Organizations sue Justice Department to reverse hundreds of grant cancellations
The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday by the Vera Institute of Justice, the Center for Children & Youth Justice, Chinese for Affirmative Action, FORCE Detroit and Health Resources in Action, asks a federal judge in the nation's capital to 'declare unlawful, vacate and set aside' the cancellations that were sent to more than 360 awardees ending grants worth nearly $820 million midstream .
The lawsuit filed by the Democracy Forward Foundation and the Perry Law firm asks for class action status and also names the Office of Justice Programs and Maureen Henneberg, the acting head of that office, as defendants.
The lawsuit argues that the grant terminations did not allow due process to the organizations, lacked sufficient clarity, and that Henneberg's office lacked 'constitutional, statutory, and regulatory authority' to terminate the grants. The lawyers also argue that the move violated the constitutional separation of powers clause that gives Congress appropriation powers.
The lawsuit notes that all the grant recipients that had money rescinded received the same form letter announcing the cancellation, with identical words saying the grant programs no longer met the agency's priorities.
Lawyers argue in the lawsuit that the new agency priorities noted in the form letter are not articulated in policy or law, and that federal regulations do not allow for cancellations when the agency's priorities change 'post-award.' They said the rule only allows for cancellations of grants that no longer meet the agency's goals as stated when the grants were awarded.
The lawsuit says the Office of Justice Programs 'is permitted to terminate an award based on agency priorities only if that basis for termination was specifically permitted by the terms and conditions of the award.' That did not happen, it argues.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment Thursday on the lawsuit.
Representatives from Vera said the nonprofit received notice on April 4 that five awards worth more than $7 million were being canceled. The other named plaintiffs, along with hundreds of other groups, received identical notices on April 22 that they should cease any activities under the grants and that they would lose access to the federal funding system.
The grants cover a wide swath of programing across the Justice Department. Among other goals, they are for community violence intervention work, combatting hate crimes, providing assistance to crime survivors and survivors of domestic or sexual abuse, improving juvenile justice, and training for law enforcement agencies.
The lawsuit says none of the organizations had previously had grants terminated and many had received grants for various programs under both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations.
Many of the organizations that lost the federal money said the unexpected cancellations mid-grant had meant layoffs, program closures and loss of community partnerships. In addition to staying the cancellations and reinstating the awards, lawyers also ask a judge to require state reports every 30 days to ensure compliance.
'The sudden and unlawful termination of these public safety grants makes neighborhoods everywhere less safe and does irreparable harm to communities across the country,' said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US budget deficit forecast $1 trillion higher over next decade, watchdog says
By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. federal budget deficits will be nearly $1 trillion higher over the next decade than projected in January by the Congressional Budget Office as a result of tax and spending legislation and tariffs, a budget watchdog said on Wednesday. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's latest forecasts show a cumulative deficit of $22.7 trillion from fiscal 2026 to 2035, compared to the CBO's January forecast of $21.8 trillion, which was based on laws and policies that were in place before U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. The CBO, Congress' non-partisan budget referee agency, said on Monday that it will not issue its customary mid-year budget update this year and will issue its next 10-year budget and economic outlook in early 2026, offering no explanation for the move. The CRFB, which advocates for deficit reduction, projected a $1.7 trillion deficit in fiscal 2025 or 5.6% of GDP, down slightly from $1.83 trillion in 2024 and the CBO's 2025 projection of $1.87 trillion in January. But it said deficits steadily rise over the decade, reaching $2.6 trillion or 5.9% of GDP by 2035. The new CRFB estimates include the budget effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending bill, as well as Trump's tariffs that are currently in place. But like CBO, they do not include the dynamic economic effects on growth from these changes, a forecasting rule that has drawn criticism from the Trump administration. The group projects the tax cut and spending bill to increase deficits, including interest, by $4.6 trillion through 2035, adding another year to the CBO's $4.1 trillion cost estimate through 2034. But CRFB estimates that this will be offset by $3.4 trillion worth of extra import duty revenue over the next decade due to Trump's new tariffs that are currently in place. New rules restricting eligibility for health insurance subsidies will reduce deficits by another $100 