Last year, the Ritenri School Quarter in Missouri received a $ 9.5 million from the Agency for Protection of Editories, which replaced its worn diesel buses with clean -running electric models.
In mid -January, the buses were almost there: waiting for the seller, just an hour away. The whole district had to do to withdraw his money for a grant and make the last payment.
Then President Trump joined the office and EPA refused to let the district take the money. The agency still rejects, despite two court orders that say Trump’s administration to end the freezing of federal grants.
The buses did not move on the thumb.
“The buses are 52 miles from us in the small town of Illinois and we can’t get them here,” said Chris Kilbride, superintendent of the Ritenar district, which raises 6,500 students in the suburbs. Louis.
According to non -profit organizations, government agencies and other recipients who claim that they cannot gain access to the money promised by past administrations, they still freeze the unknown number of federal grants.
However, after losses in court, Trump officials shifted the justification they offered to freeze funds – claim that it is no longer a wide possession, but a targeted pause for specific grants on which they will object because they have not fulfilled the previously required conditions.
On Wednesday, this approach seemed to work. The federal judge who blocked a wide freezing allowed the federal agency for emergency drive management back money From New York after the agency claimed a bad housing grant management.
Yet, the recipients of a huge number of federal grants, large and small, said they remained in the dark.
They were left to stop their projects – prevention of fires in Montana, solar panels in Massachusetts, an emergency shelter in Mississippi – and stiffened their sellers and waited for explanations that are not coming. Is it just a misunderstanding? Glitchy computer system, overloaded with panically groups trying to raise money? Or is their grant away forever?
“It was just silence.” Radio silence, ”said Holly Brewer, a professor of American history at the University of Maryland. National Archives received a competitive grant to study legal structures that managed slavery in the British Empire and early American society.
“What we are talking about in the early modern period about the authoritarian government is actually what we see” in solving these grants, said Dr. Brewer. “As ignoring the legislative choir and the treatment of the executive, as if it were above the law.”
The National Archive did not answer questions about its grant. The White House did not answer questions about its wider strategy to maintain grants frozen.
The initial freezing of Trump’s administration, covering up to $ 3 trillion in grants, was announced on January 27. The intention was to enable new officials to find “prices already awarded that are contrary to the management priorities”. Among their goals: grants to help diversity, climatic programs and efforts for an environmental court.
Two sets of plaintiffs – a group of non -profit organizations and the Alliance of Public Prosecutors – filed a lawsuit. They said This congress appropriated this money and that the president had no authority was to freeze everything at once.
It worked. Two judges issued temporary orders blocking freezing. However, Trump’s administration saw the opening. He stated that it was allowed to target or cancel one by one if they believe that these programs have violated laws or existing regulations.
“You need to know if it’s across a board or an individual.” If it is across the Board of Directors, it is illegal, ”said David Super, a professor who studies administrative law at Georgetown University. “If there are facts about a particular grant that is independent of one of these freezing, then it could be legal.”
Mr. Super said that the administration would still have to provide the recipient of justification for freezing or abolishing the grant: “It must be a real reason. Not “looking for a reason,” he said.
This week, federal agencies said they were accepting this strategy. For example, EPA said it only blocks some grants for reasons they have refused to specify.
“EPA employees have identified certain grants programs as potential discrepancies with the necessary financial and visible procedural requirements or conditions of award or programs,” the agency said in a statement. He refused to comment on specific EPA grants in New York Times reports.
Despite this, the changing directives led to confusion.
For example, a higher officer on FEMA sent internal e -mail on Monday – reviewed by The Times – called for “possession” of various payments. On Tuesday, the official clarified that it meant that payments would now be processed manually to ensure that they were correct.
On Wednesday, one of the arbitrators who blocked a wider freezing – Judge John J. McConnell Jr. On the island of Rhode Island – F said Fema would not prevent the freezing of a grant that gave New York millions to accommodate immigrants. The city said Fema sent $ 80 million last week and Then they took the money back Tuesday.
