The governor described President Donald Trump as “temporary” and also took shots at the state of Texas, which he said has been incapable of making any progress on its own high-speed rail plans.
Newsom’s comments came during a speech at the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s railhead facility, a 150-acre yard in Kern County that will receive, store and send out materials for track construction on 119 miles between the Shafter area and the Fresno-Madera area.
The governor joined rail authority CEO Ian Choudri to announce the completion of the facility and suggested the project, historically plagued by delays and cost increases, has reached better days. The rail authority says the facility will be filled with workers and materials this year, as it is scheduled to begin laying the project’s first tracks in the Central Valley before the end of 2026.
“We’re there, we’re on the other side of the hardest part of this project,” he said.
The rail authority has a big to-do list this year as it tries to advance the project without help from the federal government, which has been hostile toward the California project with Trump in office. Besides beginning to lay tracks in the Central Valley, the agency is attempting to leverage its renewed financial backing from the state — $20 billion through 2045 — to secure private partners who can pay for construction up front and build faster.
The project has grown controversial since California voters in 2008 approved $9.95 billion in bonds for a train that would connect the state’s major metro areas at a total cost of about $45 billion. Today, after years of delays and cost increases, the focus is first on completing a 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield segment that the rail authority estimates could cost at least $36.75 billion and would be operational by 2033.
But Newsom said the project has now obtained environmental clearance on 463 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that track construction on the first 119 miles in the Central Valley is fully-funded.
“This is the phase everybody’s been waiting for,” he said. “Can’t believe what you can’t see? Well, you’re about to see a lot.”
Newsom says Trump policies hurt Central Valley, Texas failing on high-speed rail
The governor blasted the Trump administration’s decision to pull $4 billion for California high-speed rail last year, but said only 17% of the money the project has ever spent has come from the federal government.
The rail authority has pivoted toward more reliance on the state, which last year committed long-term financial support for high-speed rail through its Cap-and-Invest program. The program generates public dollars from companies that buy credits at state auctions to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
But Newsom said the Trump administration’s decision to pull money dedicated to the project by past presidents was a move that “pulled the rug out from under” residents of the Central Valley, who he said would have been “the biggest beneficiaries” of that money through new jobs. He also slammed the cuts to healthcare pushed through by the Trump administration, which experts have warned could have serious impacts in the San Joaquin Valley and other high-poverty regions in the coming years.
“He’s temporary,” Newsom said about the president. “A couple years go by in a flash. By the time he’s out, we’ll have substantially completed this rail line.”
He added that California could try to seek new federal dollars for high-speed rail when there is a new administration in the White House.
Newsom also took jabs at a Texas high-speed rail project, which he described as “abandoned” by that state. That plan, a Houston-to-Dallas train, was proposed as a private venture shortly after California’s project began. But the Texas plan has also sought federal dollars.
“They couldn’t get anything done there,” Newsom said. “Big, red state of Texas, supposed to show us how to do it. They couldn’t get a damn thing done.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at the California High-Speed Rail’s railhead facility in Kern County on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. GOVERNOR’S PRESS OFFICE
This story was originally published February 3, 2026 at 7:54 PM.
Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik’s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.
A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to freeze $10 billion in child-care funds in five Democrat-led states including California.
The ruling Friday afternoon capped a tumultuous stretch that began earlier this week when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told California officials and those in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York that it would freeze federal funding over fraud concerns.
On Thursday the states sued the administration in federal court in Manhattan. The states sought a temporary restraining order, asking the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s demands for large volumes of administrative data.
An attorney for the states argued Friday morning that there was an immediate need for funding — and that withholding it would cause chaos by depriving families of their ability to pay for child care, and would harm child-care providers who would lose income.
In a brief ruling, Judge Arun Subramanian said that “good cause has been shown for the issuance of a temporary restraining order.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal government’s effort has been viewed as a broad attack on social services in California, and jolted tens of thousands of working families and the state’s child-care industry. Providers told The Times that the funding freeze could imperil child-care centers, many of which operate on slim margins.
“The underscoring issue is that child care and these other federally funded social services programs are major family supports,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California. “They are essential infrastructure that our communities need and depend on, and should not be political tools. So the fact that this judge went in and blocked this very dramatic freeze, I think is only a good thing.”
In a trio of Jan. 6 letters addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was concerned there had been “potential for extensive and systemic fraud” in child care and other social services programs that rely on federal funding, and had “reason to believe” that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.
The letters did not provide evidence to support the claims. State officials have said the suggestions of fraud are unsubstantiated.
Newsom has said he welcomes any fraud investigations the federal government might conduct, but said cutting off funding hurts families who rely on the aid. According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, about $1.4 billion in federal child-care funding was frozen per the letters from Health and Human Services.
“You want to support families? You believe in families? Then you believe in supporting child care and child-care workers in the workforce,” Newsom told MS NOW.
After Subramanian issued the ruling, Newsom’s press office said on X that “the feds went ghost-hunting for widespread ‘fraud’ (with no evidence) — and ended up trying to rip child care and food from kids.”
“It took a federal judge less than 24 hours to shut down Trump’s politically motivated child care cuts in California,” the account posted.
In instituting the freeze, Health and Human Services had said it would review how the federal money had been used by the state, and was restricting access to additional money amid its inquiries. The federal government asked for various data, including attendance documentation for child care. It also demanded beefed-up fiscal accountability requirements.
“Again and again, President Trump has shown a willingness to throw vulnerable children, seniors, and families under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against Democratic-led states,” Bonta said in a statement following the ruling. “Cutting funding for childcare and other family assistance is cruel, reckless, and most importantly, illegal.”
For Laura Pryor, research director at the California Budget & Policy Center, it is “a sigh of relief.”
California is suing the Trump administration over its “baseless and cruel” decision to freeze $10 billion in federal funding for child care and family assistance allocated to California and four other Democratic-led states, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Thursday.
The lawsuit was filed jointly by the five states targeted by the freeze — California, New York, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado — over the Trump administration’s allegations of widespread fraud within their welfare systems. California alone is facing a loss of about $5 billion in funding, including $1.4 billion for child-care programs.
The lawsuit alleges that the freeze is based on unfounded claims of fraud and infringes on Congress’ spending power as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is just the latest example of Trump’s willingness to throw vulnerable children, vulnerable families and seniors under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against California and Democratic-led states,” Bonta said at a Thursday evening news conference.
The $10-billion funding freeze follows the administration’s decision to freeze $185 million in child-care funds to Minnesota, where federal officials allege that as much as half of the roughly $18 billion paid to 14 state-run programs since 2018 may have been fraudulent. Amid the fallout, Gov. Tim Walz has ordered a third-party audit and announced that he will not seek a third term.
Bonta said that letters sent by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announcing the freeze Tuesday provided no evidence to back up claims of widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in California. The freeze applies to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the Social Services Block Grant program and the Child Care and Development Fund.
“This is funding that California parents count on to get the safe and reliable child care they need so that they can go to work and provide for their families,” he said. “It’s funding that helps families on the brink of homelessness keep roofs over their heads.”
Bonta also raised concerns regarding Health and Human Services’ request that California turn over all documents associated with the state’s implementation of the three programs. This requires the state to share personally identifiable information about program participants, a move Bonta called “deeply concerning and also deeply questionable.”
“The administration doesn’t have the authority to override the established, lawful process our states have already gone through to submit plans and receive approval for these funds,” Bonta said. “It doesn’t have the authority to override the U.S. Constitution and trample Congress’ power of the purse.”
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan and marked the 53rd suit California had filed against the Trump administration since the president’s inauguration last January. It asks the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s sweeping demands for documents and data.
California has delayed its cancellation of thousands of commercial driver’s licenses held by migrants, setting it up for another showdown with Washington.
The Department of Motor Vehicles announced on Tuesday that the 17,000 migrant truck drivers whose licenses had been revoked can now keep them for 60 more days, which could enable the drivers to retake tests and do whatever is necessary to remain legal.
“Commercial drivers are an important part of our economy — our supply chains don’t move, and our communities don’t stay connected without them,” said DMV Director Steve Gordon in a statement after the extension.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reacted by threatening to cut $160 million in federal funding to California if the state doesn’t meet the Jan. 5 deadline to revoke unvetted foreign trucker licenses.
“California does NOT have an ‘extension’ to keep breaking the law and putting Americans at risk on the roads,” Duffy posted on X.
He had earlier withheld $40 million in federal funding to California for failing to enforce English proficiency tests for truckers.
California’s move to delay license revocations comes days after the Sikh Coalition and the Asian Law Caucus, filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the DMV failed to offer proper recourse for affected drivers, refused to renew or issue new commercial driver’s licenses, and violated their rights.
The 60-day extension allows those drivers whose licenses were set to expire on Jan. 5 to continue driving until March 6.
“It’s one small positive step forward,” said Manpreet Kaur, the vice mayor of Bakersfield, home to many migrant truckers. “We were extremely relieved to see this within the community here in Bakersfield.”
Bakersfield is a hub for trucking in the Central Valley, with a large concentration of the Punjabi Sikh community that was affected by the decision to revoke licenses. Kaur said truckers have been unfairly targeted in the political tussle between state policy and federal rules.
Punjabi Sikhs are a pillar of the American trucking industry. An estimated 150,000 work in trucking, with the majority based on the West Coast.
Commercial licenses for non-American drivers became a political flash point in 2025 after an undocumented Punjabi trucker was involved in an accident in Florida that resulted in the death of three people.
A federal audit found that many commercial licenses issued to immigrant drivers were set to expire long past the duration of immigrant truckers’ legal stay in the U.S.
Critics have contended that drivers shouldn’t be punished for clerical errors of the DMV.
“I believe all 17,000 truckers will be able to take the [commercial driver’s license] test by March,” said Matt Cartwright, a transportation and personal injury attorney and former U.S. representative from Pennsylvania. “The safe drivers will have no problem passing.”
The extension could be used to do more thorough screening, such as verifying status, confirming qualifications, and documenting the process so the public can trust the outcome and safety is ensured, said Tray Gober of LGR Law Firm.
Trucking trade groups once complained about driver shortages and welcomed immigrant drivers. Now, the associations say the shortages no longer exist because of the freight recession and are supportive of the federal crackdown on foreign drivers. Some have backed the move to remove unqualified drivers who can’t read road signs.
