A judge denied Minnesota’s request to immediately block the Trump administration’s attempted withholding of a quarter billion dollars in Medicaid funding federal officials say is related to the state’s fraud problems.

U.S. District Court Judge Eric C. Tostrud on April 6 ruled in favor of the Trump administration in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison that argues the action by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is part of the “reckoning and retribution” promised by President Donald Trump, citing the president’s infamous social media post.

In his ruling, Tostrud determined the administration’s deferral of funds likely complies with the “controlling federal regulations,” and Minnesota’s challenge to the move came before any action on the matter was final.

Minnesota officials have raised “reasonable legal concerns” about the nature and scope of the Trump administration’s deferral of payments and the motivation behind it, Tostrud said, but he stopped short of immediately blocking the move.

“It is possible the record may support these concerns in the future. Today it does not,” Tostrud wrote.

Minnesota’s Assistant Attorney General Nate Brennaman said during arguments in federal court March 12 that rather than help the state fight fraud, CMS is “targeting us, attacking us and impeding us.”

“Everything screams that this is politically driven,” Brennaman said.

CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and Vice President JD Vance announced in February that the federal government would withhold $259 million from the state over concerns about fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs. Ellison’s lawsuit targets $243 million of that withheld from 14 programs deemed as high risk for fraud.

The funds will be reinstated, Oz and Vance said, once Minnesota compiles a “comprehensive corrective action plan to stop the problem.”

“All we need the governor and the administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you’re taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they’re providing,” Vance said February 25.

But Minnesota argues the funds CMS is withholding are already subject to a separate enforcement effort by the federal agency — one in which the state can present evidence and argue its case. Beyond that, the state argues, the federal government’s requests for information are broad and lack detail.

In court, Tostrud said none of Minnesota’s arguments about the deferral serving as a pretext for political retribution show a likelihood to succeed.

Brennaman said in court he believed Minnesota’s fraud problem was a “valuable political argument” for the Trump administration and that CMS’ goal is to “keep us in perpetual limbo.”

Matthew Zorn, a special assistant U.S. attorney, argued for the federal government and said CMS was working in “good faith” with the state and said it’s Minnesota’s responsibility to prove to the federal government that its Medicaid spending is lawful.

Tostrud told attorneys he wasn’t sure federal law prohibited CMS from withholding the money — but he wasn’t sure it allowed it either.

“If your honor is asking me if this is unprecedented, I would readily admit to you that it is,” Zorn said, adding that Minnesota is facing an “unprecedented scale of fraud.”

Tostrud repeatedly asked Zorn what CMS wanted in Minnesota’s corrective action plan, telling Zorn, “I’m hearing, ‘I don’t know.’”

The Trump administration has cited the state’s fraud problem as one of several reasons for the monthslong immigration crackdown and requests for huge swaths of private data.

In February, Gov. Tim Walz criticized the payment withholding as a “ransom note” and said it wasn’t a serious effort to combat fraud, calling it “targeted retribution against a state that the president doesn’t like.”

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