Democrats offered their first show of unified opposition to President Trump on Tuesday, as elected officials across the country vowed to fight against a White House-ordered pause in grants, loans and other federal financial assistance.
Since Mr. Trump won the election in November, Democrats have debated how stridently to oppose the president and his administration. Some argued for the kind of wholesale defiance that characterized their response during Mr. Trump’s first term. Others, including those from places where Mr. Trump gained support in 2024, pushed to find areas of cooperation on issues like immigration and inflation.
But on Tuesday, the earliest sketches of a new playbook emerged, as Democrats across the ideological spectrum accused Mr. Trump of preying on the nation’s most vulnerable citizens by denying government aid for struggling families and the elderly and defunding police departments, transportation systems and hospitals.
“Donald Trump’s administration is lying to you,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Chicago. “What the president is trying to do is illegal.”
Democratic governors, attorneys general and mayors raised alarms about halting funding to programs that would be harmed, including child-care centers and food assistance, and pointed angrily to the sudden failure of the online portal through which state Medicaid departments receive federal funding.
“I will not stand by while the president attempts to disrupt vital programs that feed our kids, provide medical care to our families and support housing and education in our communities,” said Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, who helped organize a lawsuit to block the order that was quickly joined by two dozen Democratic attorneys general.
By early evening, a federal judge in Washington temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s order freezing the disbursement of the federal funds. By then, Democrats in Washington and in city halls across the country had heard from constituents up in arms about the sudden loss of promised federal funding — concerns that their leaders eagerly relayed.
“When I get emails from young people in college saying they can’t access their portal to their financial aid — come on, man, that’s exhausting,” said Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham, Ala. “This moment is going to require more of an organized effort from everybody.”
In the Senate, Democrats who had approved Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees to lead the Treasury and homeland security departments said they would now vote against any subsequent nominees.
Even Democrats, like Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who are predisposed to seek bipartisan cooperation and who rarely channel the type of emotional response Mr. Trump has sparked among the party’s grass roots, said that the administration’s attempt to halt funding represented an alarming development that would have to be addressed before other business could take place.
“President Trump has tried to defy Congress’s constitutional appropriations role,” Mr. Coons said. “He cannot defy our advice-and-consent role.”
Still, a sudden surge of opposition in reaction to the order to freeze federal funds reduced the number of Democratic votes confirming Sean Duffy as Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary. All Senate Democrats had voted to advance his nomination, but 22 voted against him in the final round.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, summoned Democratic House members to an “emergency” meeting set for Wednesday afternoon to detail their “counteroffensive” strategy.
A memo circulated by the House Democratic leaders on Tuesday morning described the pause, ordered by the White House Office of Management and Budget, as an “illegal scheme to choke off virtually all federal funding for basic services” and urged their members to highlight the impact.
Still, the newly vocal opposition was not enough for some in the party’s liberal grass roots. Indivisible, a progressive organization that started during Mr. Trump’s first administration, called on Democratic senators to grind all business to a halt, and attacked Mr. Jeffries for moving too slowly.
“It’s not a policy memo — it’s a revolution,” said Ezra Levin, the group’s co-founder. “Don’t let it be a quiet one.”
Lisa Lerer reported from New York and Reid J. Epstein from Washington.
