Federal judge blocks Trump's sanctuary city grant cutoff order as unconstitutional usurpation of Congress's spending power

U.S. District Judge William Orrick III issued a nationwide permanent injunction blocking Trump's sanctuary city grant-cutoff provisions of Executive Order 13768. Orrick held that only Congress can attach conditions to appropriated funds, that EO 13768 violated the Spending Clause's unambiguous-statement rule, and that the threatened cutoff was coercively large under NFIB v. Sebelius (2012). The ruling covered all federal grants flowing to sanctuary jurisdictions, not only DOJ and DHS funds.