Latest news with #ElectrifyMusicCity
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge rules Trump administration must restore grants to Nashville, other cities
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration must reinstate grants awarded to several American cities, including Nashville. Nashville was one of six cities that joined with nearly a dozen nonprofits, led by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Public Rights Project, to file a lawsuit in late March aiming to halt the Trump administration's funding freeze. In a May 19 ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Mark Gergel prohibited federal officials from freezing or terminating a majority of the grants reflected in the lawsuit and ordered the funding to be restored. Each plaintiff in the suit was awarded funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other federal statutes. For Nashville, that included a combined $14 million in funding for the 'Electrify Music City' project, which would upgrade and expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and the 'East Nashville Spokes' project to help fund a transit connection project, including protected bike lanes and pedestrian improvements. Here's what else to know about the ruling, which the Southern Environmental Law Center says is one of the first final judgments in a case challenging the administration's actions. Gergel issued what's known as a permanent injunction in the case, meaning that the court's decision was final. Failure to comply with an injunction can result in a party being held in contempt of court, but permanent injunctions may also be appealed. As part of the ruling, the Trump administration must confirm it's compliance within a week. Nashville Director of Law Wally Dietz told The Tennessean that the ruling was the product of "excellent legal work" from the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Public Rights Project and Metro Nashville attorneys Courtney Mohan and Lora Fox. "The president's administration exceeded its constitutional authority when it rescinded these grants," Dietz said. "Only the courts can protect the rule of law." According to the ruling, the Trump administration conceded that its decision to cancel grant funding based on executive orders violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies can develop and issue regulations. That ruling applies only to 32 of the 38 grants in the suit that were funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The other six, per the ruling, were funded by general appropriations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rather than through an act of Congress. Nashville is still waiting for a ruling in its second lawsuit against the Trump administration, filed in late April over recent public health funding cuts that the city argues are unconstitutional. Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@ Get Davidson County news delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Judge rules Trump administration must restore grants to Nashville
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nashville joins lawsuit aiming to halt Trump administration's federal funding freeze
Nashville is joining five cities and nearly a dozen nonprofits in a lawsuit seeking to halt the Trump administration's federal funding freeze. The 86-page suit, led by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Public Rights Project, was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division. Along with President Donald Trump, the suit also names various Trump administration officials as defendants, including Amy Gleason, the acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, and Elon Musk, who's listed as 'senior advisor of the United States DOGE service.' According to the suit, each plaintiff is a nonprofit organization or municipality that's been awarded federal grant funds, either as direct recipients or as sub-grantees, to carry out specific programs enacted by Congress under the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other federal statutes. For Metro Nashville, that applies to two grant awards: a $4.7 million grant for the 'Electrify Music City' project, which would upgrade and expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and a $9.3 million grant for the 'East Nashville Spokes' project to help fund a transit connection project, including protected bike lanes and pedestrian improvements. According to the lawsuit, planning and implementation for the Electrify Music City project has now been thrown into disarray. Metro included those funds in its Transportation Improvement Program budget for this fiscal year. And the East Nashville Spokes project was incorporated into the larger Choose How You Move transit plan but, with funds frozen, has 'languished in uncertainty.' Like Nashville, cities such as Baltimore, Maryland, and Madison, Wisconsin, have also been impacted by the federal funding freeze. The suit states it's caused disruptions to a training program preparing young adults for jobs in the water and solid waste industries in Baltimore and to a project to improve housing affordability through home energy upgrades in Madison. Metro Director of Law Wally Dietz is one of several representatives quoted in a Southern Environmental Law Center news release about the lawsuit. In the release, Dietz said the suit asks the federal grant funding approved by Congress and awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation be delivered to Nashville 'as promised.' 'For more than 200 years, local, state and federal governments have reliably worked together to implement programs that benefit people all over America,' Dietz said. 'Metro Nashville filed this suit because the constitutional separation of powers must be maintained. No president, much less a non-federal employee at a fictional agency, has the authority to freeze funds appropriated by Congress.' Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@ This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville joins lawsuit to halt Trump admin's federal funding freeze
