A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Friday from cutting off more than $10 billion in social services and child care funding to five Democrat-led states over fraud concerns.
New York District Judge Arun Subramanian, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued the 14-day temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed by state attorneys general in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York – the states targeted by the Trump admin’s funding freeze.
“This relief is preliminary in nature and is designed to protect the status quo while plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction is briefed and decided,” Subramanian wrote in a two-page order.
Subramanian found that the Democrat-led states showed “good cause” in arguing that the funding freeze would have “immediate and devastating impacts.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 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.
“To prevent fraud, we asked states to provide receipts before sending taxpayer money for child care,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill wrote on X after the ruling. “Five blue states sued and an activist Biden-appointed judge just ordered us to stop asking.
“What are they afraid of?”
O’Neill said HHS would follow Subramanian’s order but vowed to “fight.”
“We will comply with the court, but we will fight. We will appeal. We will keep asking questions,” the Trump administration official wrote, adding, “We will stop the fraud.”
The funding pauses were announced via letters from HHS’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to each state sent Tuesday, citing concerns that benefits were fraudulently going to “illegal aliens.”
“These 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,” ACF Assistant Secretary Alex Adams wrote in each letter to the states.
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.
The Democrat-led states countered in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday that the spending halt amounted to an unconstitutional act of political retribution.
“Defendants have publicly stoked allegations of fraud, including Plaintiff States purportedly providing unlawful benefits to undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether they have been substantiated,” the lawsuit stated, arguing that the Trump administration has “used those speculative allegations as a pretextual justification to punish perceived political enemies.”