One new issue that might emerge from reapplication is whether, “by submitting to the new rules, immigrants with revoked licenses are giving up any right to sue for improper revocation,” said attorney Doug Burnetti, who has been closely following the policy changes.
“I suspect that may be fact-specific and depend on each case, but if I were representing the federal government, I would argue that reapplication under the new rules waives any objections to the revocation under the old rules,” Brunetti said.
On the other hand, he said, the truckers would argue they had no choice but to reapply to try to get their licenses back.
“That’s an interesting question that will ultimately have to be resolved by a judge,” he said.
President Donald Trump has called New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job.” Mamdani has called Trump’s administration “authoritarian” and described himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be a curious and combustible affair.Despite months of casting each other as prime adversaries, the Republican president and new Democratic star have also indicated an openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they’ve both called home.Mamdani, a democratic socialist who takes office in January, said he sought the meeting with Trump to talk about ways to make New York City more affordable. Trump has said he may want to help him out — although he has also falsely labeled Mamdani as a “communist” and threatened to yank federal funds from his hometown.But for both men, the meeting offers opportunities beyond any areas of potential bipartisan agreement.The two men are convenient political foils for each other, and taking the other one on can galvanize their supporters.Trump loomed large over the mayoral race this year, and on the eve of the election, endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the city has “ZERO chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani won. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, and said he’d have him arrested if he followed through on threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.Mamdani beat back a challenge from Cuomo, painting him as a “puppet” for the president, and said he would be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver.” He declared during one primary debate, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.”The president, who has long used political opponents to fire up his backers, predicted Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.” As Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment by defeating Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies provoked infighting, Trump repeatedly has cast Mamdani as the face of Democratic Party.For Mamdani, a sit-down with the president of the United States offers the state lawmaker who until recently was relatively unknown the chance to go head-to-head with the most powerful person in the world.The meeting gives Trump a high-profile chance to talk about affordability at a time when he’s under increasing political pressure to show he’s addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.But that’s if the meeting doesn’t turn rocky.A chance for some Oval Office dramaIt was not immediately clear whether cameras will be allowed into the meeting. Trump’s daily schedule said it will be private, but the president often invites in a small “pool” of reporters at the last minute.The president has had some dramatic public Oval Office faceoffs this year, including an infamously heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March. In May, Trump dimmed the lights while meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video making widely rejected claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers.A senior Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said Trump had not put a lot of thought into planning the meeting with the incoming mayor — but said Trump’s threats to block federal dollars from flowing to New York remained on the table.Mamdani said Thursday that he was not concerned about the president potentially trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him and said he saw it as a chance to make his case, even while acknowledging “many disagreements with the president.”If the president does use the meeting as a public confrontation, Mamdani may be uniquely ready for it.He, like Trump, was a relative political outsider who rose to victory with a populist message that promised a break from the establishment, known for his savvy navigation of the spotlight and a distinctive use of social media.Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where Trump was raised — also has shown a cutthroat streak. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from Trump’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.The moment evoked Trump’s tactics before a debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he appeared with accusers of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who denied the accusations against him.___Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump has called New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job.” Mamdani has called Trump’s administration “authoritarian” and described himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”
So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be a curious and combustible affair.
Despite months of casting each other as prime adversaries, the Republican president and new Democratic star have also indicated an openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they’ve both called home.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who takes office in January, said he sought the meeting with Trump to talk about ways to make New York City more affordable. Trump has said he may want to help him out — although he has also falsely labeled Mamdani as a “communist” and threatened to yank federal funds from his hometown.
But for both men, the meeting offers opportunities beyond any areas of potential bipartisan agreement.
The two men are convenient political foils for each other, and taking the other one on can galvanize their supporters.
Trump loomed large over the mayoral race this year, and on the eve of the election, endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the city has “ZERO chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani won. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, and said he’d have him arrested if he followed through on threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.
Mamdani beat back a challenge from Cuomo, painting him as a “puppet” for the president, and said he would be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald Trump and actually deliver.” He declared during one primary debate, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.”
The president, who has long used political opponents to fire up his backers, predicted Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.” As Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment by defeating Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies provoked infighting, Trump repeatedly has cast Mamdani as the face of Democratic Party.
For Mamdani, a sit-down with the president of the United States offers the state lawmaker who until recently was relatively unknown the chance to go head-to-head with the most powerful person in the world.
The meeting gives Trump a high-profile chance to talk about affordability at a time when he’s under increasing political pressure to show he’s addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.
But that’s if the meeting doesn’t turn rocky.
A chance for some Oval Office drama
It was not immediately clear whether cameras will be allowed into the meeting. Trump’s daily schedule said it will be private, but the president often invites in a small “pool” of reporters at the last minute.
The president has had some dramatic public Oval Office faceoffs this year, including an infamously heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March. In May, Trump dimmed the lights while meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video making widely rejected claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers.
A senior Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said Trump had not put a lot of thought into planning the meeting with the incoming mayor — but said Trump’s threats to block federal dollars from flowing to New York remained on the table.
Mamdani said Thursday that he was not concerned about the president potentially trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him and said he saw it as a chance to make his case, even while acknowledging “many disagreements with the president.”
If the president does use the meeting as a public confrontation, Mamdani may be uniquely ready for it.
He, like Trump, was a relative political outsider who rose to victory with a populist message that promised a break from the establishment, known for his savvy navigation of the spotlight and a distinctive use of social media.
Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where Trump was raised — also has shown a cutthroat streak. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from Trump’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.
The moment evoked Trump’s tactics before a debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he appeared with accusers of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who denied the accusations against him.
___
Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this report.
A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants.
The decision is a major win for universities that have struggled to resist President Trump’s attempt to discipline “very bad” universities that he claims have mistreated Jewish students, forcing them to pay exorbitant fines and agree to adhere to conservative standards.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, rendered moot — for now — nearly every aspect of a more than 7,000-word settlement offer the federal government sent to the University of California in August after suspending $584 million in medical, science and energy research grants to the Los Angeles campus.
The government said it froze the funds after finding UCLA broke the law by using race as a factor in admissions, recognizing transgender people’s gender identities, and not taking antisemitism complaints seriously during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 — claims that UC has denied.
The settlement proposal outlined extensive changes to push UCLA — and by extension all of UC — ideologically rightward by calling for an end to diversity-related scholarships, restrictions on foreign student enrollment, a declaration that transgender people do not exist, an end to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, the imposition of free speech limits and more.
“The administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities,” Lin wrote in her opinion. “Agency officials, as well as the president and vice president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune. Universities are then presented with agreements to restore federal funding under which they must change what they teach, restrict student anonymity in protests, and endorse the administration’s view of gender, among other things. Defendants submit nothing to refute this.”
“It is undisputed,” Lin added, “that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”
Universities including Columbia, Brown and Cornell agreed to pay the government hundreds of millions to atone for alleged violations similar to the ones facing UCLA. The University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia also reached agreements with the Trump administration that were focused, respectively, on ending recognition of transgender people and halting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Friday’s decision, for the time being, spares the UC system from proceeding with negotiations that it reluctantly entered with the federal government to avoid further grant cuts and restrictions across the system, which receives $17.5 billion in federal funding each year. UC President James B. Milliken has said that the $1.2-billion fine would “completely devastate” UC and that the system, under fire from the Trump administration, faces “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”
This is not the first time a judge rebuked the Trump administration for its higher education campaign. Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in September ordered the government to reverse billions in cuts to Harvard. But that case did not wade directly into settlement negotiations.
Those talks with UC have proceeded slowly. In a court hearing last week, a Department of Justice lawyer said “there’s no evidence that any type of deal with the United States is going to be happening in the immediate future.” The lawyer argued that the settlement offer was only an idea that had not received UC approval.
Because of that, he said, a lawsuit was inappropriate. Lin disagreed.
“Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real. With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratcheting up defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system.”
The case was brought by more a dozen faculty and staff unions and associations from across UC’s 10 campuses, who said the federal government was violating their 1st Amendment rights and constitutional right to due process. UC, which has avoided directly challenging the government in court, was not party to the suit.
“This is not only a historic lawsuit — brought by every labor union and faculty union in the UC — but also an incredible win,” said Veena Dubal, a UC Irvine law professor and general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the American Assn. of University Professors, which has members across UC campuses.
Dubal called the decision “a turning point in the fight to save free speech and research in the finest public school system in the world.”
Asked about Friday’s outcome, a spokesperson said UC “remains focused on our vital work to drive innovation, advance medical breakthroughs and strengthen the nation’s long-term competitiveness. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the university.”
Zoé Hamstead, chair of external relations and legal affairs for the Council of UC Faculty Assns., said she was “thrilled that the court has affirmed our First Amendment rights.”
The organization is an umbrella group of faculty associations across UC campuses that sued.
Hamstead, an associate professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, said she was “deeply proud to be part of a coalition that represents the teachers, researchers, and workers of the University of California who are challenging rising authoritarianism in federal court.”
Anna Markowitz, an associate professor in UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and president of the Los Angeles campus faculty association, said her chapter was “extremely pleased with this decision, which will put a pause on the current federal overreach at UC.”
“UCLA faculty are honored to stand with this coalition, which continues to show that when faced with an administration targeting the very heart of higher education, fighting back is the only option,” Markowitz said.
Lin’s injunction is not the final say on the case, which will proceed through the legal process as she determines whether a permanent injunction is warranted. The government also could appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as it has done for other cases, including one filed by UC researchers that restored funding from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation among other agencies.
An appeals court hearing in that case was held Friday; a decision is pending.
(CNN) — President Donald Trump late Wednesday signed a funding package to reopen the federal government, officially bringing a close to the longest shutdown in history.
The final approval came hours after the House voted 222 to 209 to pass a deal struck between Republicans and centrist Senate Democrats that keeps the government running through January and ensures some key agencies will be funded for the remainder of fiscal year 2026.
The agreement, which ended a record 43-day stalemate in Congress, will also reverse the mass federal layoffs carried out by Trump during the shutdown. It paves the way for paychecks to flow to government employees, as well as the resumption of critical food and nutrition services relied on by tens of millions of Americans.
Trump on Wednesday night cast the legislation as a victory over Democrats, calling it “a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that’s what it was, they tried to extort.”
