logo
Delaware AG, others file motion to enforce court order to unfreeze federal funding

Delaware AG, others file motion to enforce court order to unfreeze federal funding

Yahoo08-02-2025
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general on Friday who say President Donald Trump's administration is not complying with a court order to unfreeze federal funds needed for critical programs and services.
In withholding the nearly $3 trillion that had already been approved by Congress, the coalition says many states could face cash shortfalls, making it difficult to administer basic programs such as funding for health care and food for children.
"These funds are not monopoly money and this is not a game," Jennings said in a statement released in the final minutes of the business week. "Each and every one of these dollars represent promises that the United States made to Americans. Real people are suffering and will continue to suffer incredible damages from the disruption of these vital funds."
BACKGROUND: Delaware DOJ moves forward with lawsuit against President Trump's federal grant freeze
The coalition is trying to enforce a temporary restraining order issued on Jan. 31 by a federal judge in Rhode Island that blocked Trump's order pausing federal grants to states and cities. U.S. District Judge John McConnell's ruling was issued despite a Jan. 29 memo about the president's order being rescinded.
While the memo was rescinded, a White House press secretary posted on X that the rescission of the memo was not a rescission of the federal funding freeze.
McConnell, on Thursday, said he stood ready to enforce his order blocking the president's administration from freezing federal grants, loans and other financial assistance. During a virtual court hearing that day, the judge said state agencies had a "rightful concern" that they were still not able to fully access money nearly a week after he issued his temporary restraining order.
MORE: Trump holds back billions in funding despite court ruling, states tell judge
The pausing in funding means public safety, health care, preschool, health research, housing and infrastructure are on the chopping block, Jennings said.
"This is reckless, callous and an incredible insult to the American people, including the millions who voted for President Trump," she said.
The states' filing further highlights the harm Delaware and other states face if funds under the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) are not allocated as required by statute, her office said.
By way of example, Jennings said the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control received an email Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Energy, one of its federal grantors, requesting receipt of its earlier directive to cease federal funding, creating confusion and uncertainty regarding Delaware's ability to draw on obligated federal funds.
Other agencies have encountered even more serious disruptions, she said.
As of Wednesday, the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services still could not access grant funds to protect children under the age of 6 from lead paint poisoning.
Amid evidence that the Trump administration has continued to block or delay these specific funding categories, the attorneys general filed a motion to ensure these critical funds are swiftly disbursed so that states can put them to use to protect the health, safety, and well-being of their residents, Jennings' said.
Other attorneys general making up the coalition are from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
Send tips or story ideas to Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299 or eparra@delawareonline.com.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware files motion to enforce order to unfreeze federal funding
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump
Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump

Yahoo

time18 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump

If you're an American CEO, you might wake up one day to discover that President Trump has helped himself to a seat on your board of directors. Since first running for president in 2015, Trump has fashioned himself as a businessman-politician who knows what's best for American companies. Many CEOs appreciate his focus on deregulation and lowering taxes. But there's a catch: Trump has strong views on how managers should run their businesses and no compunctions about using the power of the presidency to bully bosses into doing it his way. Many CEOs are learning how to accommodate the micromanager in chief, some through lip service and others through actual business decisions. Some of Trump's interventions are remarkably mundane. He wants Coca-Cola to use real cane sugar in its soda instead of corn syrup. Coke says it will actually do what Trump wants, even though sugar is more expensive and Trumpa-Cola will probably cost more. Other demands are far more problematic. He wants the Washington Commanders football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to their former names, the racially insensitive Redskins and Indians, respectively. That's Trump using professional sports franchises to push his anti-woke agenda to the extreme, which may not hurt Trump, but it puts the two teams in a lose-lose position by reigniting controversies they thought they had finally put behind them. Trump's most meddlesome gambit is his trade policy, which is meant to literally force thousands of US companies to reorganize the way they do business by buying less abroad and more domestically. He directly threatened Apple with a 25% tax if it doesn't start making iPhones in the United States. After Mattel said it would have to raise prices because of Trump's tariffs, Trump threatened a 100% tax on products the toymaker imports and threatened that Mattel "won't sell one toy in the United States." Trump said he'd hit Harley-Davidson with a "big tax" if it went through with a plan to move some motorcycle production overseas. When Walmart said it would likely pass along the cost of Trump's tariffs to its own customers, Trump told Walmart it should "eat the tariffs" — pay the cost and accept lower profits — and warned, "I'll be watching." Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump's tariffs Trump's manhandling of corporate America is hitting the bottom line. General Motors (GM) said on July 22 that Trump's tariffs shaved $1.1 billion off its second quarter profits and will likely cost the company as much as $5 billion this year. The day before, Jeep maker Stellantis (STLA) said the Trump tariffs contributed to a $2.7 billion loss in the first half of 2025. The second quarter earnings season is just getting started, so that may just be a taste of the losses related to Trump's rewiring of global supply chains. There's another category of Trump strong-arming: revenge. Trump has punished a dozen or so prominent law firms for working with Democrats or contributing to lawsuits or prosecutions targeting Trump himself. Trump typically issues an order limiting those firms' ability to work with the federal government, and in some cases makes deals in which those firms agree to do pro bono work for Trump's pet causes. Trump becomes the de facto chair of the firm's pro bono there's Trump's anti-woke crusade targeting Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and dozens of other universities for policies Trump considers too liberal. Trump has canceled billions of dollars' worth of federal grants to those schools, in some cases securing his desired policy changes as part of a settlement. Many companies have tried to preempt a Trump anti-woke crusade by rolling back diversity policies, including Google, (GOOG), Deloitte, Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Paramount (PARA), UnitedHealth (UNH), and IBM (IBM). Trump, in these instances, runs the HR department for a stint. Trump's micromanaging is a stark departure from the free-market capitalism the Republican Party has espoused for decades. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers likens Trump's interventionism to Soviet-style central planning. "There is not a single institution this guy doesn't want to call to tell them how to do their jobs," Wolfers said recently. There are at least three lessons for CEOs. One is to hide for as long as Trump is president and hope he never notices your company or any of its products. Trump seems to have targeted Coke for his new beverage formula because he's a famous fan of its products. He hasn't said anything about Pepsi using a similar formula. Pepsi probably hopes he never does, though CEO Ramon Laguarta is clearly hedging his bets. Another lesson is that it's OK to blame Trump's intervention for losing money, but not for raising prices. Trump hasn't publicly criticized any company for saying his tariffs have cost them money, as GM and Stellantis have done and many more are sure to do. Eating the cost of his policies causes Trump no heartburn. But if you publicly blame him for any pain that afflicts voters, he blows his stack and sometimes seeks revenge. Lose money loudly, raise prices quietly. A third lesson is to pal up with Trump — and watch your back. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang has become Trump's new business BFF, accompanying him on a high-visibility Mideast trip in May and counseling him behind the scenes on technology and trade policy. Nvidia benefited earlier this month when Trump reversed a prior position and once again allowed the sale of advanced Nvidia chips to China. The company's stock popped more than 5% on the news. Other corporate titans have courted Trump — and then fallen out of favor. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, once considered Trump's "tech whisperer," seems to have offended Trump by declining to join his Mideast trip in May. That's when Trump threatened a 25% tax specifically on imported iPhones. Trump's most spectacular business breakup has been with Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who contributed millions to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and became head of the DOGE commission. But Musk grew disillusioned with some of Trump's policies, criticized them publicly, and broke ties with the Trump administration. Trump retaliated by threatening to deport Musk to his home country of South Africa and cancel contracts or subsidies involving Tesla and another Musk company, SpaceX. Crony capitalism only works if the cronyship lasts. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

