grants

State officials on the front lines of preparing for natural disasters and responding to emergencies say severe cuts to federal security grants, restrictions on money intended for readiness and funding delays tied to litigation are posing a growing risk to their ability to respond to crises.

It’s all causing confusion, frustration and concern. The federal government shutdown isn’t helping.

“Every day we remain in this grant purgatory reduces the time available to responsibly and effectively spend these critical funds,” said Kiele Amundson, communications director at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

The uncertainty has led some emergency management agencies to hold off on filling vacant positions and make rushed decisions on important training and purchases.

Experts say the developments complicate state-led emergency efforts, undermining the Republican administration’s stated goals of shifting more responsibility to states and local governments for disaster response.

In an emailed statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the new requirements were necessary because of “recent population shifts” and that changes to security grants were made “to be responsive to new and urgent threats facing our nation.”

A new wrinkle tied to immigration raids

Several DHS and FEMA grants help states, tribes and territories prepare for climate disasters and deter a variety of threats. The money pays for salaries and training, and such things as vehicles, communications equipment and software.

State emergency managers say that money has become increasingly important because the range of threats they must prepare for is expanding, including pandemics and cyberattacks.

FEMA, a part of DHS, divided a $320 million Emergency Management Performance Grant among states on Sept. 29. But the next day, it told states the money was on hold until they submitted new population counts. The directive demanded that they omit people “removed from the State pursuant to the immigration laws of the United States” and to explain their methodology.

The amount of money distributed to the states is based on U.S. census population data. The new requirement forcing states to submit revised counts “is something we have never seen before,” said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association, a group representing emergency managers. “It’s certainly not the responsibility of emergency management to certify population.”

With no guidance on how to calculate the numbers, Hawaii’s Amundson said staff scrambled to gather data from the 2020 census and other sources, then subtracted he number of “noncitizens” based on estimates from an advocacy group.

They are not sure the methodology will be accepted. But with their FEMA contacts furloughed and the grant portal down during the federal shutdown, they cannot find out. Other states said they were assessing the request or awaiting further guidance.

In its statement, DHS said FEMA needs to be certain of its funding levels before awarding grant money, and that includes updates to a state’s population due to deportations.

Experts said delays caused by the request could most affect local governments and agencies that receive grant money passed down by states because their budgets and staffs are smaller. At the same time, FEMA also reduced the time frame that recipients have to spend the money, from three years to one. That could prevent agencies from taking on longer-term projects.

Bryan Koon, president and CEO of the consulting firm IEM and a former Florida emergency management chief, said state governments and local agencies need time to adjust their budgets to any kind of changes.

“An interruption in those services could place American lives in jeopardy,” he said.

Grant programs tied up by litigation

In another move that has caused uncertainty, FEMA in September drastically cut some states’ allocations from another source of funding. The $1 billion Homeland Security Grant Program is supposed to be based on assessed risks, and states pass most of the money to police and fire departments.

New York received $100 million less than it expected, a 79% reduction, while Illinois saw a 69% reduction. Both states are politically controlled by Democrats. Meanwhile, some territories received unexpected windfalls, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, which got more than twice its expected allocation.

The National Emergency Management Association said the grants are meant to be distributed based on risk and that it “remains unclear what risk methodology was used” to determine the new funding allocation.

After a group of Democratic states challenged the cuts in court, a federal judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order on Sept. 30. That forced FEMA to rescind award notifications and refrain from making payments until a further court order.

The freeze “underscores the uncertainty and political volatility surrounding these awards,” said Frank Pace, administrator of the Hawaii Office of Homeland Security. The Democratic-controlled state received more money than expected, but anticipates the bonus being taken away with the lawsuit.

In Hawaii, where a 2023 wildfire devastated the Maui town of Lahaina and killed more than 100 people, the state, counties and nonprofits “face the real possibility” of delays in paying contractors, completing projects and “even staff furloughs or layoffs” if the grant freeze and government shutdown continue, he said.

The myriad setbacks prompted Washington state’s Emergency Management Division to pause filling some positions “out of an abundance of caution,” communications director Karina Shagren said.

A series of delays and cuts disrupts state-federal partnership

Emergency management experts said the moves have created uncertainty for those in charge of preparedness.

The Trump administration has suspended a $3.6 billion FEMA disaster resilience program, cut the FEMA workforce and disrupted routine training.