“They didn’t want to do it the easy way,” he said from the Oval Office, attacking what he called “the extremists” in the Democratic Party. “They had to do it the hard way, and they look very bad.”
The White House signing ceremony was attended by a range of Republican lawmakers and capped a four-day sprint to pass the funding bill, after eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to compromise with Republicans amid worries about the shutdown’s widening economic consequences.
The deal guarantees an early December vote in the Senate on the expiring Obamacare subsidies that Democrats made the focus of their demands during the shutdown fight. But a vote to extend the subsidies is unlikely to succeed, a likelihood that’s driven intense blowback across the Democratic Party.
Most congressional Democrats loudly protested the bill in the run-up to Wednesday’s vote over concerns Americans’ health care premiums will skyrocket without the subsidies, with only six House Democrats voting in favor of the package.
“This fight is not over. We’re just getting started,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said ahead of the vote. “Tens of millions of Americans are at risk of being unable to afford to go see a doctor when they need it.”
Back in Washington for the first time since mid-September, Speaker Mike Johnson corralled almost all Republicans behind the bill, despite sharp complaints from some of his members over a contentious provision added by Senate Republicans that allowed senators to retroactively sue the Department of Justice for obtaining phone records during a Biden-era probe – potentially amounting to a major financial windfall for those lawmakers.
Johnson himself said he was blindsided by the language, and he said he didn’t know about it until the Senate had already passed the package.
“I was shocked by it, I was angry about it,” the speaker said, though he added that he did not believe Senate Majority Leader John Thune added it in a nefarious manner. “I think it was a really bad look, and we’re going to fix it in the House.”
To win over conservative holdouts, Johnson vowed that the House would take a future vote to strip that language — though it’s unclear if the Senate would take it up. Republicans like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas ultimately agreed not to amend the language in the current stopgap bill, since it would require the Senate to return to Washington to vote again and delay the end of the shutdown.
Conservatives like Roy had blasted that provision as “self-dealing,” since it would award senators $500,000 or more in damages for each violation by the government if their lawsuit is successful. The amendment appeared to benefit eight senators in particular who had been subpoenaed by the previous administration into investigations into Trump’s first term.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, accused those eight senators of voting “to shove taxpayer dollars into their own pockets – $500,000 for each time their records were inspected.”
The House Democrats who voted in favor of the compromise bill to reopen the government were: Reps. Jared Golden, Adam Gray, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Henry Cuellar, Tom Suozzi and Don Davis. GOP Reps. Thomas Massie voted and Greg Steube against the bill.
The end of the government shutdown will usher in a frenetic few weeks of work for the House, which has been largely shuttered since late September. As part of the GOP’s pressure campaign on Democrats, Johnson had decided to keep all members out of Washington until Senate Democrats agreed to back the GOP’s existing funding plan.
Now, Republicans and Democrats have just four weeks in session before the end of the year — when those Obamacare tax credits expire. Trump has called for revamping the law rather than extending the existing subsidies, setting up a high-stakes showdown over health care that could carry political ramifications for next year’s midterm elections.
“Obamacare was a disaster,” Trump said Wednesday night. “We’ll work on something having to do with health care. We can do a lot better.”
But there are plenty of other deadlines, including Congress’ farm bill and a slew of expiring energy credits.
House Republicans are also eager to pass as many spending bills as possible to improve their negotiating stance with the Senate ahead of that next deadline on January 30.
Johnson also faces another hot-button issue: the question of how Congress should handle the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Not long before the votes to reopen the government got underway, a newly elected Democrat — Rep. Adelita Grijalva — became the critical 218th signature to force a vote to compel the Justice Department to release all of its case files related to Epstein.
Johnson announced to reporters soon after Grijalva signed the petition that he will put a bill compelling the Department of Justice to release all of its Epstein case files on the House floor next week – earlier than expected, and after an extraordinary White House pressure campaign earlier Wednesday failed to convince any Republicans to remove their name from the petition.
The effort coincided with intensifying scrutiny over the Epstein files in the House. Earlier Wednesday, House Democrats on the Oversight panel released new emails that showed Epstein had repeatedly mentioned Trump by name in private correspondence, and then the GOP-led committee released 200,000 pages of documents the panel received from Epstein’s estate.
This headline and story have been updated with additional details.
ON WHAT PEOPLE IN ROSEVILLE ARE DOING TO MEET THAT NEED. AS A PERSON LIVING WITH CELIAC DISEASE. STEPHANIE HOUSTON’S QUEST FOR GLUTEN FREE FOOD TURNED INTO A BUSINESS. I COULD BAKE. I’M PRETTY GOOD AT BAKING. I COULD DO THAT. AND AS A MEMBER OF THE SMALL BUSINESS COMMUNITY IN ROSEVILLE, SHE FINDS A WAY TO HELP OTHERS DURING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. THE FOOD BANKS DON’T REALLY HAVE MUCH RIGHT NOW, AND THAT’S WHAT I’M HEARING, IS THAT THERE ISN’T AN OPTION FOR GLUTEN FREE. SO WE FIGURED I CAN SCALE UP, I CAN MAKE MORE BREAD, I SELL BREAD EVERY WEEK AT JUST GLUTEN FREE KITCHENS. NOW, GIVING AWAY A LOAF OF BREAD TO FOLKS WHO DEPEND ON CALFRESH. IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT. THAT’S ALL. AND THAT’S WHAT WE’RE HERE FOR. WE’RE HERE TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY. ARE YOU READY FOR A BURRITO? VOLUNTEERS ARE SERVING UP FREE WARM MEALS. HI THERE AT SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL DINING ROOM, WE SEE THE IMPACT EVERY DAY. THE NEED FOR HELP IN ROSEVILLE WAS ALREADY CLEAR. HELP YOURSELF TO A PIECE OF PIE. EVEN BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN PUT FEDERAL FOOD PROGRAMS LIKE CALFRESH ON PAUSE. IT SADDENS ME. AND I YOU KNOW, WE DO WHAT WE CAN HERE IN OTHER PLACES THROUGH FOOD VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS TO DO WHAT WE CAN. TERRY GARRISON, ALSO SERVING UP LOVE AND A PRAYER TO GET FOLKS THROUGH THE TOUGH TIMES AHEAD. IF EVERYBODY STEPPED UP AND DID JUST A LITTLE BIT, IT WOULD GO A LONG WAY. THANK YOU. IN ROSEVILLE MICHELLE BANDUR KCRA THREE NEWS. OTHER ROSEVILLE BUSINESSES ARE ALSO OFFERING HELP. HIDDEN COFFEE IS GIVING AWAY FREE COFFE
Roseville small businesses step up to help those losing federal food benefits during government shutdown
The government shutdown is affecting many in Roseville, prompting local businesses and volunteers to provide food and support to those impacted by halted federal benefits.Feeding the Foothills, a food bank serving over 50,000 people in Placer, El Dorado, and Nevada counties, is witnessing an increased demand for assistance as federal programs, such as CalFresh, are paused. On a rainy Wednesday, St. Vincent de Paul’s dining room offered free warm meals to those in need. “We have bean and meat burritos with beans on the side, coleslaw, and pie today,” said Terry Garrison. She volunteers to serve the food and noted the gratitude of those receiving meals. “These people are so gracious and so thankful,” Garrison said.Even before the shutdown, the need for help in Roseville was evident. “We see the impact every day,” Garrison said. “It saddens me. We do what we can here in other places through food volunteer programs, to do what we can.”Inspired by other local businesses, Stephanie Houston of Just Gluten Free Kitchens decided to contribute by baking. “I could bake. I’m pretty good at baking. I can do that,” Houston said. She doubled her bread recipes to provide gluten-free options, which are scarce at food banks. “The food banks don’t really have much right now. What I’m hearing is that there isn’t an option for gluten-free. So we figured I can scale up, I can make more bread. I sell bread every week,” she said. Houston is now giving away loaves of bread to those dependent on CalFresh.”It’s just not right, that’s all. And that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to serve the community,” she said.Back at lunch, Garrison continued to serve meals with love and prayers, believing that collective small efforts can make a significant impact. “If everybody stepped up and did just a little bit, it would go a long way,” she said.More businesses are joining the effort, including Hidden Coffee, which offers free coffee and pastries to those on CalFresh. Free lunches are available five days a week, and Feeding the Foothills has multiple food distribution sites across the three counties of Placer, El Dorado and Nevada.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
ROSEVILLE, Calif. —
The government shutdown is affecting many in Roseville, prompting local businesses and volunteers to provide food and support to those impacted by halted federal benefits.
Feeding the Foothills, a food bank serving over 50,000 people in Placer, El Dorado, and Nevada counties, is witnessing an increased demand for assistance as federal programs, such as CalFresh, are paused.
“We have bean and meat burritos with beans on the side, coleslaw, and pie today,” said Terry Garrison. She volunteers to serve the food and noted the gratitude of those receiving meals.
“These people are so gracious and so thankful,” Garrison said.
Even before the shutdown, the need for help in Roseville was evident.
“We see the impact every day,” Garrison said. “It saddens me. We do what we can here in other places through food volunteer programs, to do what we can.”
Inspired by other local businesses, Stephanie Houston of Just Gluten Free Kitchens decided to contribute by baking.
“I could bake. I’m pretty good at baking. I can do that,” Houston said.
She doubled her bread recipes to provide gluten-free options, which are scarce at food banks.
“The food banks don’t really have much right now. What I’m hearing is that there isn’t an option for gluten-free. So we figured I can scale up, I can make more bread. I sell bread every week,” she said.
Houston is now giving away loaves of bread to those dependent on CalFresh.
“It’s just not right, that’s all. And that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to serve the community,” she said.
Back at lunch, Garrison continued to serve meals with love and prayers, believing that collective small efforts can make a significant impact.
“If everybody stepped up and did just a little bit, it would go a long way,” she said.
More businesses are joining the effort, including Hidden Coffee, which offers free coffee and pastries to those on CalFresh. Free lunches are available five days a week, and Feeding the Foothills has multiple food distribution sites across the three counties of Placer, El Dorado and Nevada.
Colorado Head Start programs are on track to be the latest victims of the federal government shutdown.
Head Start serves 11,000 low-income children in Colorado — infants through preschoolers — through $120 million in annual federal funding.
