President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to weaponize federal funding as leverage in his immigration policy war hit a brick wall this week when a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the administration cannot strip more than $233 million in Homeland Security and disaster grants from Democratic-led states merely because they refuse to cooperate with his hardline immigration enforcement directives.
This ruling is hardly a technicality. It’s a thumping reminder that the executive branch doesn’t get to punish states for political disagreements. That’s something we should have expected in a constitutional republic — but Trump’s repeated efforts to use federal dollars as political leverage have become all too routine.
What the Ruling Did
On December 23, 2025, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy found that Trump’s administration had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in slashing Homeland Security and disaster funding from states like Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and others that maintain “sanctuary” policies protecting immigrants. The judge held that distributing these grants based on threat assessments — not political cooperation — is the law. The result: the money must be restored.
According to the Associate Press, the Trump administration had argued that states should lose federal funds unless they agreed to cooperate with immigration enforcement under federal directives. But the judge emphatically rejected that reasoning, stressing the statutory rules governing grant distribution did not allow for such political coercion.
This is part of a worrying trend: using federal funding as a cudgel against states with different political philosophies. It’s not neutral policy — it’s punishment. And the courts are catching on.
Just weeks ago, a separate federal judge similarly ruled it was unconstitutional to require states to cooperate with immigration action in order to get FEMA disaster funding at all*, reinforcing the idea that Trump’s strategies on funding and immigration are legally shaky.
Trump’s allies might try to spin this as a minor defeat or blame “activist judges,” but make no mistake: rulings like these curb the expansion of executive power and prevent dangerous precedents where fiscal policy becomes weaponized in political fights.
