freezes

Oct. 3 (UPI) — The President Donald Trump administration is withholding billions of dollars in funding from Chicago and New York transportation infrastructure funding.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought announced on X that $2.1 billion was being frozen that had been allocated to Chicago for its Red and Purple (train lines) Modernization Project “to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation Friday morning said, “This week, USDOT issued an interim final rule barring race- and sex-based contracting requirements from federal grants.”

“To continue implementation of this rule, USDOT today sent letters to the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to inform them that two projects – the CTA Red Line Extension and the CTA Red and Purple Modernization Program – are also under administrative review to determine whether any unconstitutional practices are occurring,” the DOT said. “The remaining federal funding for both projects total $2.1 billion.”

Vought also announced Wednesday that the administration is freezing about $18 billion for infrastructure in New York City. The Hudson Tunnel Project is the main project suffering a funding freeze. The project helps connect New Jersey and New York, and the Second Avenue subway.

Later, the administration announced it was canceling $7.5 billion in funding for energy projects in states that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

On Thursday, Trump said on Truth Social that he would meet with Vought to determine which “Democrat agencies” to cut.

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote.

Israeli authorities froze all bank accounts of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem over a long-standing property tax dispute, escalating tensions with Christian institutions in the occupied city, local media said on Thursday, Anadolu reports.

A statement by Protecting Holy Land Christians, a group founded by Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, said the freeze has left the Patriarchate unable to pay salaries to clergy, teachers, and staff.

The Times of Israel news outlet said the freeze, enacted on Aug. 6, stems from the Jerusalem Municipality’s push to collect Arnona, a property tax, on church-owned properties used for non-religious purposes, such as guesthouses and coffee shops.

The municipality claimed that the measure followed “efforts at dialogue and engagement” that failed because the Patriarchate “ignored letters from the municipality demanding payment.”

“Administrative enforcement measures were taken against the Greek Patriarchate because it failed to settle its property tax debts for assets not used as houses of worship,” its spokesperson office said.

“This was done despite efforts at dialogue and engagement with them, and in light of their ignoring letters from the municipality demanding payment.”

A decades-long agreement had historically exempted churches from such taxes, but in 2018, the city narrowed the exemption to properties used solely for prayer, religious teaching, or related needs, seeking tens of millions of shekels in back taxes.

The dispute echoes a 2018 clash when then-mayor Nir Barkat froze church accounts, prompting a three-day closure of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in protest. The municipality relented after intervention by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Tensions have since flared periodically over specific properties and activities.

The Trump administration has frozen hundreds of science, medical and other federal grants to UCLA worth nearly $200 million, citing the university’s alleged “discrimination” in admissions and failure to “promote a research environment free of antisemitism.”

The decision to pull funding comes after Atty. Gen.Pam Bondi and the Justice Department said this week that UCLA would pay a “heavy price” for acting with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza and campus protests the events spurred last year.

The cancellation of grants is the first large-scale targeted funding claw-back against UCLA under the Trump administration. Until now, the White House has largely focused its attempts to remake higher education on elite East Coast schools such as Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania. Each has reached deals with the government in recent weeks over issues including admissions, Jewish student life, student discipline, antisemitism training and gender identity in sports.

In a letter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk dated Wednesday, the National Science Foundation wrote that it was terminating grants because “the University of California – Los Angeles continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life.”

An estimated 300 NSF grants totaling $180 million have been canceled. About half of the funds were already distributed. Before the letter was released Thursday, researchers were expecting the other half to follow.

In a letter to the university community Thursday, Frenk wrote that the canceled grants are from NSF, NIH and other federal agencies, but he did not give a dollar amount or list the other agencies. A partial list of terminated grants reviewed by The Times added up to roughly $200 million. The list was provided by a source who was not authorized to share the information.

Frenk called the government’s decision “deeply disappointing” and “a loss for Americans across the nation whose work, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking work we do.”

“In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons,” Frenk wrote. “This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.”

Spokespersons for the NSF and NIH did not immediately reply to requests for comment Thursday.

The federal government’s decision to cut UCLA off from significant federal funds follows a similar playbook to its dealings with Ivy League institutions.

The Trump administration this spring canceled billions of dollars in federal grants to Harvard, which has sued in federal court to reverse the terminations and stop a Trump move to rescind its ability to host international students. Harvard is separately in negotiations with the White House to end the legal fight.

Columbia University this month agreed to pay more than $200 million to the federal government to resolve investigations over alleged antisemitism amid its response to 2024 pro-Palestinian protests. On Wednesday, Brown University also came to a $50-million agreement with the White House. The Brown payment will go toward Rhode Island workforce development programs.

The Department of Justice said this week that it had found UCLA guilty of violating the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students. The department also indicated that it wanted to the university to enter into negotiations to avoid a federal lawsuit.

The department gave UCLA a Tuesday deadline to communicate its desire to negotiate. If not, the DOJ said, it was ready to sue by Sept. 2.

The University of California, in a statement, was unclear on whether it would settle or go to court.