Other lawsuits also are complicating decision-making. A Manhattan federal judge last week ordered DHS and FEMA to restore $34 million in transit security grants it had withheld from New York City because of its immigration policies.

Another judge in Rhode Island ordered DHS to permanently stop imposing grant conditions tied to immigration enforcement, after ruling in September that the conditions were unlawful — only to have DHS again try to impose them.

Taken together, the turbulence surrounding what was once a reliable partner is prompting some states to prepare for a different relationship with FEMA.

“Given all of the uncertainties,” said Sheets, of the National Emergency Management Association, states are trying to find ways to be “less reliant on federal funding.”

Angueira writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — More than 20 states are suing the Trump administration for rescinding $7 billion in Congress-approved funds to equip nearly 1 million homes in low-income and disadvantaged communities with solar power.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of breaching grant agreements by unilaterally terminated grants that had already been awarded.

“The administration is again targeting people struggling to get by in America, this time by gutting programs that help low-income households afford electricity, Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.

“Congress passed a solar energy program to help make electricity costs more affordable, but the administration is ignoring the law and focused on the conspiracy theory that climate change is a hoax.

The Solar for All program was established with the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which included a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for the EPA to administer.

Using that Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Congress appropriated $7 billion for the EPA to make grants, loans and financial assistance available for low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from zero-emission technologies, including solar power.

In April 2024, the EPA announced it had selected 60 applicants to receive the grants. By August of that year, the EPA had awarded program funds to states and other grant recipients.

But in August, the EPA, under the Trump administration, ended the program and reclaimed about 90% of the funds already awarded.

The 22 states, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, are accusing the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how administrative agencies operate, and the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine by canceling the program.

The plaintiffs allege that the EPA is using an “erroneous interpretation” of H.R. 1, which the Trump administration calls the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress in July, to justify the termination of the grants.

The states on Wednesday also filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to recover damages caused by the alleged breach of the grant agreements.

Earlier this month, a coalition of solar energy companies, labor unions and homeowners sued the EPA over the termination of the grants.

A Texas court has issued a stay of execution for Robert Roberson, a man whose 2003 murder conviction has raised serious questions about the validity of “shaken baby syndrome” as a medical diagnosis.

Thursday’s decision arrived with only a week remaining until Roberson’s scheduled execution date on October 16.

Roberson, a 58-year-old autistic man, was accused of having killed his two-year-old daughter Nikki Michelle Curtis in January 2002, after he brought her to a hospital emergency room unconscious.

He has maintained that Nikki had been sick and fell from her bed overnight. But prosecutors argued that her head trauma must have been caused by “shaken baby syndrome”, a diagnosis popularised in the late 1990s as evidence of physical abuse in infants and toddlers.

But that diagnosis has been increasingly rejected, as doctors and medical researchers point out that the symptoms of “shaken baby syndrome” — namely, bleeding or swelling in the eyes or brain — can be caused by other conditions.

Roberson’s defence team has argued that Nikki suffered from chronic pneumonia in the lead-up to her death, and the medications she was given, including codeine, contributed to her death.

In Thursday’s decision, the judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to pause his execution in light of a similar case being overturned in 2024.

Judge Bert Richardson contrasted the shifting nature of the medical research with the finality of execution in his concurring opinion.

“There is a delicate balance and tension in our criminal justice system between the finality of judgment and its accuracy based on our ever-advancing scientific understanding,” Judge Richardson wrote.

“A death sentence is clearly final and, once carried out, hindsight is useless. Thus, when moving forward in such a way, we should require the highest standards of accuracy so that we can act with a reliable degree of certainty.”

But the court limited its judgement to reopening Roberson’s petition for habeas corpus, which questions the constitutionality of a person’s imprisonment.

It declined to reconsider Roberson’s case as a whole. That prompted some of the judges on the court to issue a partial dissent.

Judge David Schenck, for instance, argued that “a new trial is necessary and mandated by our Constitution”, given the new evidence that has emerged in the two decades since Roberson was sentenced to death.

“The merits of Roberson’s claims and the cumulative effect of the evidence Roberson presents — in his fifth application as well as his previous and subsequent applications — would be more properly and more swiftly assessed at this point by a jury in a new trial,” Schenck said.

