WASHINGTON — President Trump’s budget office is instructing the Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claw back more than $1.5 billion in grants to blue states seen as propping up “woke” or inefficient energy initiatives, officials told The Post.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told the DOT Wednesday to cancel more than $943 million in grants and the CDC to nix at least $602 million in federal funding to New York, California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado.
Administration officials said the transportation-related taxpayer dollars came in part from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and were mostly funneled to projects involving construction of electric buses and charging stations.
Illinois was slated to receive the largest of those grants, with $100 million provided to the state’s Environmental Protection Agency for charging stations.
The health care money, some of which was also passed under former President Joe Biden, funded research on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or transgender medicine that was “not in line with administration policy,” according to the OMB officials.
An OMB spokesperson noted that the cuts were just the start and more grant cancellations were expected.
If the Trump administration is successful in the latest round of cancellations, New York would lose $15 million for the city DOT’s EV charging program and another $15 million for a similar project at the State University of New York.
Minnesota’s $15 million in federal funding for EV chargers in poor neighborhoods and “environmental justice communities” would also be scratched out.
Additionally, the feds would pull $4.9 million from Colorado’s Boulder County meant for EV chargers “in low and moderate-income neighborhoods,” and Illinois would have to forgo $3.6 million for a research study aimed at helping with a translation of the Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) test into Spanish.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has already threatened to hold up tens of millions in other federal funding over lax rules surrounding CDLs for foreign drivers in New York.
The DOT cuts in California also included $15 million for “robust, accessible, and equitable” EV charging network for “disadvantaged communities” in nine counties around San Francisco. Another $2 million was set aside for the Golden State’s “climate change adaptation” plans.
None of the CDC grants being yanked were disease-specific research funding and were subawarded from a pot of taxpayer money sent to the states, the officials noted.
Chicago was in line to receive $7 million in taxpayer funds for research involving “adolescents, racial and ethnic minorities and men who have sex with men” being “disproportionately affected with Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).”
Another $7.2 million was put on the chopping block for the American Medical Association in Illinois, which officials said had supported gender transitions for children.
At least $3 million was outlined for Colorado to “Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities” — and another $1.2 million for the state to “partner with local public health departments, local health agencies, community-based organizations, STD clinics, family planning clinics, Title X clinics.”
Los Angeles County was supposed to get a remaining $1.1 million in remaining funding cut for an HIV behavioral survey. The total $4.3 million grant was approved in January 2022.
California universities also were awaiting hundreds of thousands of federal dollars for research on “reducing social isolation among older LGBTQ adults,” “Creating Medical Trust with Latinx Communities” and a National Transgender Health Summit in the state.
The City of San Francisco also had $337,000 remaining in a grant to be paid out for “intersectoral climate adaptation.”
Minneapolis would also get around $754,000 for “Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health” if the grants weren’t done away with.
In January, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, moved to cut $10 billion for the same five blue states, The Post first reported. A judge put that on pause days later.
Democrats like Empire State Gov. Kathy Hochul denounced the move for having politicized federal funding for child care and other social services
“I believe that we’ll be successful in court,” Hochul told reporters last month. “We’ll fight this with every fiber of our being because our kids should not be political pawns in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue state governors.”
Reps for Hochul and the Democratic governors of California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
