Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined another multistate lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time seeking to block the termination of nearly $12 billion worth of public health grants to states.
Raoul was part of a coalition of 24 state attorneys general and governors who filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for terminating the grants.
The Illinois Department of Public Health announced March 26 that HHS was pulling back $477 million in grant funding that previously had been approved for Illinois. That included $125 million that was earmarked to support laboratory operations in 97 local health departments as well as $324 million for future work to prevent and treat infectious diseases in Illinois.
The suit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island, argues that Congress appropriated those funds in various pandemic-related spending bills, and the administration’s decisions to terminate the grants violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act.
“Illinois and states across the nation rely on federal grants to provide state public health services that protect our children and residents from serious diseases or health crises,” Raoul said in a statement. “The abrupt termination of this funding that impacts millions of American lives is both callous and unlawful.”
Since the start of the second Trump administration in January, Raoul has joined numerous multistate lawsuits seeking to block various executive orders and policy initiatives. Those include Trump’s efforts to halt the recognition of birthright citizenship; to freeze the distribution of federal funds previously appropriated by Congress; to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, and to terminate the employment of tens of thousands of federal employees.
U.S. Department of Education rescinds millions allocated to Illinois
The Illinois State Board of Education said this week the Trump administration has decided to “claw back” more than $77 million in federal pandemic relief funds that had previously been approved for Illinois but not yet spent.
Those funds represent the final portion of more than $7.8 billion in school-related pandemic relief funds allocated to Illinois. ISBE said in a statement that it made commitments to distribute those funds to various grantees, but some of the grantees had asked for and received extensions on the deadline to actually spend the funds, “to account for supply chain issues, staffing shortages, and other delays due to the pandemic.”
On March 28, however, ISBE said the federal agency revoked those extensions, effectively taking back any funds that had not yet been spent.
“This decision is a devastating blow to the students and schools that were relying on those approved funds to provide critical services,” State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said in a statement. “School districts depend on stability in funding to plan effectively and ensure continuity of services for students. The abrupt reversal of this extension disrupts stability and jeopardizes essential programs that support students’ learning recovery.”
The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for an explanation of its decision.
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