The first four Head Start programs in Colorado will run out of money on Nov. 1. Those four programs are out of the Thompson School District, Poudre School District, Adams County and the Community Partnership for Child Development (CPCD) in Colorado Springs.
Another six programs will lose funding starting Dec. 1.
State
Colo. early childcare centers face cuts — even closure — if shutdown continues
Forty-eight programs in Colorado receive federal grants through the Department of Health and Human Services. Each program has different, staggered contracts with the federal government, and Head Start is much more than just childcare.
“We really offer a comprehensive suite of services, including early childhood education, job training for parents, initiatives to find homes for families that are experiencing homelessness. We have drug counseling, and we have family counseling. And we make sure that every child has a medical home and a dental home. And so, all these things are at jeopardy,” said Heather Frenz, executive director of Colorado Head Start Association.
Denver7 anchor Shannon Ogden spoke with Frenz about how these families are planning to deal with the loss of these vital services. Frenz said the plans right now consist of little more than hope.
“A lot of families are looking toward families, looking for family members to help them and friends, and they are hoping the shutdown doesn’t last,” said Frenz. “I was telling them it’s not going to last. I didn’t see it going on this long.”
Frenz said Head Start programs have never seen an existential threat like this.
“Head Start is 60 years old this year, and we have never had an issue with our funding on a federal level like this before,” she said. “Now we’re just looking at no funding.”
Frenz said the first four programs to lose funding in November will be kept afloat for that first month. She said the two school districts and Adams County have said they will find the money. The CPCD will also use its rainy-day fund to keep that program going until at least December.
Frenz warned that there is no plan after that.
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The city council meeting was packed Tuesday night with community members, leaders, and activists, leaving standing room only and 44 people spoke during the public comments in opposition to the amendment.
Fousia Abdullahi, Fabdullahi@star-telegram.com
The Arlington City Council voted Tuesday to delay making amendments to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, including removing protections for LGBTQ+ residents, until Nov 18.
“We must balance the need to make modifications with the need to ensure that every single member of our community feels welcome, protected, respected, and is treated with dignity,” Ross said.
The delay follows a month of deliberations after the city council suspended the ordinance to amend it to remove diversity, equity and inclusion language. Had this not taken place, the city said it would be at risk of losing $65 million in federal grant money.
There were 44 people who spoke in opposition to removing protections for the LGBTQ+ community during public comments and 57 non-speakers in opposition at Tuesday’s meeting.
Ross said he was proud that so many people came out to address this issue.
“I struggle with this more than I have on almost any issue that’s out there, because this deals with just human dignity and it’s hard. You know? It’s not, it’s not a fun process,” Ross told the Star-Telegram after the meeting.
The ordinance still prohibits forms of discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on race, color, national origin, age, religion, sex or disability.
The definitions of “Gender Identity and Expression” and “Sexual Orientation” were in question when it comes to unlawful employment and public accommodation practices.
David Grebel, pastor of Celebration Community Church in Fort Worth and an Arlington resident, said he is opposed to removed the protections.
“Any time that we threaten to take away anti-discrimination language concerning sexual orientation or gender expression, it threatens my church and the folks that I love,” Grebel said.
DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of Help Center for LGTBQ Health and Wellness, said at the meeting he believes the Attorney General’s guidance related to federal funding states that cities should have an antidiscrimination ordinance, and they should include it in their vendor contracts.
Johannessen said he was happy the council chose to delay taking action on the amendment, and he hopes the council receives sound legal advice, showing there is no need for any change to the anti-discrimination ordinance and that federal funds aren’t at risk.
“We want to be first in a lot of things,” Johannessen said. “This isn’t it. If we say we’re the American dream city, you can’t be the American dream city and allow discrimination to happen.”
Damien Raygoza a transgender man spoke tearfully to the city council about the importance of protecting community members from discrimination.
“If they take away the rights of queer people, who’s to say they won’t go after veterans rights, the elderly rights, disabled people, women, people of color, Muslims, Hispanic people,” Raygoza said. “Where are you willing to draw the line when it comes to our unalienable rights as American citizens?”
This story was originally published October 14, 2025 at 8:51 PM.
The federal Office for Victims of Crime announced in the summer that millions of dollars approved for domestic violence survivors and other crime victims would be withheld from states that don’t comply with the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
California, 19 other states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that such preconditions are illegal and would undermine public safety.
The administration then took a different tack, announcing that community organizations that receive such funding from the states — and use it to help people escape violence, access shelter and file for restraining orders against their abusers — generally may not use it to provide services to undocumented immigrants.
California and other states sued again, arguing that the requirements — which the administration says the states must enforce — are similarly illegal and dangerous. Advocates agreed, saying screening immigrant women out of such programs would be cruel.
The repeated lawsuits reflect an increasingly familiar pattern in the growing mountain of litigation between the Trump administration, California and other blue states.
Since President Trump took office in January, his administration has tried to force the states into submission on a host of policy fronts by cutting off federal funding, part of a drive to bypass Congress and vastly expand executive power. Repeatedly when those cuts have been challenged in court, the administration has shifted its approach to go after the same or similar funding from a slightly different angle — prompting more litigation.
The repeated lawsuits have added complexity and volume to an already monumental legal war between the administration and states such as California, one that began almost immediately after Trump took office and is ongoing, as the administration once again threatens major cuts amid the government shutdown.
The White House has previously dismissed California’s lawsuits as baseless and defended Trump’s right to enact his policy agenda, including by withholding funds. Asked about its shifting strategies in some of those cases, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration “has won numerous cases regarding spending cuts at the Supreme Court and will continue to cut wasteful spending across the government in a lawful manner.”
Other administration officials have also defended its legal tactics. During a fight over frozen federal funding earlier this year, for instance, Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” — sparking concerns about a constitutional crisis.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the pattern is a result of Trump overstating his power to control federal funding and use it as a weapon against his political opponents, but also of his dangerous disregard for the rule of law and the authority of both Congress and federal judges. His office has sued the administration more than 40 times since January, many times over funding.
“It is not something that you should have to see, that a federal government, a president of the United States, is so contemptuous of the rule of law and is willing to break it and break it again, get told by a court that they’re violating the law, and then have to be told by a court again,” Bonta said.
And yet, such examples abound, he said. For example, the Justice Department’s repeated attempts to strip California of crime victim funding echoed the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated attempts recently to deny the state disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding, Bonta said.
Homeland Security officials first told states that such funding would be conditioned on their complying with immigration enforcement efforts. California and other states sued, and a federal judge rejected such preconditions as unconstitutional.
The administration then notified the states that refused to comply, including California, that they would simply receive less money — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — while states that cooperate with immigration enforcement would receive more.
California and other Democratic-led states sued again, arguing this week that the shifting of funds was nothing more than the administration circumventing the court’s earlier ruling against the conditioning of funds outright.
Bonta’s office cited a similar pattern in announcing Thursday that the Trump administration had backed off major cuts to AmeriCorps funding. The win came only after successive rounds of litigation by the state and others, Bonta’s office noted, including an amended complaint accusing the administration of continuing to withhold the funding despite an earlier court order barring it from doing so.
Bonta said such shifting strategies were the work of a “consistently and brazenly lawless and lawbreaking federal administration,” and that his office was “duty-bound” to fight back and will — as many times as it takes.
“It can’t be that you take an action, are held accountable, a court finds that you’ve acted unlawfully, and then you just take another unlawful action to try to restrict or withhold that same funding,” he said.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, said he agreed with Bonta that there is “a pattern of ignoring court orders or trying to circumvent them” on the part of the Trump administration.
And he provided another example: a case in which he represents University of California faculty and researchers challenging Trump administration cuts to National Science Foundation funding.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought talks to reporters outside the White House on Monday, accompanied by House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Vice President JD Vance.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
After a judge blocked the administration from terminating that funding, the Trump administration responded by declaring that the funds were “suspended” instead, Chemerinsky said.
The judge then ruled the administration was violating her order against termination, he said, as “calling them suspensions rather than terminations changed nothing.”
Mitchel Sollenberger, a political science professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of several books on executive powers, said Trump aggressively flexing those powers was expected. Conservative leaders have been trying to restore executive authority ever since Congress reined in the presidency after Watergate, and Trump took an aggressive approach in his first term, too, Sollenberger said.
However, what Trump has done this term has nonetheless been stunning, Sollenberger said — the result of a sophisticated and well-planned strategy that has been given a clear runway by a Supreme Court that clearly shares a belief in an empowered executive branch.
“It’s like watching water run down, and it tries to find cracks,” Sollenberger said. “That’s what the Trump administration is doing. It’s trying to find those cracks where it can widen the gap and exercise more and more executive power.”
Bonta noted that the administration’s targeting of blue state funding began almost immediately after Trump took office, when the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo asserting that vast sums of federal funding for all sorts of programs were being frozen as the administration assessed whether the spending aligned with Trump’s policy goals.
California and other states sued to block that move and won, but the administration wasn’t swayed from the strategy, Bonta said — as evidenced by more recent events.
On Wednesday, as the government shutdown over Congress’ inability to pass a funding measure set in, Russell Vought — head of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Trump administration’s purse-string policies — announced on X that $8 billion in funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” was being canceled. He then listed 16 blue states where projects will be cut.
Vought had broadly outlined his ideas for slashing government in Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for Trump’s second term, which Trump vigorously denied any connection to during his campaign but has since broadly implemented.
On Thursday, Trump seemed to relish the opportunity, amid the shutdown, to implement more of the plan.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted online. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
Bonta said Wednesday that his office had no plans to get involved in the shutdown, which he said was caused by Trump and “for Trump to figure out.” But he said he was watching the battle closely.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) chalked Vought’s latest cuts up to more illegal targeting of blue states such as California that oppose Trump politically, writing, “Our democracy is badly broken when a president can illegally suspend projects for Blue states in order to punish his political enemies.”
Cities and towns have also been pushing back against Trump’s use of federal funding as political leverage. On Wednesday, Los Angeles and other cities announced a lawsuit challenging the cuts to disaster funding.
L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto said the cuts were part of an “unprecedented weaponization” of federal funding by the Trump administration, and that she was proud to be fighting to “preserve constitutional limits on executive overreach.”
