Federal funds freeze blocked for 14 days while case proceeds
A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration cannot block federal money for child care subsidies and other programs for five Democratic-led states for now, court filings and a hearing showed. The decision applies at least temporarily as the case moves forward, with the court emphasizing protection of the “status quo” while arguments continue.
The five states seeking relief were California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. They argued that a policy announced Tuesday to freeze billions of dollars in funds for three grant programs was having an immediate impact and creating “operational chaos,” according to their positions in court.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was pausing the funding because it had “reason to believe” the states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally, the report said. The department did not provide evidence or explain why it was targeting those states and not others, and Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.
Judge Arun Subramanian, who was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, did not rule on whether the administration’s funding freeze was legally justified. Instead, he said the five states met a legal threshold “to protect the status quo” for at least 14 days while the parties make their arguments in court.
The report said the programs affected include the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care for 1.3 million children from low-income families. The lawsuit also challenged actions affecting the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, described as providing cash assistance and job training, as well as the Social Services Block Grant, a smaller fund that provides money for a variety of programs.
The states said they receive more than $10 billion a year from those programs, and the government sought detailed information from the states. The report said the government requested “reams of data,” including the names and Social Security numbers of everyone who received benefits from some of the programs since 2022.
In court, New York Attorney General Letitia James led the lawsuit and called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.” Jessica Ranucci, a lawyer in James’ office, said during the Friday hearing that at least four of the states had already had money delayed after requesting it, and she warned that if the states could not obtain child care funds, providers and families would face immediate uncertainty.
While the states pressed that the administration lacked a legal reason to withhold funds, the federal government maintained its actions were not stopping money from reaching states. A lawyer for the federal government, Kamika Shaw, said her understanding was that the money had not stopped flowing to the states.
At the same time as the temporary order, the report said the other 45 states faced a new requirement to check attendance at child care centers and submit “strong justification for the use of funds” that aligns with the program’s purpose, rather than the freeze challenged by the five states.
Minnesota freeze announced alongside the court’s child-care decision
About the same time the judge stopped the child care subsidies freeze, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the administration would freeze about $130 million a year in funding from her agency to Minnesota, the report said. Rollins said Minnesota’s inability to stop fraud schemes led to the decision.
The report tied the funding action to the Feeding Our Future case, saying 78 people have been charged since 2022 and 57 convicted after federal prosecutors said the Minnesota nonprofit group stole $250 million from a program meant to feed children in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s office did not immediately have a comment Friday evening. Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, said he would fight the new freeze of funds in court.
Rollins also shared a letter on social media suggesting how Minnesota could seek restoration of access to funding. The report said Rollins suggested the state could restore access by providing justification for how it spent federal dollars over the past year, and she said the state’s future transactions involving the agency’s money would require the same justification.
The article said Walz and Minnesota have become a main target of the administration in Trump’s second term, including a recent comment from Trump about the state’s Somali population in the context of the Feeding Our Futures investigation and other fraud cases involving Somali defendants. It also said the administration launched a large immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis this week that led to a fatal shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.