Trump Freezes Help For Kids In Five Blue States To Punish Them For Being Enemies
That'll learn 'em.
The Trump administration announced this week it’s withholding some $10 billion in social safety-net funds in five blue states, claiming without evidence that there’s massive fraud. Hundreds of thousands of kids from low-income families are likely to be affected, but that’s OK because Donald Trump is big mad at Minnesota and Somalis. And because they’re blue states, so why not pretend that the alleged day care scandal in Minnesota is endemic to all large states with Democratic majorities? Besides, help to poor families was already targeted by Project 2025, so insisting there’s vast fraud is as good a pretext as any.
The funding freeze applies to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York, none of which are likely to ever vote for Trump or elect GOP majorities, so they’re effectively not really part of America anyway. The five states will lose about $7 billion in funding for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the cash assistance program that’s already been slashed again and again over the years. Another $2.4 billion is being frozen from the Child Care and Development Fund which helps low-income families pay for day care, along with $870 million from block grants for a variety of children’s programs.
Low-income families across the five states are likely to be harmed by the funding cuts, which is the point. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie summed up the administration’s attitude perfectly, writing on Bluesky, “It is the policy of this government to treat democratic-led states as conquered territories and the people therein as something like hostiles or even enemy combatants.”
The Health and Human Services announcement of the funding freeze claimed, without any specifics, that it’s necessary because of “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs.” The press release vaguely claims HHS had “identified concerns” that benefits “may have been improperly provided to individuals who are not eligible under federal law.”
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon insisted, in fact-free Trump Boilerplate Style, that it was a crisis that blue states brought on themselves by being just the worst, claiming in a statement that “For too long, Democrat-led states and Governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch.” Notice that there isn’t a single bit of evidence there.
To restore the funding, HHS claims it simply wants some receipts, is that too much to ask? However, as California Attorney General Rob Bonta explains, letters sent to the states demanded they “turn over essentially every document ever associated with the state's implementation of these federal programs and do so within 14 days, by Jan. 20, including personally identifiable information about program participants.”
Attorneys general from the five states filed a federal lawsuit Thursday evening in the Southern District of New York, asking that the court freeze the freeze and release the funds immediately. They argue that the funding freeze is unconstitutional, because it withholds funds already authorized by Congress, and that it violates the laws governing how the programs are supposed to work.
“Defendants have no statutory or constitutional authority to do this,” the suit states, referring to the freeze. “Nor do they have any justification for this action beyond a desire to punish Plaintiff States for their political leadership. The action is thus clearly unlawful many times over.”
The lawsuit also argues that the huge amount of data HHS wants before it’ll restore fund is “overly broad,” and fuck yes it is. It’s like demanding that every last paper clip be accounted for before authorizing an office’s budget.
The states say the Trump administration hasn’t offered any evidence to back its claim that the programs are full of fraud, which is the supposed reason for the freeze. The lawsuit is being led by New York AG Letitia James, what with the case being filed in SDNY. James said in a statement that the administration “has provided no legitimate justification for freezing these funds. While the letters sent to states claim that the freeze is necessary to prevent ‘potential’ fraud, the administration has failed to provide any evidence of this fraud.”
But this is Trump’s America, where an assertion is the same as evidence, at least when it comes from the Trump administration, and that Nixon fellow said there was “massive fraud,” so there must be. Besides, all rightwing people know that anyone receiving federal help is cheating, unless of course it’s the good patriotic Americans who voted for Trump and actually deserve a bit of help to get through the tough times forced on them by Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
To convince a federal court to block the freeze and restore the funding, they need to demonstrate that they’d be irreparably harmed and that they’re likely to win the lawsuit. Hundreds of thousands of people losing funding they rely on in order to go to work and put food on their families is harmful, and holding up congressionally appropriated funding without presenting any evidence of fraud should also be a slam dunk, although who’s to say what will happen when any lower court’s injunction against the freeze inevitably gets appealed up to the Supreme Court?
[Politico / CNN / ABC News / WBEZ]
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No, really--won't somebody PLEASE think of the fucking children?
/FFCS all day
These folks really seem to get off on hurting children.