By LINDSAY WHITEHURST Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge found Monday that the Trump administration hasn’t fully followed his order to unfreeze federal spending and told the White House to release all the money.

U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell ruled that continued struggles to get federal money for things like early childhood education, pollution reduction and HIV prevention research violated his Jan. 31 order. He ordered the Trump administration to “immediately take every step necessary” to follow his temporary restraining over halting its plans for a sweeping freeze of federal funding.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The judge said his temporary restraining order also blocks the administration from cutting billions of dollars in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the (temporary restraining order),” he wrote. “The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”

The administration has said it was making good-faith efforts to comply with the judge’s ruling in a lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen states. But the Justice Department also argued that his ruling only applied to a sweeping spending freeze outlined in a late January memo that has since been rescinded.

The ruling doesn’t apply to other spending pauses outlined in different memos, including funds that were part of President Joe Biden’s signature climate, health care and tax package.

But McConnell, who is based in Rhode Island and was nominated by President Barack Obama, said his order blocked the administration from a wide range of funding cuts.

The Republican administration previously said the sweeping funding pause would bring federal spending in line with the president’s agenda, and the White House press secretary has indicated some spending halts would continue as part of his blitz of executive orders.

Trump has sought to increase fossil fuel production, remove protections for transgender people and end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

A different federal judge in Washington has issued a temporary restraining order against the funding freeze plan and since expressed concern that some nonprofit groups weren’t getting their funding.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha applauded McConnell’s ruling.

“This is a country of laws. We expect the administration to follow the law,” Neronha said in a statement. “We will not hesitate to go back to court if they don’t comply.”

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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian contributed to this story.

By JILL COLVIN Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired Sunday during the Super Bowl preshow.

“Yeah it is,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is “a real thing” — as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently suggested.

“I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. “Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially a subsidy to Canada?”

The U.S. is not subsidizing Canada. The U.S. buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities like oil. While the trade gap in goods has ballooned in recent years to $72 billion in 2023, the deficit largely reflects America’s imports of Canadian energy.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off if it agreed to become the 51st U.S. state — a prospect that is deeply unpopular among Canadians.

Trudeau said Friday during a closed-door session with business and labor leaders that Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state is “a real thing” and is linked to his desire for access to the country’s natural resources.

“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing. In my conversations with him on,” Trudeau said, according to CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster. “They’re very aware of our resources of what we have and they very much want to be able to benefit from those.”

In the interview, which was pre-taped this weekend in Florida, Trump also said that he has not seen enough action from Canada and Mexico to stave off the tariffs he has threatened to impose on the country’s two largest trading partners.

“No, it’s not good enough,” he said. “Something has to happen. It’s not sustainable. And I’m changing it.”

Trump last week agreed to a 30-day pause on his plan to slap Mexico and Canada with a 25% tariff on all imports except for Canadian oil, natural gas and electricity, which would be taxed at 10%, after the countries took steps to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking.

While traveling Sunday on Air Force One to the championship game in New Orleans, Trump said that he would on Monday announce a 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., including from Canada and Mexico and a plan for reciprocal tariffs later in the week.

“Very simply it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” he said.

Trump’s participation in the interview marked a return to tradition. Presidents have typically granted a sit-down to the network broadcasting the Super Bowl game, the most-watched television event of the year. But both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, were inconsistent in their participation.

Biden declined to participate last year and in 2023, when efforts by his team to have Biden speak with a Fox Corp. streaming service instead of the main network failed. During his first term, Trump participated in three out of four years.

Trump on Sunday will also become the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl in person — something he told Baier he was surprised to learn.

“I thought it would be a good thing for the country to have the president at the game,” he said.

During his flight to New Orleans, Trump signed a proclamation declaring Feb. 9 “the first ever Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water that he renamed by proclamation from the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump in the interview, also defended the work of billionaire Elon Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been drawing deep concern from Democrats as he moves to shut down whole government agencies and fire large swaths of the federal workforce in the name of rooting out waste and inefficiency.

Musk, Trump said, has “been terrific,” and will target the Department of Education and the military next.

“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” Trump predicted. “I campaigned on this.”

He was also asked about his dancing, which has become a popular meme on social media.

“I don’t know what it is. I try and walk off sometimes without dancing and I can’t. I have to dance because it’s just that – something special about it,” Trump responded.

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed reporting from Air Force One.