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Press Release:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong Chal­lenges Trump Ille­gal Attempts to Ter­mi­nate Fed­er­al Fund­ing for States

Preceding Event:

On the first day of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond term, Jan. 20, the Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy, lead by Elon Musk, began cut­ting fed­er­al depart­ments, pro­grams and grants. Thou­sands of grants pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed to states and grantees had been revoked.

Much of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the legal­i­ty of this was through a clause in reg­u­la­tions pro­mul­gat­ed by the Office of Man­age­ment of Bud­get (OMB). The clause “pro­vides that fed­er­al agen­cies may ter­mi­nate grants ‘pur­suant to the terms and con­di­tions of the Fed­er­al award, includ­ing, to the extent autho­rized by law, if an award no longer effec­tu­ates the pro­gram goals or agency pri­or­i­ties’.”

The five words “no longer effec­tu­ates agency pri­or­i­ties” have been used as a way to can­cel grants and pre­vent new ones from being award­ed. Each of the named defen­dants in the suit has uti­lized the five words at least once in order to ter­mi­nate a fed­er­al grant award­ed to a state, the suit alleges. While this had been a clause in place since 2020, its use in these ways goes against the prece­dent of how it was being used pri­or Pres­i­dent Trump’s sec­ond term.

General Overview:

Accord­ing to the press release from June 24, 2025, “Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong today announced that he has joined a coali­tion of 21 attor­neys gen­er­al suing the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion over its unprece­dent­ed and unlaw­ful attempts to invoke a sin­gle pro­vi­sion buried in the fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions to strip away bil­lions of dol­lars in crit­i­cal fed­er­al fund­ing for states and oth­er grantees.”

Con­gress has the pow­er of the purse and already had funds allo­cat­ed. Con­gress is now hav­ing their author­i­ty chal­lenged by the exec­u­tive branch as the mon­ey they allo­cat­ed is not being used in the way they intend­ed, the suit argues.

This is a fun­da­men­tal issue of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. The suit also argues that the OMB clause used by the admin­is­tra­tion to ter­mi­nate these grants is not being inter­pret­ed in the way intend­ed when it was orig­i­nal­ly estab­lished by the OMB in 2020. It was not meant to be used to jus­ti­fy ter­mi­na­tions sim­ply when agency poli­cies and pri­or­i­ties change, the suit said.

Connecticut Nexus:

Accord­ing to the law­suit, “In or around March 2025, USDA’s Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing Ser­vice (AMS), a USDA sub­agency, ter­mi­nat­ed coop­er­a­tive agree­ments with Plain­tiffs through the Local Food Pur­chase Assis­tance Coop­er­a­tive Agree­ment Pro­gram (LFPA Program)…In Con­necti­cut, AMS ter­mi­nat­ed the LFPA 2025 Coop­er­a­tive Agree­ment with the Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture. Through that coop­er­a­tive agree­ment, Con­necti­cut had planned to serve farm­ers and com­mu­ni­ties fac­ing food inse­cu­ri­ty by sup­port­ing the pur­chase of prod­uct from local pro­duc­ers and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of that prod­uct to under­served com­mu­ni­ties through a net­work of organizations…The fund­ing would have sup­port­ed con­tin­u­a­tion and expan­sion of a pro­gram which pur­chas­es healthy, local food from 131 agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­ers and sup­plies that food to Con­necti­cut indi­vid­u­als fac­ing food inse­cu­ri­ty through a net­work of non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions which oper­ate at 561 dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ters.”

Date of filing:

June 24, 2025

Case #:

1:25-cv-11816

Case title:

State of New Jer­sey et al v. U.S. Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get et al

Plaintiffs: 21 states and D.C.

• STATE OF NEW JERSEY,
• COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS,
• STATE OF NEW YORK,
• STATE OF ARIZONA,
• STATE OF CALIFORNIA,
• STATE OF COLORADO,
• STATE OF CONNECTICUT,
• STATE OF DELAWARE,
• THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
• STATE OF HAWAI‘I,
• STATE OF ILLINOIS,
• STATE OF MAINE,
• STATE OF MARYLAND,
• ATTORNEY GENERAL DANA NESSEL FOR THE PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN,
• STATE OF MINNESOTA,
• STATE OF NEVADA,
• STATE OF NEW MEXICO,
• STATE OF OREGON,
• JOSH SHAPIRO, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as Gov­er­nor of the Com­mon­wealth of Penn­syl­va­nia,
• STATE OF RHODE ISLAND,
• STATE OF VERMONT,
• STATE OF WISCONSIN,

Defendants:

• U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET;
• RUSSELL VOUGHT, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as Direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment & Bud­get;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE;
• BROOKE L. ROLLINS, in her offi­cial capac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE;
• HOWARD LUTNICK, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of Com­merce;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE;
• PETE HEGSETH, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as the Sec­re­tary of Defense;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY;
• KRISTI NOEM, in her offi­cial capac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;
• PAMELA JO BONDI, in her offi­cial capac­i­ty as Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the U.S.;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR;
• LORI CHAVEZ DeRE­MER, in her offi­cial capac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of Labor;
• U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE;
• MARCO RUBIO, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of State, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY;
• LEE ZELDIN, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as Admin­is­tra­tor of the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency;
• U.S. FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY;
• DAVID RICHARDSON, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as the Senior Offi­cial Per­form­ing the Duties of the Admin­is­tra­tor;
• NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES;
• MICHAEL MCDONALD, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as Act­ing Chair­man of the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties;
• NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION;
• BRIAN STONE, in his offi­cial capac­i­ty as the Act­ing Direc­tor of the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion

Court:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 6, 2025

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