A federal judge in New York temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing roughly $10 billion in federal funding for child care and social services destined for five Democratic-led states, keeping funds flowing until a lawsuit against the government can progress.
In a brief order on Friday, Judge Arun Subramanian directed the Trump administration to release funds for three social services programs it had planned to withhold for the next two weeks while a legal challenge by the affected states continues.
The decision came less than a day after the five states affected — New York, California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado — filed a lawsuit arguing that the freeze could create havoc among families with young children.
According to the suit, on Jan. 5 and 6, officials in the five states received letters notifying them of an immediate pause in funding for three major programs that serve low-income families and individuals with disabilities. That included around $7.3 billion through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, as well as nearly $2.4 billion from the Child Care and Development Fund, in addition to a number of smaller social service grants.
The programs disproportionately benefit vulnerable and low-income families, and the cuts could cumulatively upend support systems for hundreds of thousands of households across the five states, the lawsuit argued.
“The importance of these programs cannot be overstated — they provide cash assistance and fund services to help low-income and vulnerable families,” the lawsuit said. “Without these programs, there will be immediate and devastating impacts.”
The Trump administration has suggested that the freeze was in reaction to allegations of fraud within Minnesota’s state social safety net programs, though it has yet to provide evidence that similar schemes took place at scale in the other four states it targeted. The president has pointed to the unfolding fraud investigations in Minnesota, which have involved the Somali-American community, to justify other punitive actions, including re-examining thousands of refugee cases and launching sprawling immigration raids.
It was during those scaled-up immigration operations that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed an unarmed protester in Minneapolis on Wednesday, fueling growing protests against the administration.
Throughout President Trump’s first year in office, his administration has repeatedly canceled funding for Democratic states, including a variety of grant programs impacting energy programs, disaster relief funds and other grants. Coalitions of Democratic state attorneys general have challenged those actions in court.
During a hearing on Friday in a federal court in New York, lawyers representing the states asked Judge Subramanian to take immediate action. They argued that states such as Illinois and California were already seeing requests for hundreds of millions of dollars go unfulfilled, and that the budgetary shortfalls could lead to near-immediate disruptions.
“This cannot wait a week,” said Jessica Ranucci, a lawyer with the New York State attorney general’s office.
The lawsuit also anticipated grave effects on residents, including parents who might lose their jobs because of a lapse in child care and, as a result, their eligibility for other federal programs such as food stamps that require participants to be employed.
“It will create a tremendous burden on the state administrative systems and also harms with the ripple effects within the community,” Ms. Ranucci said.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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