Attorney General Platkin Leads Multistate Lawsuit Challenging Trump Administration’s Illegal Attempts to Terminate Critical Federal Funding to States

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced that he is leading a coalition of 21 Attorneys General and the state of Pennsylvania in suing the Trump Administration over its unprecedented and unlawful attempts to invoke a single provision buried in the federal regulations to strip away billions of dollars in critical federal funding for states and other grantees. The lawsuit seeks to limit the Trump Administration’s use of this regulation to indiscriminately and illegally terminate critical funding for combating violent crime, educating our students, protecting clean drinking water, conducting lifesaving medical and scientific research, safeguarding public health, addressing food insecurity, and much more. Since January 20, at the direction of President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, federal agencies have stripped away thousands of grants they had previously awarded to states and grantees. The Trump Administration has slashed this critical federal funding by invoking a single clause in the federal regulations of the Office of Management and Budget, which provides that agencies may terminate an award of federal funding if it “no longer effectuates … agency priorities.”  Those five words have formed the basis for much of the Trump Administration’s indiscriminate campaign to unlawfully terminate critical funding expressly authorized by Congress and awarded to states.