As state governments, private industries and nonprofits nationwide scrambled to make sense of a confusing and arbitrary federal funding freeze on Tuesday, many organizations and local governments issued stark rebukes to the Republican-held federal government. Among groups reacting to the White House OBM memo which instigated the panic was the Health and Human Services Coalition of Illinois: a nonprofit community care network in the state with 25 partner organizations in the Springfield area alone.
HHSCIL made the following statement on Tuesday afternoon:
The Health and Human Services Coalition of Illinois, collectively representing thousands of health and human service organizations in our state, is devastated to learn about the complete federal funding freeze of grants disbursed to nonprofit organizations, as well as state and local governments. This impacts vital services such as housing, medical care, educational programs, child care, shelters for homeless youth, and many others.
This action will cause irreversible harm to the lives and livelihoods of both the people who depend on these services and the health and human service workers who have dedicated their lives to delivering them. It is particularly careless to halt this funding with no warning, when end of month paychecks are issued and rent is due. More than 500,000 jobs could be impacted, creating widespread financial instability among human service workers and their families.
In Illinois, we have unique insight into how devastating this type of action can be. We have lived through a horrific budget impasse, the impacts of which are still being felt in our communities.
We know how easy it is to dismantle health and human service programs, and how hard it is to rebuild them.
We are united in putting our communities first. This freeze must be rolled back immediately.
That same afternoon, after a brief court session for lawsuits brought forward by a large collection of nonprofits, a federal district judge issued an order temporarily blocking the government from complying with parts of the OMB memo, only minutes before the hour was intended to go into effect. Prior to the court order, rumors surged on social media and elsewhere that services ranging from medical care to senior assistance had been ordered halted by local officials. Tuesday’s order is only in effect until next Monday, February 3rd, and only protects existing programs from being defunded.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker took to the press to denounce the administration. On Twitter, the Governor wrote:
Let me say this in no uncertain terms: the President’s actions today are illegal. Cutting off people from healthcare, childcare, and other services is cruel. The State of Illinois will fight this unlawful order with everything we have.
Events on Tuesday closely mirrored near-weekly happenings during the first Trump term, where in light of an often immobilized congress the White House routinely relied on broadsides of executive orders to impose policy; more often than not those executive orders, ranging from immigration bans to deregulation of industry safety standards to refusing to enforce longstanding law, ended up tied down in courts for months or years.
Much like with the attempted abandonment of birthright citizenship last week, after the initial panic on Tuesday attorneys general for dozens of states – including Illinois – have now filed suits seeking to permanently block the government from shutting down funding altogether; thus kickstarting a renewed cycle of public litigation against the administration.
Region: Springfield,Feeds,News,Prairie,Region: Central,City: Springfield
via WMAY – 92.7 WMAY https://www.wmay.com
January 28, 2025 at 10:43PM
Illinois Delivered 