agency

PORTLAND, Ore. — Federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people outside a hospital in Portland, Ore., on Thursday, a day after an officer shot and killed a driver in Minnesota, authorities said.

The FBI’s Portland office said it was investigating an “agent involved shooting” that happened around 2:15 p.m. According to the the Portland Police bureau, officers initially responded to a report of a shooting near a hospital.

A few minutes later, police received information that a man who had been shot was asking for help in a different area a couple of miles away. Officers then responded there and found the two people with apparent gunshot wounds. Officers determined they were injured in the shooting with federal agents, police said.

Their conditions were not immediately known. Council President Elana Pirtle-Guiney said during a Portland city council meeting that Thursday’s shooting took place in the eastern part of the city and that two Portlanders were wounded.

“As far as we know both of these individuals are still alive and we are hoping for more positive updates throughout the afternoon,” she said.

The shooting comes a day after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minnesota. It escalated tensions in an city that has long had a contentious relationship with President Trump, including Trump’s recent, failed effort to deploy National Guard troops in the city.

Portland police secured both the scene of the shooting and the area where the wounded people were found pending investigation.

“We are still in the early stages of this incident,” said Chief Bob Day. “We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the City Council called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to end all operations in Oregon’s largest city until a full investigation is completed.

“We stand united as elected officials in saying that we cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts,” a joint statement said. “Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences.”

The city officials said “federal militarization undermines effective, community‑based public safety, and it runs counter to the values that define our region. We’ll use every legal and legislative tool available to protect our residents’ civil and human rights.”

They urged residents to show up with “calm and purpose during this difficult time.”

“We respond with clarity, unity, and a commitment to justice,” the statement said. “We must stand together to protect Portland.”

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, urged any protesters to remain peaceful.

“Trump wants to generate riots,” he said in a post on the X social media platform. “Don’t take the bait.”

Rush writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ended the first year of President Trump’s second term with a record of rulings that gave him much broader power to control the federal government.

In a series of fast-track decisions, the justices granted emergency appeals and set aside rulings from district judges who blocked Trump’s orders from taking effect.

With the court’s approval, the administration dismissed thousands of federal employees, cut funding for education and health research grants, dismantled the agency that funds foreign aid and cleared the way for the U.S. military to reject transgender troops.

But the court also put two important checks on the president’s power.

In April, the court twice ruled — including in a post-midnight order — that the Trump administration could not secretly whisk immigrants out of the country without giving them a hearing before a judge.

Upon taking office, Trump claimed migrants who were alleged to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and flown secretly to a prison in El Salvador.

Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment entitles immigrants, like citizens, a right to “due process of law.” Many of the arrested men had no criminal records and said they never belonged to a criminal gang.
Those who face deportation “are entitled to notice and opportunity to challenge their removal,” the justices said in Trump vs. J.G.G.

They also required the government to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but may face further criminal charges or efforts to deport him.

And last week, Roberts and the court barred Trump from deploying the National Guard in Chicago to enforce the immigration laws.

Trump had claimed he had the power to defy state governors and deploy the Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.

The Supreme Court disagreed over dissents from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.

For much of the year, however, Roberts and the five other conservatives were in the majority ruling for Trump. In dissent, the three liberal justices said the court should stand aside for now and defer to district judges.

In May, the court agreed that Trump could end the Biden administration’s special temporary protections extended to more than 350,000 Venezuelans as well as an additional 530,000 migrants who arrived legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela.

It was easier to explain why the new administration’s policies were cruel and disruptive rather than why they were illegal.

Trump’s lawyers argued that the law gave the president’s top immigration officials the sole power to decide on these temporary protections and that “no judicial review” was authorized.

Nonetheless, a federal judge in San Francisco twice blocked the administration’s repeal of the temporary protected status for Venezuelans, and a federal judge in Boston blocked the repeal of the entry-level parole granted to migrants under Biden.

The court is also poised to uphold the president’s power to fire officials who have been appointed for fixed terms at independent agencies.

Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, the government has had semi-independent boards and commissions led by a mix of Republicans and Democrats.

But Roberts and the court’s conservatives believe that because these agencies enforce the law, they come under the president’s “executive power.”

That ruling may come with an exception for the Federal Reserve Board, an independent agency whose nonpartisan stability is valued by business leaders.

Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, the former legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court has sent mixed signals.

“On the emergency docket, it has ruled consistently for the president, with some notable exceptions,” he said. “I do think it significant that it put a halt to the National Guard deployments and to the Alien Enemies Act deportations, at least for the time being. And I think by this time next year, it’s possible that the court will have overturned two of Trump’s signature initiatives — the birthright citizenship executive order and the tariffs.”

For much of 2025, the court was criticized for handing down temporary unsigned orders with little or no explanation.

That practice arose in 2017 in response to Trump’s use of executive orders to make abrupt, far-reaching changes in the law. In response, Democratic state attorneys and lawyers for progressive groups sued in friendly forums such as Seattle, San Francisco and Boston and won rulings from district judges who put Trump’s policies on hold.

The 2017 “travel ban” announced in Trump’s first week in the White House set the pattern. It suspended the entry of visitors and migrants from Venezuela and seven mostly-Muslim countries on the grounds that those countries had weak vetting procedures.

Judges blocked it from taking effect, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the order discriminated based on nationality.

A year later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and upheld Trump’s order in a 5-4 ruling. Roberts pointed out that Congress in the immigration laws clearly gave this power to the president. If he “finds that the entry of … any class of aliens … would be detrimental,” it says, he may “suspend the entry” of all such migrants for as long as “he shall deem necessary.”

Since then, Roberts and the court’s conservatives have been less willing to stand aside while federal judges hand down nationwide rulings.

Democrats saw the same problem when Biden was president.

In April 2023, a federal judge in west Texas ruled for anti-abortion advocates and decreed that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved abortion pills that can end an early pregnancy. He ordered that they be removed from the market before any appeals could be heard and decided.

The Biden administration filed an emergency appeal. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court set aside the judge’s order, over dissents from Thomas and Alito.

The next year, the court heard arguments and then threw out the entire lawsuit on the grounds that abortion foes did not have standing to sue.

Since Trump returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority has not deferred to district judges. Instead, it has repeatedly lifted injunctions that blocked Trump’s policies from taking effect.

Although these are not final rulings, they are strong signs that the administration will prevail.

But Trump’s early wins do not mean he will win on some of his most disputed policies.

In November, the justices sounded skeptical of Trump’s claim that a 1977 trade law, which did not mention tariffs, gave him the power to set these import taxes on products coming from around the world.

In the spring, the court will hear Trump’s claim that he can change the principle of birthright citizenship set in the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship it to newborns whose parents are here illegally or entered as visitors.

Rulings on both cases will be handed down by late June.

WASHINGTON — In the whirlwind first year of President Trump’s second term, some of the most polarizing changes have taken place within the Department of Health and Human Services, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has openly rebuffed the medical establishment as he converts the ideas of his Make America Healthy Again movement into public policy.

Since entering office in February, the Health secretary has overseen a dramatic reshaping of the agencies he oversees, including eliminating thousands of jobs and freezing or canceling billions of dollars for scientific research. As part of his campaign against chronic disease, he has redrawn the government’s position on topics such as seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol. He also has repeatedly used his authority to promote discredited ideas about vaccines.

The department’s rapid transformation has garnered praise from MAHA supporters who say they long viewed Health and Human Services as corrupt and untrustworthy and have been waiting for such a disruption. And both Democrats and Republicans have applauded some of the agency’s actions, including efforts to encourage healthy eating and exercise, and deals to lower the prices of costly drugs.

But many of the drastic changes Kennedy has led at the department are raising grave concerns among doctors and public health experts.

“At least in the immediate or intermediate future, the United States is going to be hobbled and hollowed out in its scientific leadership,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health law professor who was removed from a National Institutes of Health advisory board this year with a letter that said he was no longer needed. “I think it will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse all the damage.”

Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon denied any threat to scientific expertise at the agency and lauded its work.

“In 2025, the Department confronted long-standing public health challenges with transparency, courage, and gold-standard science,” Nixon said in a statement. “HHS will carry this momentum into 2026 to strengthen accountability, put patients first, and protect public health.”

The overhaul comes alongside broader uncertainties in the nation’s health system, including Medicaid cuts passed by Congress this year and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that are putting millions of Americans’ insurance coverage in jeopardy.

Here’s a closer look at Kennedy’s first year leading the nation’s health agency:

Kennedy’s vaccine views ripple across the department

After many years spent publicly assailing vaccines, Kennedy sought during his confirmation process to reassure senators he wouldn’t take a wrecking ball to vaccine science. But less than a year later, his Health Department has repeatedly pushed the limits of those commitments.

In May, Kennedy announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by public health experts who saw no new data to justify the change.

In June, Kennedy fired an entire 17-member CDC vaccine advisory committee — later installing several of his own replacements, including multiple vaccine skeptics.

That group has made decisions that have shocked medical professionals, including declining to recommend COVID-19 shots for anyone, adding new restrictions on a combination shot against chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella and reversing the long-standing recommendation that all babies receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.

Kennedy in November also personally directed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, without supplying any new evidence to support the change. Although he left the old language on the agency website to keep a promise he made to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, he added a disclaimer saying it remained because of the agreement.

Public health researchers and advocates strongly refute the updated website and note that scientists have thoroughly explored the issue in rigorous research spanning decades, all pointing to the same conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Kennedy has promised a wide-ranging effort to study environmental factors that potentially contribute to autism and in an Oval Office event with Trump in September promoted unproven — and in some cases discredited — ties among Tylenol, vaccines and the complex brain disorder.

Kennedy reconfigures department with massive staffing and research cuts

Within two months of taking office, Kennedy announced a sweeping restructuring of Health and Human Services that would shut down entire agencies, consolidate others into a new one focused on chronic disease and lay off about 10,000 employees on top of 10,000 others who had already taken buyouts.

Although parts of the effort are still tied up in court, thousands of the mass layoffs were allowed to stand. Those and voluntary departures significantly thinned out the sprawling $1.7-trillion department, which oversees food and hospital inspections, health insurance for roughly half of the country and vaccine recommendations.

Kennedy also has fired or forced out several leaders at the department, among them four directors at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration’s former vaccine chief and a director of the CDC whom he had hired less than a month earlier.

On top of staffing reductions, he has overseen significant cuts to scientific research. That includes the NIH slashing billions of dollars in research projects and the termination of $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.

Amid the cuts, Kennedy has proposed or funded some new research on topics related to his MAHA goals, including autism, Lyme disease and food additives.

MAHA gains momentum despite some stumbles

Kennedy started using the phrase “MAHA” on the campaign trail last year to describe his crusade against toxic exposures and childhood chronic disease, but 2025 was the year it became ingrained in the national lexicon.

In his tenure so far, the Health secretary has made it the centerpiece of his work, using the MAHA branding to wage war on ultra-processed foods, pressure companies to phase out artificial food dyes, criticize fluoride in drinking water and push to ban junk food from the program that subsidizes grocery store runs for low-income Americans.

The idea has even spread beyond Kennedy’s agency across the federal government.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared with Kennedy to promote fitness with pull-up displays. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy teamed up with Kennedy in early December to announce $1 billion in funding for airports to install resources including playgrounds and nursing pods for mothers and babies. And Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced he is working toward unveiling a MAHA agenda with health-related goals for his own department.

MAHA has earned widespread popularity among the American public — even as it has endured some administration foibles. In May, for example, Health and Human Services faced scrutiny for releasing a MAHA report that contained several citations to studies that didn’t exist.