He added that a new trial would also offer the state of Texas “an opportunity to present this case on its merits”.

Still, some judges on the panel said they were opposed to reopening the case, arguing that the shift in medical consensus did not rule out an act of violence in Nikki’s death.

“Arguably credible and reliable scientific evidence still exists to suggest that shaking a child can cause serious injury or death,” Judge Kevin Yeary wrote in his opinion.

This is not the first time that Roberson’s case has been delayed. He has spent nearly 23 years on death row and was also slated to be executed a year ago, in October 2024.

But that execution date was scuttled in an extraordinary series of events. With his execution scheduled for October 17 of that year, a bipartisan group of legislators in the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence agreed to issue a subpoena for Roberson on October 21 — effectively setting up a battle between the legislature’s will and the court’s.

The subpoen sparked a court case about the separation of powers in Texas: A witness could not answer a legislative subpoena if the justice system executed him first.

Further, the members of the Texas House committee had argued that a 2013 state law barring the use of “junk science” in court cases had failed to be applied in Roberson’s case.

The case reached the Texas Supreme Court, which halted Roberson’s execution while the matter was resolved. Execution dates are set with at least 90 days’ notice in Texas, resulting in a prolonged pause.

On July 16, after appeals from Roberson’s defence team, a new execution date was set for this month.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, has accused critics of Roberson’s sentence of “interfering with the capital punishment proceedings” and has repeatedly pledged to push forward with the execution.

But even those involved in Roberson’s original capital murder trial have sought to see his sentence overturned.

Brian Wharton, the lead investigator in Roberson’s case, had once testified in favour of the prosecution. But last year, he told the Texas House committee that he supported Roberson’s appeal, given the new evidence that has come to light.

“He is an innocent man, and we are very close to killing him for something he did not do,” Wharton said.

On Thursday, one of the jurors who helped convict Roberson also published an opinion column in the Houston Chronicle, asserting that she was “wrong” to side with the prosecution.

“If we on the jury knew then what I know now — about the new evidence of Nikki’s missed pneumonia, how her breathing would have been affected by the Phenergan and codeine doctors gave her that last week, the signs of sepsis, and all the things that were wrong with the version of shaken baby syndrome used in the case — we would have had a lot more to discuss,” Terre Compton wrote.

“Based on all that has come out since the trial, I am 100% certain that Robert Roberson did not murder his child.”

Texas has executed 596 people since 1982, the most of any state.

A federal judge Thursday said she was “inclined to extend” an earlier ruling and order the Trump administration to restore an additional $500 million in UCLA medical research grants that were frozen in response to the university’s alleged campus antisemitism violations.

Although she did not issue a formal ruling late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin indicated she is leaning toward reversing — for now — the vast majority of funding freezes that University of California leaders say have endangered the future of the 10-campus, multi-hospital system.

Lin, a judge in the Northern District of California, said she was prepared to add UCLA’s National Institutes of Health grant recipients to an ongoing class-action lawsuit that has already led to the reversal of tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Endowment for the Humanities and other federal agencies to UC campuses.

The judge’s reasoning: The UCLA grants were suspended by form letters that were unspecific to the research, a likely violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates executive branch rulemaking.

Though Lin said she had a “lot of homework to do” on the matter, she indicated that reversing the grant cuts was “likely where I will land” and she would issue an order “shortly.”

Lin said the Trump administration had undertaken a “fundamental sin” in its “un-reasoned mass terminations” of the grants using “letters that don’t go through the required factors that the agency is supposed to consider.”

The possible preliminary injunction would be in place as the case proceeds through the courts. But in saying she leaned toward broadening the case, Lin suggested she believed there would be irreparable harm if the suspensions were not immediately reversed.

The suit was filed in June by UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley professors fighting a separate, earlier round of Trump administration grant clawbacks. The University of California is not a party in the case.

A U.S. Department of Justice lawyer, Jason Altabet, said Thursday that instead of a federal district court lawsuit filed by professors, the proper venue would be the U.S. Court of Federal Claims filed by UC. Altabet based his arguments on a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s suspension of $783 million in NIH grants — to universities and research centers throughout the country — in part because the issue, the high court said, was not properly within the jurisdiction of a lower federal court.

Altabet said the administration was “fully embracing the principles in the Supreme Court’s recent opinions.”

