By ANNA CLAIRE VOLLERS
stateline.org
Article Summary
- President Donald Trump’s administration sought to block $11 billion in public health funding grants in a March executive order.
- Illinois was among nearly a dozen Democrat-led states to file suit against the action.
- Those states won an injunction against the administration’s action in May, which allowed them to keep much of the funding that was slated for cuts.
- The injunction applied to only states that sued.
- Illinois has been able to retain 19 of the 21 grants that were slated for termination.
This summary was written by the editors of Capitol News Illinois.
After the Trump administration slashed billions in state and local public health funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, the eventual impact on states split sharply along political lines.
Democratic-led states that sued to block the cuts – including Illinois – kept much of their funding, while Republican-led states lost the bulk of theirs, according to a new analysis from health research organization KFF.
The uneven fallout underscores how politics continues shaping health care in the United States. The nearly 700 CDC grants were worth about $11 billion and had been allocated by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not just COVID-19 spending
Since then, state and local health departments had spent or planned to spend the money not just on COVID-related efforts, but also on prevention of other infectious diseases, support for mental health and substance use, shoring up aging public health infrastructure, and other needs.
The CDC grant terminations initially affected red and blue states about evenly, according to KFF. California, the District of Columbia, Illinois and Massachusetts — all led by Democrats — had among the largest numbers of terminated grants.
The Illinois Department of Public Health announced on March 26 that the federal government was pulling back over $400 million in grant funding that previously had been approved. That included $125 million that was earmarked to support laboratory operations in 97 local health departments as well as $324 million for future work to prevent and treat infectious diseases in Illinois.
Blue states sue
Illinois was one of nearly two dozen blue states and the District of Columbia that sued the Trump administration in April, asking the court to block the grant terminations. They argued the federal government lacked the authority to rescind funding it had already allocated.
The suit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island, argued that Congress appropriated those funds in various pandemic-related spending bills, and the administration’s decisions to terminate the grants violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act.
“Illinois and states across the nation rely on federal grants to provide state public health services that protect our children and residents from serious diseases or health crises,” Raoul said in a statement at the time. “The abrupt termination of this funding that impacts millions of American lives is both callous and unlawful.”
Read more: Raoul challenges blocked public health funding as feds rescind education dollars
A federal judge sided with the blue states and blocked the cancellations — but she limited her injunction to the jurisdictions that filed in the lawsuit. Nearly 80% of the grant cuts have now been restored in blue states, according to the KFF analysis, compared with less than 5% in red states.
According to the KFF analysis, 21 grants in Illinois were targeted for termination prior to the lawsuit, but just two have been terminated following the judge’s injunction.
Cuts hit red states hardest
Now four of the five states with the most canceled grants are led by Republicans: Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. California, which is dominated by Democrats, kept all of its grants that had been initially terminated.
In the West and Midwest, Democratic-led Colorado — which joined the lawsuit — had 10 of its 11 grant terminations reversed. Its Republican-led neighbors that did not sue, including Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, lost all of their grants, according to the KFF analysis.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in Stateline.org. Quotations from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, and further information about Illinois’ lawsuit, were added by CNI Editor Jerry Nowicki. For questions, contact Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers.
The post Illinois among blue states to keep public health dollars while red states lose out by K Ellen Stackhouse appeared first on Capitol News Illinois – A service of the Illinois Press Foundation