billion through 2035, and Congress' rescission of prior funding to foreign aid, public broadcasting and other programs would save another $100 billion if sustained over a decade, CRFB said. Net interest payments on the national debt will total $14 trillion over the decade, CRFB projected, rising from nearly $1 trillion or 3.2% of GDP in 2025 to $1.8 trillion or 4.1% of GDP in 2035. TARIFF CHALLENGE The forecasts are based on legislative and tariff changes since January but keep CBO's economic forecasts unchanged. Under an alternative scenario forecast by CRFB, the budget picture looks far worse, boosting deficits nearly $7 trillion higher than the CBO baseline. This scenario would see a significant part of Trump's tariffs canceled if the Court of International Trade's ruling against many of Trump's new tariffs is upheld, cutting $2.4 trillion from revenues over a decade. The alternative scenario also assumes extension of a number of temporary tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including tax breaks on overtime, tips, Social Security income and car loan interest, higher state and local tax deduction allowances and full expensing of factory investments, adding $1.7 trillion to deficits over 10 years. CRFB's alternative scenario also ditches the CBO's projection of a decline in 10-year U.S. Treasury yields over the decade to about 3.8%. If that interest rate stays at the current level of about 4.3%, interest costs would grow by about $1.6 trillion through 2035, CRFB said. The total 2035 debt-to-GDP ratio would grow from 118% in the CBO January baseline to 120% under the CRFB's projected baseline scenario and 134% under the CRFB's alternative scenario. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CNN
20 minutes ago
- CNN
Ranger fired for hanging transgender flag in Yosemite and park visitors may face prosecution
LGBTQ issues Donald Trump Diversity and equityFacebookTweetLink Follow A Yosemite National Park ranger was fired after hanging a pride flag from El Capitan while some visitors face potential prosecution for alleged violations of protest restrictions that have been tightened under President Donald Trump. Shannon 'SJ' Joslin, a ranger and biologist who studies bats, said they hung a 66-foot wide transgender pride flag on the famous climbing wall that looms over the California park's main thoroughfare for about two hours on May 20 before taking it down voluntarily. A termination letter they received last week accused Joslin of 'failing to demonstrate acceptable conduct' in their capacity as a biologist and cited the May incident. 'I was really hurting because there were a lot of policies coming from the current administration that target trans people, and I'm nonbinary,' Joslin, 35, told The Associated Press, adding that hanging the flag was a way to 'tell myself … that we're all safe in national parks.' Joslin said their firing sends the opposite message: 'If you're a federal worker and you have any kind of identity that doesn't agree with this current administration, then you must be silent, or you will be eliminated.' Park officials on Tuesday said they were working with the US Justice Department to pursue visitors and workers who violated restrictions on demonstrations at the park that had more than 4 million visitors last year. The agencies 'are pursuing administrative action against several Yosemite National Park employees and possible criminal charges against several park visitors who are alleged to have violated federal laws and regulations related to demonstrations,' National Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz said. Joslin said a group of seven climbers including two other park rangers hung the flag. The other rangers are on administrative leave pending an investigation, Joslin said. Flags have long been displayed from El Capitan without consequences, said Joanna Citron Day, a former federal attorney who is now with the advocacy group Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility. She said the group is representing Joslin, but there is no pending legal case. On May 21, a day after the flag display, Acting Superintendent Ray McPadden signed a rule prohibiting people from hanging banners, flags or signs larger than 15 square feet in park areas designated as 'wilderness' or 'potential wilderness.' That covers 94% of the park, according to Yosemite's website. Parks officials said the new restriction on demonstrations was needed to preserve Yosemite's wilderness and protect climbers. 'We take the protection of the park's resources and the experience of our visitors very seriously, and will not tolerate violations of laws and regulations that impact those resources and experiences,' Pawlitz said. It followed a widely publicized instance in February of demonstrators hanging an upside down American flag on El Capitan in the wake of the firing of National Park Service employees by the Trump administration. Among the small group of climbers who helped hang the flag was Pattie Gonia, an environmentalist and drag queen who uses the performance art to raise awareness of conservation issues. For the past five years, Gonia has helped throw a Pride event in Yosemite for park employees and their allies. She said they hung the transgender flag on the granite monolith to drive home the point that being transgender is natural. Trump has limited access to gender-affirming medical treatments, banned trans women from competing in women's sports, removed trans people from the military and changed the federal definition of sex to exclude the concept of gender identity. Gonia called the firing unjust. Joslin said they hung the flag in their free time, as a private citizen. 