The hundreds of NIH grants on hold at UCLA look into Parkinson’s disease treatment, cancer recovery, cell regeneration in nerves and other areas that campus leaders argue are pivotal for improving the health of Americans.

The Trump administration has proposed a roughly $1.2-billion fine and demanded campus changes over admission of international students and protest rules. Federal officials have also called for UCLA to release detailed admission data, ban gender-affirming healthcare for minors and give the government deep access to UCLA internal campus data, among other demands, in exchange for restoring $584 million in funding to the university.

In addition to allegations that the university has not seriously dealt with complaints of antisemitism on campus, the government also said it slashed UCLA funding in response to its findings that the campus illegally considers race in admissions and “discriminates against and endangers women” by recognizing the identities of transgender people.

UCLA has said it has made changes to improve campus climate for Jewish communities and does not use race in admissions. Its chancellor, Julio Frenk, has said that defunding medical research “does nothing” to address discrimination allegations. The university displays websites and policies that recognize different gender identities and maintains services for LGBTQ+ communities.

UC leaders said they will not pay the $1.2-billion fine and are negotiating with the Trump administration over its other demands. They have told The Times that many settlement proposals cross the university’s red lines.

“Recent federal cuts to research funding threaten lifesaving biomedical research, hobble U.S. economic competitiveness and jeopardize the health of Americans who depend on cutting-edge medical science and innovation,” a UC spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “While the University of California is not a party to this suit, the UC system is engaged in numerous legal and advocacy efforts to restore funding to vital research programs across the humanities, social sciences and STEM fields.”

A ruling Lin issued in the case last month resulted in $81 million in NSF grants restored to UCLA. If the UCLA NIH grants are reinstated, it would leave about $3 million from the July suspensions — all Department of Energy grants — still frozen at UCLA.

Lin also said she leaned toward adding Transportation and Defense department grants to the case, which run in the millions of dollars but are small compared with UC’s NIH grants.

The hearing was closely watched by researchers at the Westwood campus, who have cut back on lab hours, reduced operations and considered layoffs as the crisis at UCLA moves toward the two-month mark.

In interviews, they said they were hopeful grants would be reinstated but remain concerned over the instability of their work under the recent federal actions.

Lydia Daboussi, a UCLA assistant professor of neurobiology whose $1-million grant researching nerve injury is suspended, observed the hearing online.

Aftewards, Daboussi said she was “cautiously optimistic” about her grant being reinstated.

“I would really like this to be the relief that my lab needs to get our research back online,” said Daboussi, who is employed at the David Geffen School of Medicine. “If the preliminary injunction is granted, that is a wonderful step in the right direction.”

Grant funding, she said, “was how we bought the antibodies we needed for experiments, how we purchased our reagents and our consumable supplies.” The lab consists of nine other people, including two PhD students and one senior scientist.

So far, none of Daboussi’s lab members have departed. But, she said, if “this goes on for too much longer, at some point, people’s hours will have to be reduced.”

“I do find myself having to pay more attention to volatilities outside of our lab space,” she said. “I’ve now become acquainted with our legal system in ways that I didn’t know would be necessary for my job.”

Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year neuroscience PhD candidate at UCLA, lost a roughly $160,000 NIH grant that funded her study of stroke recovery treatment.

“If there is a chance that these suspensions are lifted, that is phenomenal news,” said Rathbun, who presented at UCLA’s “Science Fair for Suspended Research” this month.

“Lifting these suspensions would then allow us to continue these really critical projects that have already been determined to be important for American health and the future of American health,” she said.

Rathbun’s research is focused on a potential treatment that would be injected into the brain to help rebuild it after a stroke. Since the suspension of her grant, Rathbun, who works out of a lab at UCLA’s neurology department, has been seeking other funding sources.

“Applying to grants takes a lot of time,” she said. “So that really slowed down my progress in my project.”

WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court said Thursday the Trump administration may cancel hundreds of health research grants that involve diversity, equity and inclusion or gender identity.

The justices granted an emergency appeal from President Trump’s lawyers and set aside a Boston’s judge order that blocked the canceling of $783 million in research grants.

The justices split 5-4. Chief Justice John G. Roberts joined the court’s three liberals in dissent and said the district judge had not overstepped his authority.