U.S. congressional lawmakers have failed to agree on a spending package for the new fiscal year, which triggered a federal government shutdown on Wednesday.Many Americans are wondering how the shutdown will impact travel, and, specifically, how it will affect passport applications and driver’s license services. Here’s what we know.Are passports still being processed?Yes. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the naturalization process, is primarily funded by application fees, meaning a lapse in funding at the federal government has minimal impacts on most passport and visa processing.What if I have a passport appointment with the United States Postal Service?The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars. You can still make appointments for new passport applications, passport renewals and photo services on the USPS website.Can I still get a driver’s license or REAL ID?You can still get a driver’s license or REAL ID during a government shutdown.That’s because motor vehicle departments are primarily funded and operated through state budgets.This means you can also make an appointment or visit one of your state’s driver’s license centers to receive a REAL ID with proper paperwork. The shutdown will not stop Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees from enforcing the REAL ID Act in U.S. airports and other federal facilities.TSA officers are typically deemed essential and must remain on the job, though they are not paid. What about visas?Agency spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement, however, that the shutdown does temporarily shutter the agency’s E-Verify program, a free online system that employers can use to confirm their new employees are authorized to work in the U.S.The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.
U.S. congressional lawmakers have failed to agree on a spending package for the new fiscal year, which triggered a federal government shutdown on Wednesday.
Many Americans are wondering how the shutdown will impact travel, and, specifically, how it will affect passport applications and driver’s license services.
Here’s what we know.
Are passports still being processed?
Yes. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the naturalization process, is primarily funded by application fees, meaning a lapse in funding at the federal government has minimal impacts on most passport and visa processing.
What if I have a passport appointment with the United States Postal Service?
The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars. You can still make appointments for new passport applications, passport renewals and photo services on the USPS website.
Can I still get a driver’s license or REAL ID?
You can still get a driver’s license or REAL ID during a government shutdown.
That’s because motor vehicle departments are primarily funded and operated through state budgets.
This means you can also make an appointment or visit one of your state’s driver’s license centers to receive a REAL ID with proper paperwork.
The shutdown will not stop Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees from enforcing the REAL ID Act in U.S. airports and other federal facilities.
TSA officers are typically deemed essential and must remain on the job, though they are not paid.
What about visas?
Agency spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement, however, that the shutdown does temporarily shutter the agency’s E-Verify program, a free online system that employers can use to confirm their new employees are authorized to work in the U.S.
The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.
Washington is bracing for what could be a prolonged federal shutdown after lawmakers deadlocked and missed the deadline for funding the government.
Republicans supported a short-term measure to fund the government generally at current levels through Nov. 21, but Democrats blocked it, insisting the measure address their concerns on health care. They want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s mega-bill passed this summer and extend tax credits that make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people who purchase through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans called the Democratic proposal a nonstarter that would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.
Here’s what to know about the shutdown that began Wednesday:
What happens in the shutdown?
Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, who include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.
The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed each day of the shutdown, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400 million.
What government work continues during a shutdown?
A great deal, actually.
FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.
Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.
Veteran health care also continues during a shutdown. Veterans Affairs medical centers and outpatient clinics will be open, and VA benefits will be processed and delivered. Burials will continue at VA national cemeteries.
Will furloughed federal workers get paid?
Yes. In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.
While they’ll eventually get paid, the furloughed workers and those who remain on the job may have to go without one or more of their regular paychecks, depending upon how long the shutdown lasts.
Service members would also receive back pay for missed paychecks once federal funding resumes.
Will I still get mail?
Yes. The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars.
What closes during a shutdown?
All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze or maintain in a shutdown.
The first Trump administration worked to blunt the impact of what became the country’s longest partial shutdown in 2018 and 2019. But on Tuesday, Trump threatened the possibility of increasing the pain that comes with a shutdown.
“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them,” Trump said of Democrats. “Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”
Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan. The plans outline which workers would stay on the job during a shutdown and which would be furloughed.
In a provocative move, the Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers in a shutdown. An OMB memo said those programs that didn’t get funding through Trump’s mega-bill this summer would bear the brunt of a shutdown.
Agencies should consider issuing reduction-in-force notices for those programs whose funding expires, that don’t have alternative funding sources and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” the memo said.
That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when furloughed federal workers returned to their jobs once the shutdown was over. A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but eliminate their positions, which would trigger another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that’s already faced major rounds of cuts due to efforts from the Department of Government Efficiency and elsewhere in Trump’s Republican administration.
What agencies are planning
Health and Human Services will furlough about 41 percent of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website.
As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.
Meanwhile, research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the House of Hope will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.
At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused.” For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee.
The National Park Service plans to furlough about two-thirds of its employees while keeping parks largely open to visitors during the federal shutdown, according to a contingency plan released Tuesday night. The plan says “park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors.”
The plan also allows parks to enter into agreements with states, tribes or local governments willing to make donations to keep national park sites open. The park service has more than 400 sites, including large national parks such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, national battlefields and historic sites.
Sites could close if damage is being done to park resources or garbage is building up.
Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree National Park in California.
Smithsonian Institution: Museums, research centers and the National Zoo will remain open through at least Monday.
Impact on the economy
Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said a short shutdown doesn’t have a huge impact on the economy, especially since federal workers, by law, are paid retroactively. But “if a shutdown continues, then that can give rise to uncertainties about what is the role of government in our society, and what’s the financial impact on all the programs that the government funds.”
“The impact is not immediate, but over time, there is a negative impact of a shutdown on the economy,” he added.
Markets haven’t reacted strongly to past shutdowns, according to Goldman Sachs Research. At the close of the three prolonged shutdowns since the early 1990s, equity markets finished flat or up even after dipping initially.
A governmentwide shutdown would directly reduce growth by around 0.15 percentage points for each week it lasted, or about 0.2 percentage points per week once private-sector effects were included, and growth would rise by the same cumulative amount in the quarter following reopening, writes Alec Phillips, chief U.S. political economist at Goldman Sachs.
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President Donald Trump has made historically large cuts to medical research, some of them aimed at ending what he refers to as diversity, equity and inclusion in federally funded studies. His administration is proposing more: Overall funding for the National Institutes of Health would return to its 2007 level if Trump’s budget proposal were to be enacted. A recent New York Times story highlighted Trump’s billions in proposed National Cancer Institute cuts and carried the headline, “Trump Is Shutting Down the War on Cancer.”
In the midst of a fight with Republicans over spending and a possible government shutdown, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to cut back medical research funding during a Q&A with reporters.
“Republicans have effectively ended medical research in the United States of America,” Jeffries said Sept. 24.
Has the Trump administration really ended medical research? While a substantial amount has disappeared, and more could be on the way out if Trump gets his way, Jeffries exaggerated the outlook, even allowing for his “effectively” caveat. Billions of dollars would remain even in the most austere scenario, and there’s uncertainty about whether his most severe proposed cuts will receive congressional approval.
Even after proposing substantial cuts to the budget of the National Institutes of Health — the main engine funding U.S. medical research — Trump’s proposal would give the institutes $27 billion for fiscal year 2026.
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And Trump’s proposal is not final; Congress could increase that amount. Some experts call that scenario likely.
“The appropriations language making its way through Congress is much less draconian, so it may be too early to know where all this is going to land,” said Richard Frank, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Jeffries’ office did not provide additional evidence for his statement.
What cuts has Trump made so far?
Trump’s cuts so far take several forms, said Joshua Weitz, a University of Maryland biology professor who co-founded the Science and Community Impacts Mapping Project, which is tracking the impacts of federal funding cuts nationally. Some of these cutbacks are being challenged in court.
Weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the National Institutes of Health announced major cuts to “indirect costs” — funds that pay for facilities, safety and grant administration. It capped indirect costs for labs working on NIH grants at 15%. Previously, the average rate was about 28%, and sometimes above 60%.
The White House has terminated thousands of research grants worth approximately $5 billion. Some of these were canceled for being related to diversity, equity and inclusion, a top target of the administration, such as a $3.8 million Asian Bipolar Genetics Network study to a $1.05 million Alzheimer’s and dementia study focusing on Black Americans. Others were related to administration efforts to punish elite universities for allegedly allowing antisemitism on campus, leading to hiring freezes and holds on clinical trials, Harvard University economist David Cutler and Harvard economist Edward Glaeser co-wrote a recent paper in JAMA Health Forum. “A fraction of these grants have been reinstated, but science does not turn on and off like a spigot,” Weitz said. “Interrupting research leads to wasted studies, risks projects, and is already causing job loss.”
Through early April, the NIH ousted 1,200 employees, and granted an unknown number of retirements and resignations. At the Food and Drug Administration, which approves drugs, thousands of jobs have been eliminated.
The president’s budget proposal would cut NIH funding from about $45 billion to about $27 billion. That’s a roughly 39% cut for a budget item that in recent decades has almost always increased from year to year. The proposed budget would eliminate the National Institutes for Nursing Research, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the Fogarty International Center, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
The consequences of these cuts could be significant.
“Our research shows that while cutting NIH funding may appear to save money in the short term, it can trigger a chain of effects that increase long-term health care costs and slow the development of new treatments and public health solutions over time,” Harvard University health policy and data specialists Mohammad S. Jalali and Zeynep Hasgül wrote for The Conversation.
Between 2010 and 2019, all but two of the 356 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration received some NIH funding, one study found. So any cuts could reduce the number of drugs in the pipeline, experts say.
Once all the follow-on impacts reverberate throughout the U.S. economy and health care system, the cuts could prompt an “$8 trillion health care catastrophe,” Cutler and Glaeser wrote. They estimated that the losses from reduced health would be 16 times greater than the proposed budgetary savings.
Despite the cuts, medical research is here to stay
The cuts are extensive but do not end U.S. medical research.
Trump’s slashed NIH budget would still spend more than $27 billion in fiscal year 2026.
“Novel biomedical discoveries that enhance health and lengthen life are more vital than ever to our country’s future,” the agency said in its budget proposal. “NIH research is critical to protect national security and sustain the United States’ scientific competitiveness, globally.”
The president’s proposal highlighted initiatives on nutrition, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, autism, and cancer, all priorities of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The FDA would receive a modest budgetary bump under Trump’s budget proposal, to almost $6.8 billion.
Despite the Republican majority’s generally close alignment with Trump’s policy agenda, Congress is on record rejecting his proposed medical research cuts, at least in the preliminary stage.
The Senate and House appropriations committees have voted for modest increases in NIH’s budget rather than Trump’s large cuts. They also voted to fund CDC and FDA at higher levels than Trump set out in his budget proposal.