But to the extent that the initiative has included calls to action that aren’t based on science — such as urging distrust in vaccines or promoting raw milk, which is far more likely than pasteurized milk to lead to illness — critics say it can be dangerous.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

The Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump has cut federal limits on air and water pollution and promoted fossil fuels, a metamorphosis that clashes with the agency’s stated mission — to protect human health and the environment.

The administration says its actions will “unleash” the American economy, but environmentalists say the agency’s abrupt change in focus threatens to unravel years of progress on climate-friendly initiatives that could be hard or impossible to reverse.

“It just constantly wants to pat the fossil fuel business on the back and turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon era” when the agency didn’t exist, said historian Douglas Brinkley.

A lot has happened this year at “Trump’s EPA,” as Administrator Lee Zeldin frequently calls the agency. Zeldin proposed overturning the landmark finding that climate change is a threat to human health. He pledged to roll back dozens of environmental regulations in “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.” He froze billions of dollars for clean energy and upended agency research.

Zeldin has argued the EPA can protect the environment and grow the economy at the same time. He announced “five pillars” to guide the EPA’s work; four were economic goals, including energy dominance — President Trump’s shorthand for more fossil fuels — and boosting the auto industry.

A former New York congressman who had a record as a moderate Republican on some environmental issues, Zeldin said his views on climate change have evolved. Many federal and state climate goals are unattainable in the near future — and come at a huge cost, he said.

“We should not be causing … extreme economic pain for an individual or a family” because of policies aimed at “saving the planet,” he told reporters at EPA headquarters in early December.

But scientists and experts say the EPA’s new direction comes at a cost to public health and would lead to far more pollutants in the environment, including mercury, lead and especially tiny airborne particles that can lodge in lungs. They also note higher emissions of greenhouse gases will worsen atmospheric warming that is driving more frequent, costly and deadly extreme weather.

Christine Todd Whitman, a longtime Republican who led the EPA under President George W. Bush, said watching Zeldin attack laws protecting air and water has been “just depressing.”

“It’s tragic for our country. I worry about my grandchildren, of which I have seven. I worry about what their future is going to be if they don’t have clean air, if they don’t have clean water to drink,” said Whitman, who joined a centrist third party in recent years.

The history behind EPA

The EPA was launched under Nixon in 1970 at a time when pollution was disrupting American life, some cities were suffocating in smog and industrial chemicals turned some rivers into wastelands. Congress passed laws then that remain foundational for protecting water, air and endangered species.

The agency’s aggressiveness has always seesawed depending on who occupies the White House. The Biden administration boosted renewable energy and electric vehicles, tightened restrictions on motor-vehicle emissions and proposed greenhouse gas limits on coal-fired power plants and oil and gas wells. Industry groups called rules overly burdensome and said the power plant rule would force many aging facilities to shut down. In response, many businesses shifted resources to meet the more stringent rules that are now being undone.

“While the Biden EPA repeatedly attempted to usurp the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law to impose its ‘Green New Scam,’ the Trump EPA is laser-focused on achieving results for the American people while operating within the limits of the laws passed by Congress,” EPA spokeswoman Brigit Hirsch said.

Zeldin’s list of targets is long

Zeldin has announced plans to abandon soot pollution rules, loosen rules around harmful refrigerants, limit wetland protections and weaken gas mileage rules. Meanwhile, he would exempt polluting industries and plants from federal emissions-reduction requirements.

Much of the EPA’s new direction aligns with Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation road map that argued the agency should gut staffing, cut regulations and end what it called a war on coal or other fossil fuels.

“A lot of the regulations that were put on during the Biden administration were more harmful and restrictive than in any other period. So that’s why deregulating them looks like EPA is making major changes,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of Heritage’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment.

But Chris Frey, an EPA official under Biden, said the regulations Zeldin has targeted “offered benefits of avoided premature deaths, of avoided chronic illness … bad things that would not happen because of these rules.”

Matthew Tejada, a former EPA official under both Trump and then-President Biden who now works at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the revamped EPA: “I think it would be hard for them to make it any clearer to polluters in this country that they can go on about their business and not worry about EPA getting in their way.”

