 2/10/24]