Trump pick Alina Habba is out\u00a0as interim US attorney for New Jersey
Trump pick Alina Habba is out\u00a0as interim US attorney for New Jersey

USA Today

time19 minutes ago

  • USA Today

Trump pick Alina Habba is out\u00a0as interim US attorney for New Jersey

President Donald Trump's former lawyer Alina Habba was rejected as the state's top federal prosecutor. WASHINGTON – A panel of judges in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey declined to permanently appoint President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Alina Habba, to serve as the state's top federal prosecutor, according to an order from the court. Habba has been serving as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney since her appointment by Trump in March, but was limited by law to 120 days in office unless the court agreed to keep her in place. The U.S. Senate has not yet acted on her formal nomination to the role, submitted by Trump this month. The court instead appointed the office's No. 2 attorney, Desiree Grace, the order said. More: Trump's team promised transparency on Epstein. Here's what they delivered. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York last week declined to keep Trump's U.S. attorney pick John Sarcone in place after his 120-day term neared expiration. Sarcone managed to stay in the office after the Justice Department found a workaround by naming him as "special attorney to the attorney general," according to The New York Times. Habba's brief tenure as New Jersey's interim U.S. attorney included the filing of multiple legal actions against Democratic elected officials. Her office brought criminal charges against Democratic U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, as she and other members of Congress and Newark's Democratic mayor, Ras Baraka, tried to visit an immigration detention center. The scene grew chaotic after immigration agents tried to arrest Baraka for trespassing, and McIver's elbows appeared to make brief contact with an immigration officer. Habba's office charged McIver with two counts of assaulting and impeding a law enforcement officer. McIver has pleaded not guilty. Habba's office did not follow Justice Department rules, which require prosecutors to seek permission from the Public Integrity Section before bringing criminal charges against a member of Congress for conduct related to their official duties. Habba's office also charged Baraka, but later dropped the case, prompting a federal magistrate judge to criticize her office for its handling of the matter. Prior to March, Habba had never worked as a prosecutor. She represented Trump in a variety of civil litigation, including a trial in which a jury found Trump liable for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room. In 2023, a federal judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and Habba and ordered them to pay $1 million for filing a frivolous lawsuit, which alleged that Hillary Clinton and others conspired to damage Trump's reputation in the investigation into Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

American dad DUPED into fighting on Russian frontlines after family fled US
American dad DUPED into fighting on Russian frontlines after family fled US

New York Post

time19 minutes ago

  • New York Post

American dad DUPED into fighting on Russian frontlines after family fled US

An American dad has been duped into fighting on the front lines of Russia's army. Derek Huffman and his wife, DeAnna, moved their three daughters, ages 10, 11 and 12, across the globe to avoid 'woke ideology" in the US in March. He joined the Russian military in the hopes of expediting citizenship for his family. Despite being assured he would serve a non-combat role – either as a welder or a correspondent – his wife DeAnna claimed in a since-deleted YouTube video that he's being 'thrown to the wolves.' Here's everything we know about the 'anti-woke' family who fled the US to Russia – and the dangerous turn of events they didn't see coming.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store