'SJ is a respected pillar within the Yosemite community, a tireless volunteer who consistently goes above and beyond,' Gonia said. Jayson O'Neill with the advocacy group Save Our Parks said Joslin's firing appears aimed at intimidating park employees about expressing their views as the Trump administration pursues broad cuts to the federal workforce. Since Trump took office, the National Park Service has lost approximately 2,500 employees from a workforce that had about 10,000 people, Wade said. The Republican president is proposing a $900 million cut to the agency's budget next year. Pawlitz said numerous visitors complained about unauthorized demonstrations on El Capitan earlier in the year. Many parks have designated 'First Amendment areas' where groups 25 or fewer people can protest without a permit. Yosemite has several First Amendment areas, including one in Yosemite Valley, where El Capitan is located. Park service rules on demonstrations have been around for decades and withstood several court challenges, said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers. He was not aware of any changes in how those rules are enforced under Trump.
CNN
21 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump's new warnings about mail-in voting are the most sinister yet
Donald Trump Congressional news January 6th Election securityFacebookTweetLink Follow President Donald Trump has often shown how far he'll go to try to flout the will of voters. That's what makes his new renewed obsession with mail-in ballots so sinister. Trump falsely claimed in a Truth Social post Monday that voting by mail is a 'scam' that allows Democrats to cheat. He promised an executive order to also target another safe election tool — voting machines — and inaccurately claimed he had the authority to dictate how elections are run before the 2026 midterms. Incredibly, he appears to have been partly acting on the advice of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian who destroyed Russia's post-Soviet Union democracy and who interfered in the 2016 election that Trump won. Trump's fixation on mail-in voting is not new. His suspicion was sent into overdrive after he lost the presidency in 2020 in an election that saw an expansion of mail-in ballots to help keep voters safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. The president sensed the danger to his hopes of a consecutive second term from a high turnout as early as the second quarter of 2020. He falsely claimed in interviews and on social media that foreign states could interfere in mail-in voting and that postal balloting would allow fraud. In June of that year, he predicted the 'Election disaster of our time' and a 'RIGGED ELECTION' on Twitter. At the time, his warnings were seen as an odd quirk and were not supported by many senior Republicans. They also frustrated GOP strategists who were urging their voters to use mail-in ballots during the health emergency, especially since Democratic voters were traditionally more likely to use postal voting. But in retrospect, and following the experience of Trump's refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election, his comments look more alarming: They heralded a historic attempt to overturn the result of a free and fair presidential election. And they mean his newest remarks on the topic should be taken seriously. Taken together with more recent attempts to sway future elections, they raise alarm bells about the midterms and the next presidential election. Since Trump lacks the Constitutional power to dictate election rules in the states, he may also be laying the groundwork to claim a Republican loss in the midterm elections — often a rite of passage for incumbent presidents — is illegitimate. Since returning to power, Trump has escalated his attempts to use executive power and the visibility of his office to tilt the midterms toward Republicans and to undermine democracy more generally. Trump ordered Texas Republicans to initiate an unprecedented midterm redistricting drive to net five new GOP seats by 2026, which could be critical given the current tiny Republican House majority. The move set off a similar move by Gov. Gavin Newsom to draw new Democratic seats in California, which may trigger a nationwide partisan redistricting wave that could further damage democracy. The president has also rewarded those who did his dirty work in attacking elections, granting hundreds of pardons and commutations to supporters who were convicted and jailed for the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, an attempt to overturn President Joe Biden's election win the previous November. Trump's supporters have shown a similar disregard for the right of voters in each state to choose their leaders, even those who fiercely resisted federal power in previous capacities. In June, Homeland Security Secretary and former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem explained the deployment of National Guard troops and active-duty US Marines to Los Angeles amid protests against Trump's immigration policies. She said they planned to stay to 'liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership' of its elected Democratic representatives. In the event, the soldiers did nothing of the sort