Zeldin also has shrunk EPA staffing by about 20% to levels last seen in the mid-1980s.

Justin Chen, president of the EPA’s largest union, called the staff cuts “devastating.” He cited the dismantling of research and development offices at labs across the country and the firing of employees who signed a letter of dissent opposing EPA cuts.

Relaxed enforcement and cutting staff

Many of Zeldin’s changes aren’t in effect yet. It takes time to propose new rules, get public input and finalize rollbacks.

It’s much faster to cut grants and ease up on enforcement, and Trump’s EPA is doing both. The number of new civil environmental actions is roughly one-fifth what it was in the first eight months of the Biden administration, according to the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project.

“You can effectively do a lot of deregulation if you just don’t do enforcement,” said Leif Fredrickson, visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Montana.

Hirsch said the number of legal filings isn’t the best way to judge enforcement because they require work outside the EPA and can bog staff down with burdensome legal agreements. She said the EPA is “focused on efficiently resolving violations and achieving compliance as quickly as possible” and not making demands beyond what the law requires.

EPA’s cuts have been especially hard on climate change programs and environmental justice, the effort to address chronic pollution that typically is worse in minority and poor communities. Both were Biden administration priorities. Zeldin dismissed staff and canceled billions in grants for projects that fell under the “diversity, equity and inclusion” umbrella, a Trump administration target.

Zeldin also spiked a $20-billion “green bank” set up under Biden’s landmark climate law to fund qualifying clean energy projects. The EPA chief argued the fund was a scheme to funnel money to Democratic-aligned organizations with little oversight — allegations a federal judge rejected.

Pat Parenteau, an environmental law expert and former director of the Environmental Law School at Vermont Law & Graduate School, said the EPA’s shift under Trump left him with little optimism for what he called “the two most awful crises in the 21st century”: biodiversity loss and climate disruption.

“I don’t see any hope for either one,” he said. “I really don’t. And I’ll be long gone, but I think the world is in just for absolute catastrophe.”

Phillis, John and Daly write for the Associated Press.

GENEVA — The United States on Monday announced a $2-billion pledge for U.N. humanitarian aid as President Trump’s administration slashes U.S. foreign assistance and warns United Nations agencies to “adapt, shrink or die” in a time of new financial realities.

The money is a small fraction of what the U.S. has contributed in the past but reflects what the administration believes is still a generous amount that will maintain America’s status as the world’s largest humanitarian donor.

“This new model will better share the burden of U.N. humanitarian work with other developed countries and will require the U.N. to cut bloat, remove duplication, and commit to powerful new impact, accountability and oversight mechanisms,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media.

The pledge creates an umbrella fund from which money will be doled out to agencies and priorities, a key part of U.S. demands for drastic changes across the U.N. that have alarmed many humanitarian workers and led to severe reductions in programs and services.

The $2 billion is only a sliver of traditional U.S. humanitarian funding for U.N.-coordinated programs, which has run as high as $17 billion annually in recent years, according to U.N. data. U.S. officials say only $8 billion to $10 billion of that has been in voluntary contributions. The United States also pays billions in annual dues related to its U.N. membership.

“The piggy bank is not open to organizations that just want to return to the old system,” Jeremy Lewin, the State Department official in charge of foreign assistance, said at a press conference Monday in Geneva. “President Trump has made clear that the system is dead.”

The State Department said “individual U.N. agencies will need to adapt, shrink, or die.” Critics say the Western aid cutbacks have been shortsighted, driven millions toward hunger, displacement or disease, and harmed U.S. soft power around the world.

A year of crisis in aid

The move caps a crisis year for many U.N. organizations, including its refugee, migration and food aid agencies. The Trump administration has already cut billions in U.S. foreign aid, prompting the agencies to slash spending, aid projects and thousands of jobs. Other traditional Western donors have reduced outlays, too.

