A judge granted a temporary restraining order to block the cuts for 14 days.
A U.S. District Court judge in Illinois granted a temporary restraining order to reinstate $602 million in public health grants allocated for four states that the Trump administration had moved to cancel.
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget ordered the CDC to cancel the grants to California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, as well as $943 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation that had been allocated to the states — both effective Feb. 11. Combined, the cuts totaled more than $1.5 billion in grant funding for the four states.
The cuts were first reported by the New York Post on Feb. 4. An HHS spokesperson confirmed the move to Healio, saying “these grants are being terminated because they do not reflect agency priorities.”
In response, the states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to reinstate the funds, which were already awarded but not yet paid out. All four states are run by Democratic governors who have clashed publicly with Trump, a Republican.
“There is simply no need or valid justification for these targeted cuts that put Minnesotans at risk,” Brooke A. Cunningham, MD, PhD, MA, Minnesota’s commissioner of health, said in a press release. “These cuts by the federal government, and other cuts to public health funding over the past year, highlight a total disregard for promoting health and wellbeing.”
The largest grant impacted was the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG). Since it began in 2022, the federal program has distributed more than $5 billion to 107 health departments in all 50 states. It is set to expire Nov. 30, 2027, according to the CDC. The terminated grants only affected California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota.
According to a press release from the Minnesota Department of Health, the CDC canceled $38 million in PHIG funding earmarked for the state. Minnesota was using the grant for staffing, emergency planning and improving local public health services throughout the state.
Gabi Johnston, media relations manager at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the administration is attempting to reclaim $22 million in unspent PHIG funds already awarded to Colorado.
More than $100 million in PHIG funds are in jeopardy in California and Illinois, according to press releases from those states’ attorneys general offices.
It is not just PHIG funding that could be impacted. Johnston said Colorado also received formal termination notices for grants allocated for STI surveillance, STD prevention and control, and HIV behavioral surveillance and was expecting even more termination notices.
“These programs support core public health functions, including disease surveillance, testing capacity, workforce staffing and partnerships that help prevent and control HIV and other sexually transmitted infections across Colorado,” Jill Hunsaker Ryan, MPH, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said in a statement provided to Healio. “They are carried out by dedicated public health professionals and community partners who work every day to protect the health of Coloradans. We are carefully assessing operational impacts and are focused on maintaining continuity of essential public health services while we evaluate next steps.”
Anna K. Person, MD, FIDSA, chair of the HIV Medicine Association, called the cuts “deeply troubling.”
“Many of the grants under scrutiny aim to expand access to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP — one of the most effective tools we have to prevent HIV and a strategy the administration itself has identified as central to ending the HIV epidemic,” she said in a press release.
