A federal judge ordered the administration Monday to turn back on the pipeline of money to the National Endowment for Democracy, saying President Trump doesn’t have the power to override Congress’s spending decisions.

Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee to the court in Washington, said the White House had been slow-walking the organization’s money — and it needs to stop.

She said the administration gave insufficient reasons for why it has withheld as much as $95 million, or 30%, of the $315 million Congress allocated to the group.

“The defendants have likely unlawfully frozen the endowment’s funding,” she ruled.

The endowment is an independent nonprofit group that gets money from the government each year to dole out in the form of grants.

White House officials had argued that the endowment’s spending had gone off the rails in some cases and no longer aligned with “administration priorities.”

That’s similar to the claim the administration has made in blocking funding for all manner of government agencies.

But Judge Friedrich said that was a weak excuse compared to Congress’s explicit direction that the endowment be granted $315 million to “carry out its purposes.”

“The sudden and unprecedented withholding of $95 million — or roughly 30% — from its anticipated budget has forced the endowment to renege on commitments,” the judge ruled.

She said the president’s team likely ran afoul of both procedural law and the National Endowment for Democracy Act of 1983.

The endowment says that its grants protect human rights, battle corruption and promote democratic institutions.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.