Final week, the Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS) knowledgeable Congress that it meant to withhold roughly $600 million in grant funding from 4 states: California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota, Hanna Schoenbaum reported for AP Information. The respective states sued on Wednesday to attempt to block the deliberate funding. Their attorneys basic claimed the cuts are a response to those states’ opposition to Trump’s immigration insurance policies, Schoenbaum wrote. The subsequent day, a federal choose blocked the Trump administration’s motion with a non permanent restraining order launched late Thursday, NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin reported.
“These grants weren’t all put in place by a earlier Democratic administration. The $600 million is included within the funding invoice that handed with bipartisan help in Congress and was signed into legislation by Trump himself simply weeks in the past,” Simmons-Duffin wrote.
“The courtroom finds that plaintiffs have established a chance of success in demonstrating that defendants have taken ultimate company motion amounting to steering or directives to evaluation grants awarded to plaintiffs for termination primarily based on arbitrary, capricious, or unconstitutional rationales,” U.S. District Decide Manish Shah wrote in a two-page ruling issued late Thursday. “Due to this fact, plaintiffs are more likely to succeed on their declare to put aside that steering below the Administrative Process Act and their declare to enjoin unconstitutional motion by defendants.”
“President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to withhold funding from Democratic-led states, although the cuts have been blocked by decrease courtroom judges,” Reuters’ Dietrich Knauth famous. “A choose final month quickly stopped the Trump administration from freezing 5 Democratic-led states’ entry to greater than $10 billion of federal funds for childcare and household help primarily based on what the administration stated have been considerations about fraud.” “Trump final month warned so-called ‘sanctuary cities or states’ that he would start halting funding in February,” Knauth reported.