Judge McConnell said agencies can use “their own legal authorities to detain funding”.
These judicial battles focused on domestic grants and did not affect a break in US foreign aid that remains in force.
The result was a major disruption, even for groups whose grants were not freezed.
Most federal grants do not work as a game show price paid as one lump sum. Instead, they are more like an endless series of cost reports. The grant spends his own money for expenses or launches a big purchase like school buses. Only then – with an account in your hand – can seek reimbursement from the federal account.
“They want to see that you do not pretend or do not use,” said Erin TRAPP, CEO of La Pine Community Health Center, a group of federally funded clinics in the central oregon. “We’re working on it very thin edge,” she said.
The financial cushion of her group was so thin that when his funding disappeared for a week in the initial freezing, she released more than 10 percent of her employees.
Nevertheless, groups that have gained their financial concerns are on the list of goals and the renewed flow of dollars is only temporary.
In some cases, there were so much demand that once the federal payment systems were reopen, they were amazed by groups who feared they would be closed soon.
“It’s like a bank run,” said Marty Carty, director of the Government Affairs Association of Primary Care Oregon, which represents clinics as Mrs. Trapp.
These groups were happy. For some frozen there was still no end.
In Jackson, Miss., The only explanation of Dominik Parry was one word: her federal grant account said he was “suspended”.
Its non -profit organization, 2cMissisispippi, received a $ 20 million grant from EPA
The money is to be used to renovate a shelter to protect residents in a poor community from hurricanes and a more regular threat: current outages that are common during Jackson’s appalling summer. It is planned to accommodate 100 people, while the air conditioning is connected by a solar micro-cross that runs independently of the city’s energy system.
“It’s an emergency shelter, but in Jackson, where they get too much every week, they would send someone every week,” Mrs. Parry said.
The work was to start on March 1, but now it will not.
Many of the groups whose funds are still frozen rely on grants from The law on reducing inflation, which included billions to promote clean energy and the fight against climate change, or the draft Infrastructure Act Joseph R. Biden Jr., which funded transport, energy, water, broadband internet and other projects. Republicans in Congress opposed the first measures, but dozens of them supported the infrastructure legislation.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker, Democrat, said Trump’s administration detained $ 117 million in federal funds, aimed at almost 70 infrastructure projects and more than $ 120. Also, the state could not gain access to more than $ 529 million from EPA for projects that included port improvements.
On Tuesday, the Department of Natural Resources and Natural Resources Protection stated that it stops all projects funded by the US Forestry and the Land Management Office due to the delay of federal compensation. A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior operated by the Land Administration Office, and the agriculture department that the Forestry Service stated that agencies’ financing decisions were reviewed to make sure they were in accordance with the President’s orders.
According to Jennifer Schoonen, a spokesperson and a fund for organization, about 40 percent of the funding of a non -profit organization called Blackfoot Challenge is now suspended. The group that works to reduce fire risks and alleviates the effects of drought depends largely on millions of dollars in multi -year grants from agriculture and internal wards.
“We are a protective group that works in red and has a long inheritance of joining people from different political lanes,” said Mrs. Schoonen.
In Missouri, Ritenr School District buses should also be paid within the grant program funded by the Infrastructure Act. The district also says that electric vehicles have also purchased, but cannot access the grant funds needed to pay the supplier who installed them.
Mr. Kilbride, the district superintendent, said that electric buses would be expected to reduce the cost of fuel districts and eliminate diesel fumes that students had to walk to get after buses after school.
The district ordered 24, but only three arrived before freezing money.
If EPA does not issue money for the rest of the electric buses, the school district will have to pay for new, cheaper buses. If this happened, Mr. Kilbride said, the result would be six fewer teachers hired for next year. He talked to the congress representative and addressed Missouri senators.
“Let’s finish this project,” he said. “Just follow the obligations that have been made in good faith.”
Noah Weiland, Matathias Schwartz and Christopher Flavelle The report contributed. Julie tate Research contributed.