These increases are not guaranteed; they will have to go through negotiations between lawmakers and the president before final passage.
“Congress is likely to approve much smaller cuts than the Administration had proposed,” said Sherry Glied, a professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
Our ruling
Jeffries said, “Republicans have effectively ended medical research in the United States of America.”
Trump has proposed severe cuts to medical research at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, including caps on indirect costs for grantees’ labs, terminated grant funding and staff reductions. But this is not tantamount to effectively ending U.S. medical research.
Even if Trump gets his way on a 39% cut to NIH’s budget in 2026, the institutes would still have more than $27 billion to spend in fiscal year 2026.
Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress may not go along with cuts on the scale the president proposed. Appropriations committees in both the Senate and the House have already rejected Trump’s steep cuts on medical research.
Trump’s medical research cuts are real and sweeping, but they have not “effectively ended medical research.” We rate the statement Mostly False.
Ever since Elijah Maldonado was born at just 29 months, he has needed specialty treatments that his family could afford only with publicly funded healthcare.
Diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, he spent his first three months at a public hospital where the family lives in Orange County.
Now 7, Elijah receives physical and speech therapy among a host of other services paid for through Medicaid. He relies on a wheelchair funded by the government. An assistant paid for with taxpayer dollars makes sure he’s safe on the bus ride to and from school.
Each month, he receives a $957 disability check that helps to cover his and his family’s living expenses.
Josephine Rios wipes her grandson Elijah’s face.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Still learning to speak on his own, he uses a Proloquo speech app on an iPad provided by his school to tell his family when he’s hungry, needs to use the restroom or wants to play with his favorite toys.
“It’s his voice — his lifeline,” his aunt and primary caretaker Cassandra Gonzalez says of the app. Her compensation for his in-home care comes from taxpayer dollars too.
Now that lifeline — and much of the government assistance Elijah receives — is at risk of going away.
With hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cuts to Medicaid and food aid kicking in this fall thanks to the passage of the Republican-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — on top of earlier cuts imposed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — a host of federally funded healthcare and nutrition programs that serve low-income Americans will be scaled back, revamped with expanded work requirements and other restrictions or canceled altogether if individual states can’t find alternate funding sources.
The budget reduces federal spending on Medicaid alone by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years nationwide, with initial reductions taking effect in the coming weeks.
Gov. Gavin Newsom responded by accusing the Trump administration of “ripping care from cancer patients, meals from children and money from working families — just to give tax breaks to the ultra-rich.”
L.A. public health officials called the cuts devastating for a county where nearly 40% of the population is enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. L.A. County’s Department of Health Services, which oversees four public hospitals and about two dozen clinics, projects a budget reduction amounting to $750 million a year, and federal funding for the Department of Public Health, which inspects food, provides substance-use treatment and tracks disease outbreaks, will drop by an estimated $200 million a year. Spending cuts have prompted hiring freezes and projections of ballooning budget deficits, county health officials said.
Spending reductions, combined with recent changes to the Affordable Care Act and Medicare, could leave an additional 1.7 million people in California uninsured by 2034, according to an analysis by the nonprofit healthcare research organization KFF.
It’s not just that the cuts to these programs are massive by historical standards.
The new rules and restrictions are confusing and states have been given little guidance from the federal agencies that oversee health and nutrition programs on how, or even when, to implement them, experts at the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities wrote in a recent report.
What’s clear, the CBPP said, is that millions of children, older adults, people with disabilities and veterans stand to lose not just Medicaid coverage but federal aid to access the type of healthy foods that could prevent illness and chronic conditions.
More than 5 million California households receive food aid through the state’s CalFresh program and 97% percent of them will see their benefits either slashed or eliminated because of federal spending cuts, changes to eligibility requirements or financial constraints at the state level, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan California Budget Policy Center.
Elijah plays with toy cars outside his aunt’s home in Tustin.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
In Orange County, where Elijah’s family lives, public health officials were already reeling from federal spending cuts in the months before the budget bill passed, said Dr. Veronica Kelley, director of the OC Health Care Agency. For example, there was the $13.2-million cut to funding for family planning services in the county, and the $4-million reduction in funding to Women, Infants and Children nutrition (WIC).
The agency has worked to prevent mass layoffs by moving public-health workers in canceled programs to other departments or leaving some positions unfilled in order to save jobs elsewhere, and it has sought out nonprofit social service organizations and philanthropies to either take over programs or help fund them, Kelley said.
Now, Kelley is preparing for possible cuts to programs to combat obesity, maintain community gardens, help seniors make better healthcare decisions and reduce the use of tobacco. The agency also has to figure out how to make up for a $4.8-million reduction in federal funds for the county’s SNAP program that takes effect on Wednesday — another casualty of the federal spending bill.
The measures that the agency has leaned on to get through the year are not sustainable, Kelley said. “We can only do that for so long,” she said. “It’s chaotic. In terms of healthcare, it’s devastating… It feels like we’re taking so many steps backward.”
The looming cuts and changes have also set off alarm bells at Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest private healthcare provider with 9.5 million members statewide, 1.1 million of whom are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.
“Without the ability to pay, newly uninsured people will find themselves having to delay care, leading to more serious and complex health conditions, increasing the use of emergency services and more intensive medical services,” Kaiser Permanente Southern California Regional spokeswoman Candice Lee said in a statement to The Times.
“This will affect all of us as the cost of this uncompensated care leads hospitals and care providers to charge paying customers more to cover their costs. Some hospitals and providers, especially those in rural and underserved areas, will be unable to make up for these unreimbursed costs, and will be financially threatened by these changes.”
Standing in front of her sister Cassandra’s town home in Tustin, a quiet suburban city of 80,000 about 10 miles south of Disneyland, Elijah’s mother, Samantha Rios; grandmother Josephine Rios; and Aunt Cassandra are filled with worry.
Elijah points to a command on his Proloquo speech app, which he uses to communicate his needs.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Josephine, a nursing assistant who works at a Kaiser hospital in Orange County, said she hears the panic in patients’ voices when they describe rushing to schedule needed medical procedures in anticipation of losing their Medicaid benefits.
Earlier this year, Josephine joined delegations of unionized California healthcare workers who traveled to Washington with the aim of pressing lawmakers to oppose spending cuts.
Rep. Young Kim, the Republican who represents the Rios family’s district in Congress, was receptive to the delegation’s pleas to vote no on the budget bill, Josephine recalls. The congresswoman ultimately voted for the bill, saying on her official webpage the legislation was good for Californians because it would relieve the tax burden on families, ensure that government dollars are used effectively and “strengthen Medicaid and SNAP for our most vulnerable citizens who truly need it.”
Elijah’s Aunt Cassandra and grandmother Josephine look over his shoulder as he watches a TV show.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Now, Josephine looked on as Elijah, seated in his wheelchair, played on his iPad and watched a Disney program on his phone. He can press a tab on the touchscreen to make the tablet say “My name’s Elijah” if he’s feeling unsafe away from home, another to tell his family he needs space when upset.
Watching Elijah enjoy himself, the women said they feel awkward broadcasting their woes to strangers when all they desire is what’s best for him. They don’t need the public’s pity.
The family wants lawmakers and the public to understand how seemingly abstract healthcare decisions involving billions of dollars, and made 2,000-plus miles away in Washington, have brought new financial turmoil to a family that’s already on the edge financially.
Samantha, a single mom, works full time to provide a home for Elijah and his two sisters, ages 10 and 8. A subscription to the Proloquo speech app alone would cost $300 a year out-of-pocket — more than she can afford on her shoestring budget.
Due to changes in household income requirements, Samantha had already lost Medicaid coverage for herself and her two girls, she said, as well as her SNAP food assistance, leaving her at a loss for how to fill the gap. She now pays about $760 a month to cover her daughters and herself through her employer-based health plan.
The cut to food aid has forced her to compensate by getting free vegetables, milk, eggs and chicken from the food pantry at a local school, a reality that she said she was at first too ashamed to disclose even to relatives.
Then came the bad news Samantha recently received about Elijah’s monthly Social Security Insurance for his disability. She was stunned to hear that because of stricter income cut-offs for that type of aid, Elijah would no longer receive those checks as of Oct. 1.
“Before, he was getting $957 a month — obviously that’s grocery money for me,” Samantha said. The money also went to buy baby wipes, as well as knee pads to help him move more comfortably on the floor when not using his wheelchair.
“I don’t get food stamps. I don’t get Medi-Cal for my girls. I don’t get any of that,” Samantha said. “As of Oct. 1, now I’ve got to figure out how am I going to pay my rent? How am I going to buy groceries?”
Luckily, the sisters said, the physical, speech and behavioral-health therapies that Elijah receives are safe — for now.
And the women know they can lean on each other in tough times. The sisters and Josephine all live within minutes of each other in Tustin, close enough for Samantha’s children to eat at someone’s home when their own cupboards are bare.
Every few months, Samantha said, Elijah experiences severe seizures that can last up to 90 minutes and require hospitalization.
Cassandra and Josephine like that they can run over to help if Elijah has a medical emergency. Another sister who lives farther away is on hand when needed too.
“What’s going to happen to other families who don’t have that support system?” Samantha said.
Given the potential for further cuts to programs that pay for home-based healthcare and assistants for people with disabilities, Cassandra wonders what will happen to her own family if she can no longer work as Elijah’s caregiver.
Where would the family get the money to pay a new caregiver who is qualified enough to work with a special-needs child who can speak a few words thanks to speech therapy but who cannot eat, walk or use the restroom without supervision? What if funding is eliminated for the assistant who travels with Elijah to school?
“People think that cutting Medi-Cal, cutting food stamps or whatever isn’t going to affect that many people,” Cassandra said. “It’s affecting my nephew and nieces. It’s affecting my sister. But it’s not just affecting her household. It’s affecting my household.”
“We’re not saying we’re going to Disneyland or going out to eat every day,” Cassandra said. “This is just living. We can’t even live at this point, with things being cut.”
The women offered up principles they feel are in short supply lately in the discourse over the government’s role in public health — among them “morals” and “empathy.” Samantha adds one more word to the list.
The Department of Education has started to withhold federal funding from Fairfax County Public Schools, a significant escalation in the battle over the Northern Virginia school district’s bathroom policies.
