Judge Rules Trump Can't Hide How Taxpayer Money Is Spent

Advocacy groups that sued U.S. President Donald Trump's administration this spring for taking offline a legally mandated website that details federal spending celebrated on Monday after a federal judge ordered the restoration of the Public Apportionments Database.

"The law is clear that the federal government must make its appropriations decisions public," said Adina Rosenbaum, Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney and counsel on the case, in a statement. "So this case turned on a straightforward point: The administration must follow the law."

The nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, represented by CREW lawyers and the Public Citizen Litigation Group, sued the Office of Management and Budget and OMB Director Russell Vought in April for taking down the database the previous month. That suit and another from the Protect Democracy Project were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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