The court’s conservative majority has repeatedly sided with the administration and against federal judges in disputes over spending and staffing at federal agencies.

In the latest case, the majority agreed that Trump and his appointees may decide on how to spend health research funds allocated by Congress.

Upon taking office in January, Trump issued an executive order “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.”

A few weeks later, the acting director of the National Institutes of Health said the agency would no longer fund “low-value and off-mission research programs, including but not limited to studies based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and gender identity.”

More than 1,700 grants were canceled.

Trump’s lawyers told the court NIH had terminated grants to study “Buddhism and HIV stigma in Thailand”; “intersectional, multilevel and multidimensional structural racism for English- and Spanish-speaking populations”; and “anti-racist healing in nature to protect telomeres of transitional age BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] for health equity.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his counterparts from 15 Democratic-led states had sued to halt what they called an “unprecedented disruption to ongoing research.” They were joined by groups of researchers and public health advocates.

The state attorneys said their public universities were using grant money for “projects investigating heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, alcohol and substance abuse, mental-health issues, and countless other health conditions.”

They said NIH had terminated a grant for a University of California study examining how inflammation, insulin resistance, and physical activity affect Alzheimer’s disease in Black women, a group with higher rates and a more aggressive profile of the disease.

Also terminated they said was a University of Hawaiʻi study that aimed to identify genetic and biological risk factors for colorectal cancer among Native Hawaiians, a population with increased incidence and mortality rates of that disease.

In June, the Democratic state attorneys won a ruling from U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee. He said the sudden halt to research grants violated a federal procedural law because it was “arbitrary” and poorly explained.

He said Trump had required agencies “to focus on eradicating anything that it labels as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”), an undefined enemy.” He said he had tried and failed to get a clear definition of DEI and what it entailed.

When the 1st Circuit Court refused to lift the judge’s order, Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court in late July.

He noted the justices in April had set aside a similar decision from a Boston-based judge who blocked the new administration’s canceling of education grants.

The solicitor general argued that Trump’s order rescinded an executive order from President Biden in 2021 that mandated “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda” and instructed federal agencies to “allocate resources to address the historic failure to invest sufficiently, justly, and equally in underserved communities.”

He said the new administration decided these DEI-related grants “do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”

Officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration made comments saying the equity stake was not to run the firm.

United States Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the US government wants an equity stake in Intel in exchange for cash grants approved during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

Separately, also on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said any US investment in Intel would be aimed at helping the troubled chipmaker stabilise.

Asked about reports that the US was considering taking a 10 percent stake in Intel, Bessent told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” programme: “The stake would be a conversion of the grants and maybe increase the investment into Intel to help stabilise the company for chip production here in the US.”

Bessent gave no details about the size or timing of any US stake in Intel, but said any investment would not be aimed at forcing US companies to buy chips from Intel.

Bessent’s comments were the first official response from the Trump administration after Bloomberg News reported on Monday that the US government is in talks to take a 10 percent Intel stake in exchange for $7.9bn in grants that were approved for the US chip company during the Biden administration.

‘Not governance’

“We should get an equity stake for our money,” Lutnick told CNBC. “We’ll get equity in return for that … instead of just giving grants away.”

Lutnick said the US does not want control of the company.

“It’s not governance, we are just converting what was a grant under Biden into equity for the Trump administration for the American people.” He suggested any stake would be “non-voting,” meaning it would not enable the US government to tell the company how to run its business.

He made his comments a day after SoftBank Group agreed to invest $2bn into the chipmaker, which has struggled to compete after years of management blunders.

“The Biden administration literally was giving Intel money for free and giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies just giving the money for free, and Donald Trump turned it into saying, ‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the money, we want a piece of the action for the American taxpayer,’” Lutnick said.

Intel and TSMC, a Taiwan-based chipmaker, did not immediately comment.

Intel helped launch Silicon Valley, but has fallen behind rivals like Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc and is shedding thousands of workers and slashing costs under its new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. It recorded an annual loss of $18.8bn in 2024, its first such loss since 1986.

Intel plans to end the year with 75,000 “core” workers, excluding subsidiaries, through layoffs and attrition, down from 99,500 core employees at the end of 2024. The company previously announced a 15 percent workforce reduction.

Trump recently said Tan, who was made CEO in March, should resign. But after meeting with him last week, Trump relented, saying Tan had an “amazing story”.