Twenty-three Democratic state attorneys general asked a federal judge to enforce his ruling blocking the Trump administration from freezing grants to states, arguing that many states still cannot access federal disaster relief and preparedness funds.
“Without this funding, Hawaii and other states may be forced to wind down disaster relief programs, including those actively helping victims of the Maui wildfires rebuild,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), one of the leaders of the multistate lawsuit, said in a statement Tuesday.
At least 215 Federal Emergency Management Agency grants to at least 19 states involved in the lawsuit were frozen as of March 12, the attorneys general argue in their latest motion. States are unable to access funding for emergency operations, fire prevention and safety, flood mitigation, and much more, they said in a filing last week.
Now some of the cash has been inaccessible for more than a month. If the FEMA grants remain frozen, Hawaii will have to end its work helping 4,000 survivors of the 2023 Maui wildfires rebuild their lives, the latest motion says. Oregon’s emergency management agency will have to stop its work helping local governments and may be unable to pay its staff.
The motion makes no mention of funding disruptions related to Hurricane Helene or the Los Angeles wildfires, two recent disasters that devastated plaintiff states.
A senior FEMA official in February ordered a halt on some grants awarded in Fiscal Years 2023 and earlier, according to NBC News.
The Trump administration says it has merely implemented a manual review process for FEMA grants that does not violate U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell Jr.’s March 6 preliminary injunction.
“FEMA is processing payment requests and approving them for payment as appropriate, simply with an added level of internal controls to ensure that payment requests are reviewed prior to payments being released,” the Department of Justice argued in a court filing earlier this month.
The Democratic attorneys general say FEMA is breaking the law by holding up grants for weeks for no clear reason.
“FEMA has frozen federal funding disbursements en masse while it purports to review funding streams to find irregularities it has not identified or review grant recipients’ compliance with obligations it has not specified,” the latest motion says.
States first sued in January after a memo from the Office of Management and Budget threatened to cut off trillions of dollars of grant and loan funding that flows through states.
The attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The office of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is also a plaintiff.