“UCLA has addressed and will continue to address the issues raised in [the] Department of Justice notice,” Stett Holbrook, associate director of Strategic and Critical Communications, wrote in a statement Wednesday. He cited a $6.45-million settlement the university reached with Jewish students who had sued over claims that the 2024 encampment had discriminated against them.

“We have cooperated fully with the Department of Justice’s investigation and are reviewing its findings closely,” Holbrook wrote.

In his Thursday letter, Frenk shot back against the cuts.

“Let me be clear: Federal research grants are not handouts. Our researchers compete fiercely for these grants, proposing work that the government itself deems vital to the country’s health, safety and economic future,” he wrote.

“Grants lead to medical breakthroughs, economic advancement, improved national security and global competitiveness — these are national priorities,” Frenk wrote, adding that “we are actively evaluating our best course of action. We will be in constant communication as decisions move forward.”

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans alike raised concerns on Wednesday about deep staffing cuts, funding freezes and far-reaching policy changes overseen by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned Kennedy’s approach to the job, some saying that he has jeopardized vaccine uptake, cancer research and dental health in just a few short months.

In combative and at times highly personal rejoinders, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s dramatic effort to reshape the sprawling, $1.7-trillion-a-year agency, saying it would deliver a more efficient department focused on promoting healthier lifestyles among Americans.

“There’s so much chaos and disorganization in this department,” Kennedy said on Wednesday during the Senate hearing. “What we’re saying is let’s organize in a way that we can quickly adopt and deploy all these opportunities we have to really deliver high-quality healthcare to the American people.”

During tense exchanges, lawmakers — in back-to-back House and Senate hearings — sometimes questioned whether Kennedy was aware of his actions and the structure of his own department after he struggled to provide more details about staffing cuts.

“I have noted you’ve been unable, in most instances, to answer any specific questions related to your agency,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat.

The secretary, in turn, pushed back — saying he had not had time to answer specific questions — and at points questioning lawmakers’ own grasp of health policy.

Kennedy testified to explain his downsizing of the department — from 82,000 to 62,000 staffers — and argue on behalf of the White House’s requested budget, which includes a $500-million boost for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative to promote nutrition and healthier lifestyles while making deep cuts to infectious disease prevention, medical research and maternal health programs.

He revealed that he persuaded the White House to back down from one major cut: Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for low-income families across the country.

But lawmakers described how thousands of job losses at the health department and funding freezes have impacted their districts.

One Washington state mother, Natalie, has faced delays in treatment for Stage 4 cancer at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. The clinical center is the research-only hospital commonly known as the “House of Hope,” but when Murray asked Kennedy to explain how many jobs have been lost there, he could not answer. The president’s budget proposes a nearly $20-billion slash from the NIH.

“You are here to defend cutting the NIH by half,” Murray said. “Do you genuinely believe that won’t result in more stories like Natalie’s?” Kennedy disputed Murray’s account.

Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman of New Jersey asked “why, why, why?” Kennedy would lay off nearly all the staff who oversee the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4.1 billion in heating assistance to needy families. The program is slated to be eliminated from the agency’s budget.

Kennedy said that advocates warned him those cuts “will end up killing people,” but that President Trump believes his energy policy will lower costs. If that doesn’t work, Kennedy said, he would restore funding for the program.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska, said those savings would be realized too late for people in her state.

“Right now, folks in Alaska still need those ugly generators to keep warm,” she said.

Murkowski was one of several Republicans who expressed concerns about Kennedy’s approach to the job throughout the hearings.

Like several Republicans, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee praised Kennedy for his work promoting healthy foods. But he raised concerns about whether the secretary has provided adequate evidence that artificial food dyes are bad for diets. Removing those food dyes would hurt the “many snack manufacturers” in his district, including the makers of M&M’s candy, he said.

Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist from Idaho, said Kennedy’s plan to remove fluoride recommendations for drinking water alarms him. The department’s news release on Tuesday, which announced the Food and Drug Administration plans to remove fluoride supplements for children from the market, wrongly claimed that fluoride “kills bacteria from the teeth,” Simpson noted. He explained to Kennedy that fluoride doesn’t kill bacteria in the mouth but instead makes tooth enamel more resistant to decay.

“I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride … we better put a lot more money into dental education because we’re going to need a lot more dentists,” Simpson added.

Kennedy was pressed repeatedly on the mixed message he’s delivered on vaccines, which public health experts have said are hampering efforts to contain a growing measles outbreak now in at least 11 states.

Responding to Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, Kennedy refused to recommend that parents follow the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule, which includes shots for measles, polio and whooping cough. He, instead, wrongly claimed that the vaccines have not been safety tested against a placebo.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the health committee, had extracted a number of guarantees from Kennedy that he would not alter existing vaccine guidance and work at the nation’s health department. Cassidy, correcting Kennedy, pointed out that rotavirus, measles and HPV vaccines recommended for children have all been tested in a placebo study.

As health secretary, Kennedy has called the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — a shot given to children to provide immunity from all three diseases — “leaky,” although it offers lifetime protection from the measles for most people. He’s also said they cause deaths, although none has been documented among healthy people.

“You have undermined the vital role vaccines play in preventing disease during the single, largest measles outbreak in 25 years,” independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said.

Seitz writes for the Associated Press.