Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has drawn a line in the sand between his state and the federal government and is warning that there will be no middle ground. You're either with him or against him.
“If people think they’re being safe by being silent, by being complicit, you’re wrong,” Raoul said, citing Donald Trump's recent executive actions taken against the law firm Perkins Coie and others.
The Illinois AG has been one of the most aggressive state officials to "stand up" to the Trump administration. He has most recently signed on to a lawsuit against Robert F. Kennedy's Department of Health and Human Services, demanding that Kennedy lift the hold on $12 billion in health grants. He said that Trump “absolutely has a right to pursue” (gee, thanks) policy changes through Congress.
“But for funds that have been appropriated, for funds where there may be a contract already in place, you just can’t rewind the tape,” Raoul said. Federal contractual issues are currently being adjudicated, and we'll likely have an answer from the courts before too long. Raoul says the Trump administration’s action will have “devastating harms” on people needing services.
The Trump administration slashed $11 billion in federal funds for states. Some of that money was in the form of grants to states to help them deal with the pandemic.
This money may be a waste, but Congress appropriated it as part of one of the gigantic Biden COVID relief bills. That means the courts will almost certainly require congressional action to claw it back.
Almost all states are addicted to that spending, and if people like Raoul get their way, we'll be funding these pandemic programs for all eternity.
While the grants were authorized and appropriated by Congress in legislation related to COVID-19, they didn’t solely address the pandemic and instead supported a variety of public health measures, according to the lawsuit against HHS.
The funding cuts that the coalition sued over came with no warning or “legally valid explanation,” according to the attorney general’s office. State health agencies were using the funds for issues such as infectious disease management, mental health and substance abuse services and emergency preparedness, the office said.
The state AGs and governors are seeking a temporary restraining order against the grant terminations.
"Many of these grants are from specific programs created by Congress, such as block grants to states for mental health and substance abuse and addiction services. Yet, with no legal authority or explanation, HHS agencies on March 24 arbitrarily terminated these grants 'for cause' effective immediately, claiming that the pandemic is over and the grants are no longer necessary," Raoul said.
If Trump and Kennedy can break this notion that once the federal government starts spending money on a program, any cut would be unthinkable, this cycle of borrow-and-spend might begin to end.
Government dollars are not holy or sacred. And why can't states spend the money to fund their own programs? That's the entire idea of federalism.
That's an easy one for Illinois. If Illinois had to fund all of these programs, it'd have to raise taxes. And that would mean Illinois would lose much more of its population to nearby low-tax red states.
On Tuesday, the lawsuit was filed at a U.S. District Court in Rhode Island. The lawsuit claims cutting the grants violated federal law "because the end of the pandemic is not a 'for cause' basis for ending the grants."
The coalition is seeking a temporary restraining order to invalidate HHS' grant terminations.
The attorneys general who are part of the coalition are from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Washington, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
If the court determines that the states have standing to sue, the cuts will likely be reversed until Congress can claw the money back itself.
