Lawsuit challenges billions of dollars in Trump administration funding cuts
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The lawsuit argues the Trump administration has used the clause for the basis of a 'slash-and-burn campaign' to cut federal grants.
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'Defendants have terminated thousands of grant awards made to Plaintiffs, pulling the rug out from under the States, and taking away critical federal funding on which States and their residents rely for essential programs,' the lawsuit added.
Rhode Island Attorney General Neronha said this lawsuit was just one of several the coalition of mostly Democratic states have filed over funding cuts. For the most part, they have largely succeeded in a string of legal victories to temporarily halt cuts.
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This one, though, may be the broadest challenge to those funding cuts.
'It's no secret that this President has gone to great lengths to intercept federal funding to the states, but what may be lesser known is how the Trump Administration is attempting to justify their unlawful actions,' Neronha said in a statement. 'Nearly every lawsuit this coalition of Democratic attorneys general has filed against the Administration is related to its unlawful and flagrant attempts to rob Americans of basic programs and services upon which they rely. Most often, this comes in the form of illegal federal funding cuts, which the Administration attempts to justify via a so-called 'agency priorities clause.'
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the lawsuit aimed to stop funding cuts he described as indiscriminate and illegal.
'There is no 'because I don't like you' or 'because I don't feel like it anymore' defunding clause in federal law that allows the President to bypass Congress on a whim,' Tong said in a statement. 'Since his first minutes in office, Trump has unilaterally defunded our police, our schools, our healthcare, and more. He can't do that, and that's why over and over again we have blocked him in court and won back our funding.'
The lawsuit argues that the OMB promulgated the use of the clause in question to justify the cuts. The clause in question, according to the lawsuit, refers to five words that say federal agents can terminate grants if the award 'no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.'
'The Trump Administration has claimed that five words in this Clause—'no longer effectuates . . . agency priorities'—provide federal agencies with virtually unfettered authority to withhold federal funding any time they no longer wish to support the programs for which Congress has appropriated funding,' the lawsuit said.
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