California, other states sue Trump administration over cuts to CDC infectious-disease funding
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- California joined 23 other states and the District of Columbia in suing the Trump administration over the cuts, which include nearly $1 billion in funding for California public health agencies.
California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its plans to cut billions of dollars in federal public health grants designed to make states more resilient to infectious disease, and accused the administration of overreaching its authority by clawing back funding already allocated by Congress.
The pullback in funding is a devastating hit to local health departments, many of whom are dealing with large and novel outbreaks ranging from COVID-19 to bird flu and measles. Agencies in California alone stand to lose nearly $1 billion.
“Congress explicitly authorized funding for the grants at issue to help keep our country healthy and protect us from future pandemics,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “cannot unilaterally do away with that critical federal funding.”
The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced sweeping cuts in several federal health agencies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month notified health agencies in all 50 states — including the California Department of Public Health — that it was suspending more than $11 billion in grants it had previously provided to support state infectious-disease responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic has subsided, the states have continued using the funding for a range of infectious-disease initiatives.
The lawsuit, filed against Kennedy and the Health and Human Services Department in federal court in Rhode Island by California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia, is the latest in a string of litigation filed by Democratic-led states against the administration amid a wave of policy enactments and other funding cuts that Trump has attempted to initiate through executive orders and other White House dictates since taking office in January.
Several of the states’ prior lawsuits have also alleged that Trump is illegally seizing funding powers that belong to Congress and not to the executive branch. Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and seeks a temporary restraining order that would immediately restore the public health funding to its previously allocated levels.
Bonta’s office said the cuts — which include $972 million in funds for California — would cause “irreparable harm” to the states if allowed to stand.
It said the California Department of Public Health would lose $800 million that it planned to use in part to vaccinate 4.5 million children and improve logistical preparation for directing sick and injured patients from hospitals to other available health facilities during emergencies.
The office said the California Department of Health Care Services would lose $119 million that it intended to use for substance use prevention and other early intervention health services for youth across the state. It also said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health would lose $45 million that it intended to use in part to prevent the spread of measles and bird flu.
A spokeswoman for the county said the funding cuts would eliminate staffers who work to mitigate disease spread in homeless shelters, schools, jails and worksites; curtail work by the county mobile infectious-disease team to provide vaccines and other healthcare to homebound residents, seniors at housing developments, senior centers and others confined to living facilities; and forestall upgrades to county data systems and other infrastructure needed to track infectious diseases and share timely outbreak information with the public.
The top vaccine official criticized the nation’s top health official for letting ‘misinformation and lies’ to guide his thinking on vaccination safety.
Some of those system upgrades are already underway, meaning cutting the funding now will waste past investments, in addition to increasing the likelihood of system failures during emergencies, the spokeswoman said.
The CDC funding cuts are part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration and Trump’s “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk to radically reduce federal spending, in part to pay for tax cuts that critics allege will disproportionately benefit the rich.
Musk, the world’s richest man, and his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not an actual government department, have been granted access to sensitive government facilities, computer networks and other data and have been empowered to slash away at government budgets — which California is also suing over.
The CDC cuts are not the first to public health. Kennedy also has announced plans to reduce the health department workforce by some 20,000 employees, and the Trump administration reportedly intends to close various Health and Human Services buildings — including in California.
On Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) issued a statement denouncing what she called a “reported decision to close” a Health and Human Services regional office in San Francisco by Kennedy, whom she called “the Trump administration’s leading vaccine denialist” — a nod to his past adoption of vaccine pseudoscience that medical experts have widely rejected and criticized.
“By closing our regional office, the Trump Administration would choose to put the health and safety of Bay Area residents and all Californians in jeopardy, gut vital public health initiatives like the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and potentially axe hundreds of career civil servant jobs held by hardworking Californians,” Pelosi said.
She said Kennedy’s “extreme views on public health are out of step with the vast majority of the American people,” that the “shortsighted” closure would “directly harm our most vulnerable communities and make America sicker,” and that she and others would be fighting the closure and other cuts to public health.
Tuesday’s lawsuit is the ninth that Bonta’s office has filed against the current Trump administration. It has also filed its support for litigants against the administration in at least a half-dozen other cases.
California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed while working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined. The virus has also infected 758 dairy herds — or more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.
There have been eight measles cases in California since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and other respiratory virus cases.
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