An effort by the Trump administration to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal public health grants to four states is temporarily on hold.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified Congress of its plan to terminate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant funding to California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota on February 9. But the funding termination was temporarily halted by a federal judge yesterday in response to a lawsuit filed by the four states.
The four states could lose an estimated $600 million in CDC funding, which has already been allocated by Congress for state and local health departments. Illinois health officials said yesterday that local public health departments, HIV funding and monitoring programs, and chronic disease surveys in Illinois alone would lose more than $100 million in funding if the cuts go through.
“These cuts target programs that benefit the health of all Illinois residents,” Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) Director Sameer Vohra, MD, JD, said in a IDPH news release. “These actions will severely harm IDPH programs that provide critical support to local health departments, decrease HIV rates, and promote injury and violence prevention, among other efforts.”
In Minnesota, state health officials said the CDC has terminated roughly $38 million in funding from the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG), which was awarded to the state in 2022 and was set to expire in 2027. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) said the termination of the funding will “directly and immediately” impact the work of multiple programs within the department and will reduce its ability to strengthen the state’s public health workforce, modernize data systems, and support emergency planning and response work.
“There is simply no need or valid justification for these targeted cuts that put Minnesotans at risk,” Minnesota Commissioner of Health Brooke Cunningham, MD, PhD, said in an MDH press release. “These cuts by the federal government, and other cuts to public health funding over the past year, highlight a total disregard for promoting health and wellbeing. The ongoing cuts create an environment of chaos and confusion for communities.”
MDH said that 107 health departments across the country have received PHIG funding, but only Minnesota and the three other states are having those funds cancelled.
“This is not normal. Assaults like this hurt our state and make it harder for us to do our work to protect, maintain and improve the health of Minnesotans,” Cunningham said.
State officials say they’re being targeted
An HHS spokesperson said in an email that the CDC grants are being terminated because “they do not reflect agency priorities.” But MDH noted that the cuts will affect its ability to modernize public health infrastructure, which is among the priorities listed in a document published by the agency in September 2025.
The cuts, which would have gone into effect yesterday, are temporarily on hold after a federal judge in Illinois placed a restraining order in response to a motion filed by attorneys general from the four states against the Office of Management and Budget. US District Judge Manish Shah, JD, said in his order that the states “have shown that they would suffer irreparable harm from the agency action,” according to the Associated Press.
These cuts by the federal government, and other cuts to public health funding over the past year, highlight a total disregard for promoting health and wellbeing.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, JD, called the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate CDC funding to the four states “callous, arbitrary, and politically based,” suggesting the states were targeted because they’ve opposed the administration’s immigration policies
“The president may be playing politics with critical public health funding, including more than $100 million to Illinois, but our residents are the ones who pay the price,” Raoul said in a press release.
The restraining order will last 14 days.
