WASHINGTON 鈥� A federal judge in New York temporarily blocked the Trump administration from freezing roughly $10 billion in federal funding for child care and social services destined for five Democratic-led states, keeping funds flowing until a lawsuit against the government can progress.
In a brief order Friday, Judge Arun Subramanian directed the Trump administration to release funds for three social services programs it had planned to withhold for the next two weeks while a legal challenge by the affected states continues.
The decision came less than a day after the five states targeted by the Trump administration 鈥� New York, California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado 鈥� filed a lawsuit arguing that the freeze could create havoc among families with young children.
According to the suit, on Jan. 5 and 6, officials in the five states received letters notifying them of an immediate pause in funding for three major programs that serve low-income families and people with disabilities. That included around $7.3 billion through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, as well as nearly $2.4 billion from the Child Care and Development Fund, in addition to a number of smaller social service grants.
The programs disproportionately benefit vulnerable and low-income families, and the cuts could cumulatively upend support systems for hundreds of thousands of households across the five states, the lawsuit argued.
鈥淭his decision is a critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration鈥檚 cruelty,鈥� Letitia James, the New York attorney general, said in a statement. 鈥淔rom child care to shelter services for survivors of domestic violence, these funds provide resources that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers depend on.鈥�
The Trump administration has suggested that the freeze was a reaction to allegations of fraud within Minnesota鈥檚 state social safety net programs, though it has yet to provide evidence that similar schemes took place at scale in the other four states it targeted.
In recent days, President Donald Trump has fixated on the unfolding fraud investigations in Minnesota, which have involved members of the state鈥檚 Somali American community, to justify other punitive actions, including reexamining thousands of refugee cases that had already been cleared and launching sprawling immigration raids.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said immigration agents had been dispatched to go 鈥渄oor to door鈥� searching for migrants lacking permanent legal status. It was during those scaled-up immigration operations that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed an unarmed protester in Minneapolis on Wednesday, fueling growing protests against the administration.
On Friday evening, Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, wrote on social media that all funding from the Agriculture Department 鈥� nearly $130 million 鈥� would be withheld from Minnesota as well.
Since Trump returned to office, his administration has repeatedly canceled funding for Democratic states, including energy programs, disaster relief funds and other grants. Coalitions of Democratic state attorneys general have challenged those actions in court.
Though the emergency hearing on preserving the status quo was handled Friday by Subramanian, a Biden appointee, the case was assigned to Judge Vernon S. Broderick, an Obama appointee, who will handle future motions.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the programs that were frozen, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During a hearing Friday in a federal court in New York, lawyers representing the states asked Subramanian to take immediate action. They argued that states such as Illinois and California were already seeing requests for hundreds of millions of dollars go unfulfilled, and that the budgetary shortfalls could lead to near-immediate disruptions.
鈥淭his cannot wait a week,鈥� said Jessica Ranucci, a lawyer with the New York state attorney general鈥檚 office.
The lawsuit also anticipated grave effects on residents, including parents who might lose their jobs because of a lapse in child care and, as a result, their eligibility for other federal programs such as food stamps that require participants to be employed.
鈥淚t will create a tremendous burden on the state administrative systems and also harms with the ripple effects within the community,鈥� Ranucci said.
This article originally appeared in .
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