Last week, the Trump administration cut about $11.4 billion originally allocated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to state health departments, nonprofit organizations as well as international groups.
These cuts include $380 million to Michigan, according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, and so far these impacts have been felt statewide.
In the past year, the money has been used to track infectious disease, vaccination campaigns and substance use grants.
The March 24 stop-work order came abruptly, Michigan Public reporter Kate Wells told Stateside. And the state needed time to figure out what the cuts entail and how they'll impact individual communities.
In a statement, officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the department is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Donald Trump’s mandate to make America healthy again.
“[HHS] will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said.
The funding cuts would reduce support services for Michiganders suffering serious mental illnesses, as well as substance use disorder services. It would also cut funding to laboratory upgrades statewide throughout both the Upper and Lower Peninsulas.
“You're in the middle of expanding a lab or purchasing equipment and now all of a sudden that money is turned off,” executive director of the Michigan Association of Local Public Health Norm Hess told Wells. “In my opinion that's not saving money — it's wasting money that's already been spent because you don't end up with the final product.”
Other states are seeing drastic cuts too. In a press release from earlier this week, the Minnesota Health Department said they were losing about $226 million or about a quarter of their budget and had sent lay off and separation notices to 170 employees.
On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel, joined 22 other states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit over the public health grant cuts.
“The Trump administration is now terminating millions in grants being used in our state to support vaccine clinics for kids, crisis mental health services, opioid abuse intervention, and to control disease spread in health care facilities,” Nessel said in a press release. “And once again they’re breaking the law to take money that has been granted to the states. These programs keep Michigan healthy and, in some cases, help save lives, and that’s worth standing up and fighting for.”
The lawsuit is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the HHS announced cuts from moving forward.
