White House cuts $1.5 billion in grants to Democratic states

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced $1.5 billion in cuts to federal health and transportation grants for Democratic states. An OMB spokesman told The New York Post that these states were wasting and mismanaging taxpayer funds.

Specifically, OMB asked the Department of Transportation to rescind $943 million in earmarked funds for projects in Colorado, Illinois, California, and Minnesota. At the same time, it ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to rescind $602 million in those same states.

As argued by the Trump administration, many of these grants, approved under Joe Biden's administration, were to fund ideological policies with climate or diversity criteria, discriminating against states that do not follow this agenda.

In the area of infrastructure, the list includes $100 million earmarked for installing electric vehicle chargers in Illinois and $15 million for Minneapolis and St. Paul, to deploy charging stations in low-income, high-pollution areas. This is in addition to another $15 million to develop a similar network in the San Francisco Bay Area and $4.9 million to install chargers in low- and middle-income neighborhoods in Colorado.

On the health side, the affected programs encompass $5.2 million for Chicago's Lurie Children's Hospital, $3 million for Colorado, focused on reducing health disparities linked to COVID-19, $988,000 for Chicago aimed at interacting with populations affected by sexually transmitted diseases and $500,000 for the University of California to research intimate partner violence among LGBTQ youth.

Some of the states involved have already begun publicly condemning the cuts. "Time and time again, the Trump Administration has attempted to politicize and punish certain states President Trump does not like. It's wrong and often illegal, so Illinois will always fight for the resources and services our taxpayers are owed," said a spokesman for the Illinois governor's office, JB Pritzker.

In turn, the OMB spokesman told the NYP that more such cancellations are expected.