The U.S. pledge for aid programs of the United Nations — the world’s top provider of humanitarian assistance and biggest recipient of U.S. humanitarian aid money — takes shape in a preliminary deal with the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, run by Tom Fletcher, a former British diplomat and government official.

Fletcher, who has spent the past year lobbying U.S. officials not to abandon U.N. funding altogether, appeared optimistic at the deal’s signing in Geneva.

“It’s a very, very significant landmark contribution. And a month ago, I would have anticipated the number would have been zero,” he told reporters. “And so I think, before worrying about what we haven’t got, I’d like to look at the millions of people whose lives will be saved, whose lives will be better because of this contribution, and start there.”

Even as the U.S. pulls back its aid contributions, needs have ballooned worldwide: Famine has been recorded this year in parts of conflict-ridden Sudan and Gaza, and floods, drought and natural disasters that many scientists attribute to climate change have taken many lives or driven thousands from their homes.

The cuts will have major implications for U.N. affiliates like the International Organization for Migration, the World Food Program and refugee agency UNHCR. They have already received billions less from the U.S. this year than under annual allocations from the Biden administration — or even during Trump’s first term.

Now, the idea is that Fletcher’s office — which has aimed to improve efficiency — will become a funnel for U.S. and other aid money that can be redirected to those agencies, rather than scattered U.S. contributions to a variety of individual appeals for aid.

Asked by reporters if the U.S. language of “adapt or die” worried him, Fletcher said, “If the choices are adapt or die, I choose adapt.”

U.S. seeks aid consolidation

U.S. officials say the $2 billion is just a first outlay to help fund OCHA’s annual appeal for money. Fletcher, noting the upended aid landscape, already slashed the request this year. Other traditional U.N. donors like Britain, France, Germany and Japan have reduced aid allocations and sought reforms this year.

“This humanitarian reset at the United Nations should deliver more aid with fewer tax dollars — providing more focused, results-driven assistance aligned with U.S foreign policy,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said.

At its core, the changes will help establish pools of funding that can be directed either to specific crises or countries in need. A total of 17 countries will be initially targeted, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Syria and Ukraine.

Two of the world’s most desperate countries, Afghanistan and Yemen, are not included, with U.S. officials citing aid diversion to the Taliban and Houthi rebels as concerns over restarting contributions.

Also not mentioned on the list are the Palestinian territories, which officials say will be covered by money stemming from Trump’s as-yet-incomplete Gaza peace plan.

The U.N. project, months in the making, stems from Trump’s longtime view that the world body has great promise but has failed to live up to it and has — in his eyes — drifted too far from its original mandate to save lives while undermining American interests, promoting radical ideologies and encouraging wasteful, unaccountable spending.

“No one wants to be an aid recipient. No one wants to be living in a UNHCR camp because they’ve been displaced by conflict,” Lewin said. “So the best thing that we can do to decrease costs, and President Trump recognizes this and that’s why he’s the president of peace, is by ending armed conflict and allowing communities to get back to peace and prosperity.”

Keaten and Lee write for the Associated Press. Lee reported from Washington. AP writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report from New York.

The American Academy of Pediatrics sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday, seeking to block nearly $12 million in cuts to the group.

Earlier this month, the federal government “abruptly terminated” grants to the group, the lawsuit says.

The funding supported numerous public health programs, including efforts to prevent sudden unexpected infant death, strengthen pediatric care in rural communities and support teens facing substance use and mental health challenges.

“AAP does not have other sources of grant funding to replace the federal awards, and without the necessary funds it must immediately terminate its work on its dozens of programs that save children’s lives every day,” says the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Within a few weeks, AAP will have to begin laying off employees dedicated to this critically important work.”

The suit alleges Health and Human Services made the cuts in retaliation for the doctors’ group speaking out against the Trump administration’s positions and actions.

The doctors’ group has been vocal about its support for pediatric vaccines and has publicly opposed the agency’s positions. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years — is seeking to broadly remake federal policies on vaccines. Earlier this year, the pediatrics group released its own recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines, which substantially diverged from the government’s recommendations.