and mostly just guarded federal properties, but the deployments and her rhetoric were in keeping with Trump's authoritarian turn. More recently, Trump has sent military reservists and federal agents into the streets of Washington, DC, as part of an anti-crime crackdown. He's now importing National Guard members from Republican states in a show of force over a city that has repeatedly and overwhelmingly voted to reject him in national elections. There are concerns this could be a template he will later apply to Democratic cities in the states. With all this in mind, the possibility of an attempt by Trump to block or delegitimize the rights of states — including those that return mostly Democratic delegations — to run their own elections must be taken seriously. Trump vented about mail-in voting during an Oval Office appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. 'Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,' the president said, firing off a torrent of falsehoods about voter fraud. His latest tirade against mail-in voting may have been sown by Putin, an enemy of the United States, during their summit meeting in Alaska last week. 'You know, Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things. He said, 'Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.' He said, 'It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections,' Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News immediately after the summit. Trump said Putin told him that he won the 2020 by 'so much' and that there would have been no war in Ukraine had Trump held office in 2022. 'And he said, 'And you lost it because of mail-in voting.' … Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can't have an honest election with mail-in voting.' It took only two days for Trump to launch an early-morning online tirade against mail-in voting and to initiate a new attempt to halt it in the United States. Still, Trump's capacity to do more than try to discredit mail-in voting is questionable. There is no official role for presidents in administering federal elections — a point driven home in several of the criminal indictments he faced for his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election. The Constitution states that 'the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.' It does allow Congress to at any time alter regulations on the times and manner of elections. This is one potential route for Republicans to change state election laws. But since they lack 60 votes in the Senate, they'd have to outlaw the filibuster to do so, an unlikely scenario since this could open the way to untamed Democratic power the next time their rivals control the chamber. Still, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt signaled Tuesday that Trump intended to go beyond an executive order. 'I'm sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill. And also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we're protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people,' Leavitt said. 'I think Republicans generally, and the president generally, wants to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections,' she said — even though mail-in voting is one of the easiest ways to cast a ballot. 'And it's quite mind-boggling that the Democrat Party could stand in opposition to common sense.' Multiple studies by academic institutions, think tanks and vote protection organizations have shown that mail-in voting is secure. CNN's Daniel Dale produced a comprehensive new fact check debunking the president's claims that Democrats use mail-in voting to cheat and that the states 'must do' what the federal government and president tell them to do. The latter claim, incidentally, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character of a federal republic. Dale notes that in general in US elections, 'there has generally been a tiny quantity of ballot fraud representing a minuscule percentage of votes cast.' Any attempt by Trump to change voting methods by executive fiat would immediately trigger court challenges. And it's not clear that Republican-led state legislatures would all fall into line, since Republicans have been catching up to Democrats in the share of early voting in person and by mail. Democrats are already signaling they will resist the president's latest salvo against mail-in voting and as a rallying call. Arizona's Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, pointed out on X Tuesday that more than 80% of the state's voters cast mail-in ballots and implied that previous warnings about Republican attempts to take over elections were coming true. 'I've been warning about this for years. The canary is dead,' he wrote. And Katie Porter, a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in California, is already fundraising off Trump's remarks. 'Donald Trump is trying to steal the 2026 midterm election in plain sight,' she wrote in a mailing Tuesday. That may be getting ahead of where things currently are. But the warning signs are there, not least following Trump's joke during his meeting with Zelensky on Monday when his visitor said elections are suspended in Ukraine for the duration of the war — as the law stipulates. 'You say during the war, you can't have elections? So, let me just say, three-and-a-half years from now — so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that's good,' Trump said. Coming from any other president, his quip might have been funnier.
