Judge orders Trump administration to preserve $233M in FEMA grants it attempted to pull from blue states

[Thiệu Ngô]

The administration’s abrupt effort to repurpose the funds mere days before the end of the fiscal year appears to be illegal, the judge said.

By Kyle Cheney

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Tuesday from permanently steering $233 million in FEMA disaster relief funds away from 12 blue states, issuing a restraining order just hours before a deadline that would have seen the funds lost for good.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee to a Rhode Island-based court, said the administration’s abrupt decision to repurpose the funds from those states — just days before the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year — seemed to be plainly illegal. Her ruling ensures that the funds remain available while the states continue to litigate to reclaim them.

It’s “yet another case where the administration is saying … I’m going to do what I want to do and not what the law says and make the court make me,” McElroy said at a hastily convened court hearing Tuesday.

Earlier this month, McElroy similarly barred the Trump administration from attempting to coerce homelessness organizations to adopt gender-related policies.

Her new decision ensures that when the fiscal year ends at midnight Tuesday, the funds will still be available in case the states win their legal battle.

An attorney for Illinois, which is leading the multistate lawsuit, said the administration offered just a four-word explanation for rescinding the FEMA funding from the 12 states: “Adjusted per DHS directive.”

The states say the Trump administration’s last-second decision to pull the funding seemed intended to punish states that the Trump administration has deemed to be uncooperative with its immigration enforcement priorities.

That’s notable, they say, because another federal judge in Rhode Island, George W. Bush appointee William Smith, ruled last week that the administration’s bid to coerce states to comply with its immigration enforcement priorities was illegal.

McElroy said the administration’s decision to pull the funds so quickly after Smith’s decision was “of great concern.”

“This sort of last minute changing of the way the funding happens, and especially when it happens right in the wake of Judge Smith’s decision, is concerning,” McElroy said.

A Justice Department lawyer had urged McElroy to reject the states’ emergency effort to preserve the funding, saying it would deprive other states where the Department of Homeland Security had intended to reallocate the funds.

But McElroy said she wanted to “preserve the status quo” and ensure that the funds would still be there if the states prevail in their lawsuit.