Illinois sues feds over $600M in cuts to HIV, lead poisoning prevention grants

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a coalition of legal officials suing the Trump administration over its attempts to withhold $600 million in public health grants for Illinois and three other Democrat-led states, according to Raoul’s office.

The attorneys general of California, Colorado and Minnesota, representing the other states targeted by the federal directive, also signed onto the suit.

They say the “lawless” cuts are based on “arbitrary political animus” and that the move violates the Administrative Procedure Act — which dictates how federal agencies make regulations and decisions — as well as the Constitution.

In total, at least $29 million in Illinois grants are on the “hit list,” including city, state and other health centers’ family planning and HIV prevention programs, according to a list of grants reported by the Sun-Times Tuesday.

They also included $7.2 million in grant cuts to the American Medical Association in Illinois, which supports gender-affirming care, as well as $5.2 million slashed from an HIV prevention program at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital — which recently was threatened with another federal investigation over its gender affirming care for youth.

“The president is blatantly targeting states that are disfavored for political reasons, and our residents are the ones who will suffer,” Raoul said in a statement.

Additionally, Raoul said the cuts would force the Illinois Department of Public Health to cut nearly 100 employees, end Lead Poisoning Prevention grants to 25 local health departments and wipe out the state’s HIV surveillance system that tracks the spread of outbreaks.

“These grants are being terminated because they do not reflect agency priorities,” a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told the Sun-Times on Tuesday.

Raoul said more than $100 million in grants received by Illinois could be in jeopardy if U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant funding is terminated entirely.

The lawsuit also says the Trump administration has made “numerous attempts to strip funds from programs in States whose policies it disagrees with” and deployed National Guard troops in some of the same states, ultimately losing several legal challenges to those actions.

In September, Raoul was part of a large coalition of legal officials that won a suit for the release of $2 billion in federal disaster relief funding held up by the White House over sanctuary city policies. Two months later, a separate federal judge released federal transportation funding in response to another suit after the Trump administration attempted to block that money over immigration enforcement.

Last month, in response to another suit from Raoul and other legal officials, a federal appeals court ruled to restore medical research funding cut by the Trump administration.

“Sanctuary cities are a disaster, so I put out an order, anybody that does a sanctuary city is not getting any money,” Trump said on a podcast last month, according to the suit. “Let’s see what happens, you know, it’ll get wiped out by these liberal courts.”