{"id":95548,"date":"2026-01-10T04:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T04:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/95548\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T04:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T04:09:11","slug":"judge-blocks-trump-admin-from-freezing-10b-in-child-care-social-services-funding-to-five-blue-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/95548\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge blocks Trump admin from freezing $10B in child care, social services funding to five blue states"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Friday from cutting off more than $10 billion in social services and child care funding<\/a> to five Democrat-led states over fraud concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New York District Judge Arun Subramanian, an appointee of\u00a0former President Joe Biden, issued the 14-day temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed by state attorneys general <\/a>in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York \u2013 the states targeted by the Trump admin\u2019s funding freeze.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis relief is preliminary in nature and is designed to protect the status quo while plaintiffs\u2019 motion for a preliminary injunction is briefed and decided,\u201d Subramanian wrote in a two-page order.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Subramanian found that the Democrat-led states showed \u201cgood cause\u201d in arguing that the funding freeze would have \u201cimmediate and devastating impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the four other states suing the Trump administration, celebrated the legal victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trump administration notified California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York earlier this week that certain HHS funding would be frozen amid fraud concerns. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision is a critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration\u2019s cruelty,\u201d James said in a statement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom childcare to shelter services for survivors of domestic violence, these funds provide resources that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers depend on,\u201d the Democratic AG continued. \u201cThis illegal funding freeze should have never happened, and I will keep fighting to uphold the law and protect funding that our communities need.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Department of Health and Human Services\u00a0(HHS)<\/a> had sought to cut off the five Democrat-led states from access to more than $7 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash to low-income families with children; $2.4 billion from the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes child care for eligible parents; and about $870 million from the Social Services Block Grant program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTo prevent fraud, we asked states to provide receipts before sending taxpayer money for child care,\u201d HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O\u2019Neill wrote on X<\/a> after the ruling. \u201cFive blue states sued and an activist Biden-appointed judge just ordered us to stop asking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are they afraid of?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0O\u2019Neill said HHS would follow Subramanian\u2019s order but vowed to \u201cfight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will comply with the court, but we will fight. We will appeal. We will keep asking questions,\u201d the Trump administration official wrote, adding, \u201cWe will stop the fraud.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trump administration had asked the states to provide comprehensive lists of funding recipients between 2019 and 2025. AP<\/p>\n

The Trump administration plans to appeal the order. AP<\/p>\n

The funding pauses were announced via letters from HHS\u2019 Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to each state sent Tuesday, citing concerns that benefits were fraudulently<\/a> going to \u201cillegal aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese concerns have been heightened by recent federal prosecutions and additional allegations that substantial portions of federal resources were fraudulently diverted away from the American families they were intended to assist,\u201d ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams wrote in each letter to the states.<\/p>\n

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul were also asked to hand over comprehensive lists of funding recipients between 2019 and 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Democrat-led states countered in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday that the spending halt amounted to an unconstitutional act of political retribution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendants have publicly stoked allegations of fraud, including Plaintiff States purportedly providing unlawful benefits to undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether they have been substantiated,\u201d the lawsuit stated, arguing that the Trump administration has \u201cused those speculative allegations as a pretextual justification to punish perceived political enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Friday from cutting off more than $10 billion in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2136,5341,419,153,396,22013,5350,5800,9,11,10,49,51,50,87,58],"class_list":["post-95548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-california","tag-colorado","tag-courts","tag-donald-trump","tag-fraud","tag-health-and-human-services","tag-illinois","tag-minnesota","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-politics","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}