Trump Administration Again Blocked From Cutting Billions In Federal Health Money | EUROtoday

President Donald Trump’s administration should put the brakes on slashing billions in federal cash for public well being departments, a federal decide mentioned Friday.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island granted the preliminary injunction request within the lawsuit introduced final by a coalition of Democrat-led states, permitting the cash to maintain flowing.

“If we don’t have our health, we don’t have anything, and that’s why today’s preliminary injunction is such a critical win,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha mentioned in a press release, including later: “A hacksaw approach to government reduction will never yield positive results for the American people, and we will continue to fight, and win, in court to minimize the harm the Trump Administration is causing the people of this country.”

The lawsuit filed April 1 by 23 states and the District of Columbia sought to right away halt $11 billion in cuts, alleging that it might decimate public well being infrastructure throughout the nation. The cash, allotted by Congress in the course of the pandemic, supported COVID-19 initiatives and psychological well being and substance abuse efforts.

The federal authorities argued that as a result of the pandemic is over, the states not want the cash. But McElroy, who granted a short lived restraining order final month within the case, wrote in her choice that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t have the ability to resolve that cash isn’t crucial anymore.

She went on to say that the company ignored a number of necessities that govern how block grant applications are terminated, calling the federal authorities’s argument for the way it dealt with the state of affairs “puzzling.”

McElroy wrote that the federal authorities’s choice to rescind the cash isn’t simply an financial loss — “ample evidence” supplied by the states reveals that it’s going to decimate “key mental health, substance abuse, and other healthcare programs … worsening public health outcomes and placing their residents at risk.”

She pointed to a number of cases of what the cash funded, like vaccination efforts and increase illness surveillance and labs for “future health threats,” earlier than writing, “The Court could go on.”

The injunction solely applies to the states concerned within the lawsuit. The federal authorities should file documentation that they’re complying with the order by Tuesday night.

“We’re going to continue our lawsuit to protect the health and well-being of millions of Americans,” New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote on X shortly after the choice.

Health departments throughout the nation have mentioned they’ve laid off workers after the Trump administration started to claw again the cash in late March.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives assist from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely answerable for all content material.