Two dozen states and the District of Columbia have sued the Trump administration for pausing $6.2 billion in funding for education-related programs.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island, claims the withholding of funds violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which stipulates that Congress must review major changes to budgets that the executive branch undertakes. The administration froze funding for after-school programs, teacher training sessions, English lessons for non-native speakers, and childcare and bullying prevention, among other programs, saying it wants to make sure they fit the president’s vision.
Federal aid for schools is usually allocated annually on July 1, but the Education Department—which Trump wants to dismantle—notified state agencies the day before that it had paused its funding.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is among the 23 attorneys general and two governors who sued, called the administration’s funding hold-up “devastating.”
“The federal government cannot use our children’s classrooms to advance its assault on immigrant and working families,” she said in a statement.
“This illegal and unjustified funding freeze will be devastating for students and families nationwide, especially for those who rely on these programs for childcare or to learn English,” she added. “Congress allocated these funds, and the law requires they be delivered. We will not allow this administration to rewrite the rules to punish the communities it doesn’t like.”
James’ counterpart in North Carolina, Jeff Jackson, told ABC News that withholding funding for those programs is “plainly against the law,” and that, “from a legal standpoint, this is not a hard case.”
“Everybody knows when it comes to juvenile crime, you want a safe place for teenagers to be able to go, to be able to keep them out of trouble,” he added. “Nobody thinks that eliminating after-school programs across the entire country is a good idea.”
Some of the funds go toward after-school programs at Boys & Girls Clubs and the YMCA.
The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, but a spokesperson told ABC News in a statement that the administration is reviewing funds to make sure they don’t serve a “radical, leftwing agenda.”
“This is an ongoing programmatic review of education funding. Initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” the spokesperson said. “In one case, New York public schools used English Language Acquisition funds to promote illegal immigrant advocacy organizations. In another, Washington state used funds to direct illegal immigrants towards scholarships intended for American students.”
Yet the funding pause seems poised to hit schools in Republican-leaning areas harder. According to the think tank New America, a Republican member of Congress’ average school district would lose 1.6 times more funding per student than a Democrat’s district.
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