A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Tuesday from diverting funds from a multibillion-dollar grant program designed to protect communities against natural disasters.

US district judge Richard Stearns in Boston issued a preliminary injunction preventing the government from spending money allocated to the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (Bric) program for other purposes.

Twenty mostly Democratic-led states sued the administration last month, saying the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) lacked power to cancel the Bric program without congressional approval.

Fema is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Neither agency immediately responded to requests for comment.

Created in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term, the Bric program helps state and local governments protect major infrastructure such as roads and bridges before the occurrence of floods, hurricanes and other disasters.

According to the lawsuit, Fema approved about $4.5bn in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, primarily in coastal states, over the last four years.

But the agency announced in April it would end the program, calling it wasteful, ineffective and politicized.

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Donald Trump and Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch on Monday struck a deal related to the president’s lawsuit against the paper over its publication of a story detailing a “bawdy” birthday message Trump allegedly wrote to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

While Trump had initially sought to have Murdoch deposed swiftly, citing, in part, his advanced age and long-standing health issues, the president has now agreed to remove that request, according to a Monday court filing first reported by Politico’s Josh Gerstein.

Trump sued Murdoch, the Journal’s publisher and the reporters who authored an article the newspaper published last month reporting that the president wrote a lewd message to Epstein as part of an album British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell compiled for the disgraced financier’s 50th birthday in 2003. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Trump has denied writing the letter, attacking the newspaper for publishing its story and taking legal action over the report.

Monday’s agreement stipulates that until the “Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss the Complaint is adjudicated, the Parties agree not to engage in discovery.”

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The Justice Department is reportedly probing allegations that Obama officials fabricated evidence of Russian interference during the 2016 election, doubling down on attempts to distract from its controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Per reports from CNN and Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi has called on prosecutors to initiate a grand jury investigation into these claims – a move that could lead to subpoenas of former officials and even potential indictments.

A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bondi’s decision effectively endorses Trump’s latest baseless conspiracy theory — which has included accusing Obama of treason — and comes as the administration has struggled to move on from the Epstein debacle.

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Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, hoped to uncover evidence that Barack Obama and his national security team conspired to undermine Donald Trump in a slow-motion coup.

But if her crusade was aimed at proving that Obama embarked on a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely show that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump, Gabbard made a mistake. A previously classified annexe to a report by another special counsel, John Durham – appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency – has further undermined Gabbard’s case.

It was a quixotic enterprise from the start.

After all, the 2019 report from Robert Mueller, the original special counsel appointed to investigate the Russia allegations, and a bipartisan five-volume report the following year from the Senate intelligence committee – then chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump
’s secretary of state – both affirmed the offending January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which expressed “high confidence” in Russian interference.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, seemed to validate the intelligence’s premise in 2018 when, standing beside Trump at a news conference in Helsinki, he admitted wanting him to win.

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