The Education Department withheld federal funding from Fairfax County Public Schools, as pressure continues to build for the school district and several Northern Virginia school systems to amend their gender policy over the use of restrooms and locker rooms or risk losing federal funding.
The school division had submitted a reimbursement request for a small amount, and that request has been denied, a person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly told WTOP. It’s unclear how much has been withheld and which programs will be affected.
The action is the latest in the back-and-forth between the school division and the federal agency over the county’s policy for intimate facilities, such as bathrooms.
Fairfax County and four other Virginia school systems said their bathroom policies are in compliance with federal law. However, the Education Department said policies that allow students to use the bathroom based on gender identity, rather than biological sex, violate Title IX.
PSA: New York City, Chicago, and Fairfax schools are willing to sacrifice federal education dollars to keep boys in girls’ sports and private spaces and illegal DEI in the classroom. https://t.co/5MPCxVURSq
Education Department spokesperson Julie Hartman told The Associated Press, “The Department will not rubber-stamp civil rights compliance for New York, Chicago, and Fairfax while they blatantly discriminate against students based on race and sex.”
Fairfax County schools will lose $3.4 million in Magnet School Assistance Program funding next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.
An Education Department spokesperson said no funds have been withheld from the MSAP, but “the Office for Civil Rights cannot certify that Fairfax County Schools are in compliance with civil rights laws, so it cannot continue receiving the MSAP grant moving forward. The grant will expire on 9/30 and they will not be getting another MSAP grant.”
Fairfax County filed a lawsuit to prevent funding from being frozen, but a federal judge declined to rule, citing a lack of jurisdiction. Since then, the division has filed an appeal and an emergency motion for injunction pending appeal.
Fairfax County schools Superintendent Michelle Reid previously told WTOP the division could lose up to $167 million in federal funding, which supports students with disabilities and those who receive free school meals. School leaders in Arlington, Prince William County and the City of Alexandria have expressed similar concerns.
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A federal judge Monday ordered the Trump administration to restore $500 million in UCLA medical research grants, halting for now a nearly two-month funding crisis that UC leaders said threatened the future of the nation’s premier public university system.
The opinion by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California added hundreds of UCLA’s National Institutes of Health grants to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to the University of California.
Lin’s order provides the biggest relief to UCLA but affects federal funding awarded to all 10 UC campuses. Lin ruled that the NIH grants were suspended by form letters that were unspecific to the research, a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rulemaking.
In addition to the medical grant freezes — which had prompted talks of possible UCLA layoffs or closures of labs conducting cancer and stroke research, among other studies — Lin said the government would have to restore millions of Department of Defense and Department of Transportation grants to UC schools.
Lin explained her thinking during a hearing last week. She said the Trump administration committed a “fundamental sin” in its “un-reasoned mass terminations” of grants using “letters that don’t go through the required factors that the agency is supposed to consider.”
The preliminary injunction will be in place as the lawsuit proceeds. But in broadening the case, Lin agreed with plaintiffs that there would be irreparable harm if the suspensions were not immediately reversed.
The suit was originally filed in June by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley professors fighting a separate, earlier round of Trump administration grant clawbacks. UCLA faculty with NIH grants later joined the case.
The University of California is not a party in the suit.
The judge, a Biden appointee, told Department of Justice lawyers to make a court filing by Sept. 29 explaining “all steps” the government has take to comply with her order or, if necessary, explain why restoring grants “was not feasible.”
UC did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment about the ruling.
Spokespeople for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, and the Department of Justice did not respond to questions from The Times about the government’s next steps. The Trump administration had appealed an earlier ruling in the case to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Last month, the appeals court declined to reverse that ruling by Lin.
Prior court orders in the case have resulted in government notices to campuses within days saying that funding will flow again.
“This is wonderful news for UC researchers and should be tremendously consequential in ongoing UC negotiations with the Trump administration,” said Claudia Polsky, a UC Berkeley law professor who is part of the legal team behind the suit. “The restoration of more than half a billion dollars to UCLA in NIH funding alone gives UC the strongest hand it has had yet in resisting unlawful federal demands.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, worked with Polsky and argued the case in front of Lin.
“The judge made clear what she said previously and the 9th Circuit held: The termination of grants was illegal and they must be restored,” he said.
Trump administration lawyers argued against lifting more grant freezes, saying the case was in the wrong jurisdiction.
A Justice Department lawyer, Jason Altabet, said during the hearing last week that instead of a District Court lawsuit filed by faculty, the proper venue would be for UC to file a case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Altabet based his arguments on a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s suspension of $783 million in NIH grants — to universities and research centers throughout the country — in part because the issue, the high court said, was not correctly within the jurisdiction of a lower federal court.
In her Monday opinion, Lin disagreed with the government’s position that professors could not sue in District Court or the federal claims court.
Lin addressed a hypothetical scenario posed to the government in court filings and during last week’s hearing, in which she asked what recourse a faculty member had if “a future administration terminated all grants to researchers with Asian last names.” The government’s position was that there would be none unless the person’s employer, the university, sued, because the grants are given to the institutions, not the researchers.
Writing Monday, Lin called that an “extreme” view. “This court will not shut its doors” on researchers suing over “constitutional and statutory rights,” she wrote.
The Trump administration rescinded $584 million in UCLA grants in late July, citing allegations of campus antisemitism, use of race in admissions and the school’s recognition of transgender identities as its reasons. The awards included $81 million from the National Science Foundation — also restored last month by Lin — and $3 million from the Department of Energy, which is still suspended.
Last month, the government proposed a roughly $1.2-billion fine and demanded wide campus changes over admissions, protest rules, gender-affirming healthcare for minors and the disclosure of internal campus records, among other demands, in exchange for restoring the money.
UCLA has said it made changes in the last year to improve the climate for Jewish communities and does not use race in admissions. Chancellor Julio Frenk has said that defunding medical research “does nothing” to address discrimination allegations. The university displays websites and policies that recognize different gender identities and maintains services for LGBTQ+ communities.
UC leaders said they will not pay the $1.2-billion fine and are negotiating with the Trump administration over its other demands. They have told The Times that many settlement proposals cross the university’s red lines.
The case wasclosely watched by researchers at the Westwood campus, who have cut back on lab hours, reduced operations and considered layoffs as the crisis at UCLA moves toward the two-month mark.
Neil Garg, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA whose roughly four-year, $2.9 million grant was suspended over the summer, said that “people on the campus will be overjoyed” by the injunction.
“From the scientific side of it, it is incredibly warming to hear that, to see that sort of decision,” said Garg said. “But we will wait and see how things play out.”
Garg’s 19-person lab works on developing new organic chemistry reactions that could have pharmaceutical applications. “We try to invent chemistry that is unknown,” he explained.
No one in Garg’s lab lost jobs after his grant was frozen. After the suspension, Garg sought new funding sources. “I have been very aggressive, as have many of my colleagues, in applying,” he said. “Even if the funds are restored, we don’t know how quickly that will happen or how permanent that is.”
Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year neuroscience doctroal candidate at UCLA, had also lost a roughly $160,000 NIH grant that funded her study of stroke recovery treatment.
“I am really glad that [the suspension] didn’t last more than these two months,” said Rathbun, who hoped grants return “quickly and efficiently” so researchers can “use the money in ways that we desperately need.”
Rathbun said the experience showed her “how incredibly precarious of a situation we are in as researchers. And how quickly our lives and our life’s work can seemingly be upended.”
House Republicans unveiled on Tuesday a stopgap spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21, daring Democrats to block it knowing that the fallout would likely be a partial government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year.The bill would generally fund agencies at current levels, with a few limited exceptions, including an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The proposed boost comes as lawmakers face an increasing number of personal threats, with their concerns heightened by last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would prefer the Senate take it up this week as well. But any bill will need some Democratic support to advance through the Senate, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have been asking their Republican counterparts for weeks for a meeting to negotiate on the bill, but they say that Republicans have refused. Any bill needs help from at least seven Democrats in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and advance to a final vote.The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that by “refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country toward a shutdown.””The House Republican-only spending bill fails to meet the needs of the American people and does nothing to stop the looming healthcare crisis,” Schumer and Jeffries said. “At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums.”Republicans say it’s Democrats who are playing politics by insisting on addressing health coverage concerns as part of any government funding bill. In past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.This time, however, Democrats are facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump. They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiums for millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.Some people have already received notices that their premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to spike next year. Insurers have sent out notices in nearly every state, with some proposing premium increases of as much as 50%.Johnson called the debate over health insurance tax credits a December policy issue, not something that needs to be solved in September.”It’ll be a clean, short-term continuing resolution, end of story,” Johnson told reporters. “And it’s interesting to me that some of the same Democrats who decried government shutdowns under President Biden appear to have no heartache whatsoever at walking our nation off that cliff right now. I hope they don’t.”Thune said Republicans are simply providing what Schumer has always requested in the past when Democrats were in the majority — “a clean funding resolution to fund the government.” He said that if the House passes the measure and Trump is prepared to sign it, then “it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.”
WASHINGTON —
House Republicans unveiled on Tuesday a stopgap spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21, daring Democrats to block it knowing that the fallout would likely be a partial government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year.
The bill would generally fund agencies at current levels, with a few limited exceptions, including an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The proposed boost comes as lawmakers face an increasing number of personal threats, with their concerns heightened by last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would prefer the Senate take it up this week as well. But any bill will need some Democratic support to advance through the Senate, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have been asking their Republican counterparts for weeks for a meeting to negotiate on the bill, but they say that Republicans have refused. Any bill needs help from at least seven Democrats in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and advance to a final vote.
The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that by “refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country toward a shutdown.”
“The House Republican-only spending bill fails to meet the needs of the American people and does nothing to stop the looming healthcare crisis,” Schumer and Jeffries said. “At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums.”
Republicans say it’s Democrats who are playing politics by insisting on addressing health coverage concerns as part of any government funding bill. In past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
This time, however, Democrats are facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump. They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiums for millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.
Some people have already received notices that their premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to spike next year. Insurers have sent out notices in nearly every state, with some proposing premium increases of as much as 50%.
Johnson called the debate over health insurance tax credits a December policy issue, not something that needs to be solved in September.
