WASHINGTON — A senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency instructed subordinates to freeze funding for a wide array of grant programs Monday, just hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration — for the second time — to stop such pauses.
In an email with the subject line “URGENT: Holds on awards,” Stacey Street, the director of the agency’s Office of Grant Administration, told her team to freeze funding for grant programs going back several years, including those focused on emergency preparedness, homeland security, firefighting, protecting churches from terrorism and tribal security.
“For all awards FY23 and prior: put financial holds on all of your awards — all open awards, all years (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024),” Street wrote, using the shorthand “FY” for fiscal year.
NBC News obtained screenshots of the email from a recipient, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
“There’s a lot of people who are running scared and trying to appease [the new administration],” the recipient said. “This is a violation of the court order.”
Street did not immediately return a request for comment.
Earlier Monday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell had said the Trump administration continued to implement an executive order blocking federal grant programs the implementation of that order.
Public servants across federal agencies now find themselves caught between President Donald Trump’s executive orders and federal judges who have blocked them — at least temporarily — until the courts can more fully determine whether the president has exceeded his legal authority. They face firing by the Trump administration if they defy him and potential legal sanctions if they don’t.
These officials are at the ground level of a burgeoning in which Trump is claiming expansive powers that test traditional limits on the president’s authority and could circumscribe the roles of Congress and the courts.
Four FEMA officials were fired Tuesday. Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, declined to name the four officials. When asked why they were let go, McLaughlin referred to New York grants.
“Effective immediately, FEMA is terminating the employment of four individuals for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments for luxury NYC hotels for migrants,” McLaughlin wrote to NBC News. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS will not sit idly and allow deep state activists to undermine the will and safety of the American people.”
FEMA is the latest target of Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump adviser who runs the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk and his team turned their focus to FEMA over the weekend, according to an official at the agency.
By Monday, Musk posted on X his view that FEMA had broken the law by continuing to fund a temporary housing program for noncitizen migrants awaiting adjudication of their cases — claiming that $59 million had been illegally spent in recent weeks on luxury digs for migrants.
“Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk wrote. “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!”
The Shelter and Services Program is a joint venture between FEMA and Customs and Border Protection, which does not have its own infrastructure for administering grant programs. The $59 million sum is part of a larger pot of funds awarded to New York last year for the program. The average cost of a night’s stay at a hotel was sheltered by the program, compared to the roughly $400-a-night cost of a hotel stay in New York.
In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump said the entire emergency-management agency should be shuttered.
FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry,” he wrote. “It is now under review and investigation. THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!”
McLaughlin declined to answer whether Noem recognizes the legitimacy of federal courts or had any comment on FEMA officials re-ordering a freeze on grant programs after the judge said money should flow.
Addressing the broader question of the Trump administration’s stance toward judges who have temporarily blocked his executive orders, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the president will ultimately prevail.
“These unlawful injunctions are a continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump,” Leavitt said. “The White House will continue to fight these battles in court, and we expect to be vindicated. The President has every right to exercise his executive authority on behalf of the American people, who gave him a historic mandate to govern on November 5th.”
