A federal judge yesterday temporarily barred the Department of Health and Human Services from terminating public health funds that had been allocated to states during the Covid-19 pandemic, finding that the move had left those states stranded and unable to provide critical health services. Via The New York Times:
Ruling from the bench during a hearing on Thursday, Judge Mary S. McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island said a coalition of Democratic states had easily demonstrated that the cuts had upended their public health infrastructure and jeopardized everything from childhood vaccination programs to opioid addiction treatment almost overnight.
On Tuesday, 23 states and the District of Columbia had filed a lawsuit pushing back against the Trump administration’s decision last week to cancel at least $11 billion in federal grants. The Trump administration had said that the funding was no longer necessary because the government’s pandemic emergency declaration had officially expired nearly two years ago.
[…] But some of the funding at issue was not scheduled to expire until as late as June 2027, and the states suing said that the abrupt and seemingly arbitrary termination had left them scrambling to fill a deep hole in their budget.
It’s so hard making the mental switch from thinking of government as something that tries to help people — as opposed to the time of Trump, where strangely, the government is actively trying to hurt them.
Leslie Kane, a lawyer for the government, said that the Justice Department had been unable to review the thousands of pages of exhibits the states had submitted in the two days since the lawsuit was filed. She asked Judge McElroy to hold off on an immediate order to allow the government time to craft its case.
But within 30 minutes, Judge McElroy decided to grant an emergency restraining order, citing the “voluminous” list of harms the states had recorded, and their “extremely strong” likelihood of success in the case. She ordered both sides to return to discuss next steps on April 16.
“I don’t see how I can deny the temporary restraining order on the record that’s before the court,” she said.