“It’ll be a clean, short-term continuing resolution, end of story,” Johnson told reporters. “And it’s interesting to me that some of the same Democrats who decried government shutdowns under President Biden appear to have no heartache whatsoever at walking our nation off that cliff right now. I hope they don’t.”
Thune said Republicans are simply providing what Schumer has always requested in the past when Democrats were in the majority — “a clean funding resolution to fund the government.” He said that if the House passes the measure and Trump is prepared to sign it, then “it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.”
Substandard rental conditions draw federal attention and push for change
A federal watchdog may soon hold apartment complex owners accountable for allowing low-income renters to live in substandard conditions, following a push by U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Ossoff, motivated by media reports, has garnered bipartisan support for an amendment that would require federal oversight of property owners who receive federal funding. This move aims to improve living conditions for tenants in federally funded housing.
“These landlords are abusing their tenants – and they’re collecting federal dollars,” Ossoff said. “So we have to keep the attention on this and hold people accountable.”
A disabled tenant, whose name wasn’t share, lives at the apartment complex, formerly known as Creekside Forest in DeKalb County.
Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes remembers doing stories on this complex back in 2016, when the county shut it down for unsanitary conditions.
The tenant reported similar conditions, including a bathroom ceiling on the verge of collapse due to leaks.
“I shouldn’t have to live like this; it’s unsanitary,” she told Fernandes.
“My bathroom ceiling – it’s getting ready to collapse – from the upstairs it leaks down – it’s unsanitary. I complain and complain and nothing has been done about that,” the tenant said.
“We do know that many of the entities in the chain of title for the last 10 years have all had a New Jersey, the same New Jersey address, which circumstantially that they’re at least related,” title attorney Doug McKillip said.
Ossoff’s amendment seeks to address issues similar to those reported at the DeKalb County complex, where tenants have complained of mold and other hazardous conditions.
A recent mold test in one unit showed 100% fungal growth in all bedrooms.
“I don’t think much of this in metro Atlanta would’ve come to light without reporting from WSB … but these landlords are abusing their tenants – and they’re collecting federal dollars. So we have to keep the attention on this and hold people accountable,” Ossoff said.
If passed into law, Ossoff’s amendment could significantly improve living conditions for low-income tenants by ensuring greater accountability for property owners receiving federal funds.
The Trump administration’s cuts to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state and local health departments had vastly uneven effects depending on the political leanings of a state, according to a KFF Health News analysis. Democratic-led states and select blue-leaning cities fought back in court and saw money for public health efforts restored — while GOP-led states sustained big losses.
The Department of Health and Human Services in late March canceled nearly 700 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants nationwide — together worth about $11 billion. Awarded during the covid-19 pandemic, they supported efforts to vaccinate people, reduce health disparities among demographic groups, upgrade antiquated systems for detecting infectious disease outbreaks, and hire community health workers.
Initially, grant cancellations hit blue and red states roughly evenly. Four of the five jurisdictions with the largest number of terminated grants were led by Democrats: California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Massachusetts.
But after attorneys general and governors from about two dozen blue states sued in federal court and won an injunction, the balance flipped. Of the five states with the most canceled grants, four are led by Republicans: Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio.
In blue states, nearly 80% of the CDC grant cuts have been restored, compared with fewer than 5% in red states, according to the KFF Health News analysis. Grant amounts reported in an HHS database known as the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System, or TAGGS, often don’t match what states confirmed. Instead, this analysis focused on the number of grants.
The divide is an example of the polarization that permeates health care issues, in which access to safety-net health programs, abortion rights, and the ability of public health officials to respond to disease threats diverge significantly depending on the political party in power.
In an emailed statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the agency “is committed to protecting the health of every American, regardless of politics or geography. These funds were provided in response to the COVID pandemic, which is long over. We will continue working with states to strengthen public health infrastructure and ensure communities have the tools they need to respond to outbreaks and keep people safe.”
The money in question wasn’t spent solely on covid-related activities, public health experts say; it was also used to bolster public health infrastructure and help contain many types of viruses and diseases, including the flu, measles, and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.
“It really supported infrastructure across the board, particularly in how states respond to public health threats,” said Susan Kansagra, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
The Trump cutbacks came as the U.S. recorded its largest measles outbreak in over three decades and 266 pediatric deaths during the most recent flu season — the highest reported outside of a pandemic since 2004. Public health departments canceled vaccine clinics, laid off staff, and put contracts on hold, health officials said in interviews.
After its funding cuts were blocked in court, California retained every grant the Trump administration attempted to claw back, while Texas remains the state with the most grants terminated, with at least 30. As the CDC slashed grants in Texas, its measles outbreak spread across the U.S. and Mexico, sickening at least 4,500 people and killing at least 16.
Colorado, which joined the lawsuit, had 11 grant terminations at first, but then 10 were retained. Meanwhile, its neighboring states that didn’t sue — Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma — collectively lost 55 grants, with none retained.
In Jackson, Ohio, a half-dozen community health workers came to work one day in March to find the Trump administration had canceled their grant five months early, leaving the Jackson County Health Department half a million dollars short — and them without jobs.
“I had to lay off three employees in a single day, and I haven’t had to do that before. We don’t have those people doing outreach in Jackson County anymore,” Health Commissioner Kevin Aston said.
At one point, he said, the funding helped 11 Appalachian Ohio counties. Now it supports one.
Marsha Radabaugh, one employee who was reassigned, has scaled back her community health efforts: She’d been helping serve hot meals to homeless people and realized that many clients couldn’t read or write, so she brought forms for services such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to their encampment in a local park and helped fill them out.
“We would find them rehab places. We’d get out hygiene kits, blankets, tents, zero-degree sleeping bags, things like that,” she said. As a counselor, she’d also remind people “that they’re cared for, that they’re worthy of being a human — because, a lot of the time, they’re not treated that way.”
Sasha Johnson, who led the community health worker program, said people like Radabaugh “were basically a walking human 411,” offering aid to those in need.
Radabaugh also partnered with a food bank to deliver meals to homebound residents.
Aston said the abrupt way they lost the funds — which meant the county unexpectedly had to pay unemployment for more people — could have ruined the health district financially. Canceling funding midcycle, he said, “was really scary.”
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist and promoter of vaccine misinformation, has called the CDC a “cesspool of corruption.” At HHS, he has taken steps to undermine vaccination in the U.S. and abroad.
Federal CDC funding accounts for more than half of state and local health department budgets, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. States that President Donald Trump won in the 2024 election received a higher share of the $15 billion the CDC allocated in fiscal 2023 than those that Democrat Kamala Harris won, according to KFF.
The Trump administration’s nationwide CDC grant terminations reflect this. More than half were in states that Trump won in 2024, totaling at least 370 terminations before the court action, according to KFF Health News’ analysis.
The Columbus, Ohio, health department had received $6.2 million in CDC grants, but roughly half of it — $3 million — disappeared with the Trump cuts. The city laid off 11 people who worked on investigating infectious disease outbreaks in such places as schools and nursing homes, Columbus Health Commissioner Mysheika Roberts said.
She also said the city had planned to buy a new electronic health record system for easier access to patients’ hospital records — which could improve disease detection and provide better treatment for those infected — but that was put on ice.
“We’ve never had a grant midcycle just get pulled from us for no reason,” Roberts said. “This sense of uncertainty is stressful.”
Columbus did not receive its money directly from the CDC. Rather, the state gave the city some funds it received from the federal government. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and a Republican attorney general, did not sue to block the funding cuts.
Columbus sued the federal government in April to keep its money, along with other Democratic-led municipalities in Republican-governed states: Harris County, Texas, home to Houston; the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee; and Kansas City, Missouri. A federal judge in June blocked those cuts.
As of mid-August, Columbus was awaiting the funds. Roberts said the city won’t rehire staff because the federal funding was expected to end in December.
Joe Grogan, a senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Institute and former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council in Trump’s first term, said state and local agencies “are not entitled” to the federal money, which was awarded “to deal with an emergency” that has ended.
“We were throwing money out the door the last five years,” Grogan said of the federal government. “I don’t understand why there would ever be a controversy in unspent covid money coming back.”
Ken Gordon, Ohio Department of Health spokesperson, wrote in an email that the $250 million in grants lost had helped with, among other things, upgrading the disease reporting system and boosting public health laboratory testing.
Some of the canceled HHS funding wasn’t slated to end for years, including four grants to strengthen public health in Indian Country, a grant to a Minnesota nonprofit focused on reducing substance use disorders, and a few to universities about occupational safety, HIV, tuberculosis, and more.
Brent Ewig, chief policy and government relations officer for the Association of Immunization Managers, said the cuts were “the predictable result of ‘boom, bust, panic, neglect’ funding” for public health.
The association represents 64 state, local, and territorial immunization programs, which Ewig said will be less prepared to respond to disease outbreaks, including measles.
“The system is blinking red,” Ewig said.
Methodology
KFF Health News’ analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants sought to answer four questions: 1) How many grants have been terminated in the U.S. under the Trump administration since March? 2) Which states saw the most grants cut? 3) What were the grants for? and 4) Did the grant terminations affect blue, red, and purple states differently? This follows a similar analysis by KFF Health News for an article on nationwide NIH grant terminations.
Our primary data source was a Department of Health and Human Services website showing grant terminations. We compared an initial list of grant terminations from April 3 with one from July 11 to determine how many grants had been restored. The USAspending.gov database helped us track grants by state.
To classify states politically, we followed the same steps from our April coverage of National Institutes of Health grant terminations. States were “blue” if Democrats had complete control of the state government or if the majority of voters favored Democratic presidential candidates in the last three elections (2016, 2020, 2024). “Red” states were classified similarly with respect to the Republican Party. “Purple” states had politically split state governments and/or were generally considered to be presidential election battleground states. The result was 25 red states, 17 blue states, and eight purple states. The District of Columbia was classified as blue using similar methods.
This analysis does not account for potential grant reinstatements in local jurisdictions where the funds were awarded indirectly rather than directly from the CDC; it accounts only for the recipients’ location, and excludes grants terminated from Compacts of Free Association states and other foreign entities that received grants directly from the CDC. At least 40 CDC grants were terminated that were meant for global health efforts or assisting public health activities in other nations following the Trump administration’s order for the CDC to withdraw support for the World Health Organization.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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Henry Larweh, Rachana Pradhan, Rae Ellen Bichell and KFF Health News