The group also supports access to gender-affirming care and has publicly criticized Health and Human Services positions on the topic, saying it opposes what it calls the government’s infringements on the doctor-patient relationship.

“The Department of Health and Human Services is using federal funding as a political weapon to punish protected speech, trying to silence one of the nation’s most trusted voices for children’s well-being by cutting off critical public health funding in retaliation for speaking the truth,” Skye Perryman, president and chief executive officer of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. Perryman’s organization is representing the doctors’ group in the case.

A spokesman for Health and Human Services could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mark Del Monte, CEO and executive vice president of the 67,000-member doctors’ group, said the organization depends on its relationship with the federal government.

“We need this partnership to advance policies that prioritize children’s health. These vital child health programs fund services like hearing screenings for newborns and safe sleep campaigns to prevent sudden unexpected infant death,” he said in a statement. “We are forced to take legal action today so that these programs can continue to make communities safer and healthier.” 

Ungar writes for the Associated Press.

California joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia Monday in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from being defunded and closed by the Trump administration.

The legal action filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore. accuses Acting Director Russell Vought of trying to illegally withhold funds from the agency by unlawfully interpreting its funding statute. Also named as defendants are the agency itself and the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“For California, the CFPB has been an invaluable enforcement partner, working hand-in-hand with our office to protect pocketbooks and stop unfair business practices. But once again, the Trump administration is trying to weaken and ultimately dismantle the CFPB,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, in a press conference to announce the 41-page legal action.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Established by Congress in 2010 after the subprime mortgage abuses that gave rise to the financial crisis, the agency is funded by the Federal Reserve as a method of insulating it from political pressure.

The Dodd-Frank Act statute requires the agency’s director to petition for a reasonable amount of funding to carry out the CFPB’s duties from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve System.

Prior to this year that was interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s gross revenue. But an opinion from the Department of Justice claims that should be interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s profits, of which it has none since it has been operating at a loss since 2022. The lawsuit alleges the interpretation is bogus.

“Defendant Russell T. Vought has worked tirelessly to terminate the CFPB’s operations by any means necessary — denying Plaintiffs access to CFPB resources to which they are statutorily entitled. In this action, Plaintiffs challenge Defendant Vought’s most recent effort to do so,” the federal lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges the agency will run out of cash by next month if the policy is not reversed. Bonta said he and other attorney generals have not decided whether they will seek a restraining order or temporary injunction to change the new funding policy.

Prior to the second Trump administraition, the CPFB boasted of returning nearly $21 billion to consumers nationwide through enforcement actions, including against Wells Fargo in San Francisco over a scandal involving the creation of accounts never sought by customers.

Other big cases have been brought against student loan servicer Navient for mishandling payments and other issues, as well as Toyota Motor Credit for charging higher interest rates to Black and Asian customers.

However, this year the agency has dropped notable cases. It terminated early a consent order reached with Citibank over allegations it discriminated against customers with Armenian surnames in Los Angeles County.

It also dropped a lawsuit against Zelle that accused Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other banks of rushing the payments app into service, leading to $870 million in fraud-related losses by users. The app denied the allegations.

Monday’s lawsuit also notes that the agency is critical for states to carry out their own consumer protection mission and its closure would deprive them of their statutorily guaranteed access to a database run by the CFPB that tracks millions of consumer complaints, as well as to other data.

Vought was a chief architect of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint to reduce the size and power of the federal bureaucracy during a second Trump admistration. In February, he ordered the agency to stop nearly all its work and has been seeking to drastically downsize it since.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest legal effort to keep the agency in business.

A lawsuit filed in February by National Treasury Employees Union and consumer groups accuses the Trump administration and Vought of attempting to unconstitutionally abolish the agency, created by an act of Congress.

“It is deflating, and it is unfortunate that Congress is not defending the power of the purse,” said Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, during Monday’s press conference.

“At other times, Congress vigilantly safeguarded its authority, but because of political polarization and fear of criticizing this President, the Congress is not doing it,” he said.