Tens of millions of dollars in funding for health programs run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that had been blocked by the Trump administration is being released to grantees.
According to several CDC employees, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the agency’s spending plans for specific grants, which had been held up since at least the end of July.
The OMB did not return a request for comment.
The CDC is now scrambling to dole out funding for youth violence prevention programs, research on preventing gun injuries and deaths, public health emergency preparedness, tobacco research, research on chronic disease, and more, totaling at least $200 million, according to a list of programs seem by The Hill.
“A lot of prep work has been done, but it will be a huge scramble” to get the awards out the door, a CDC employee said.
Staff say they are moving as fast as possible to minimize the disruption to the state and local health department partners, and in case the administration reverses its decision or decides to withhold other funds.
OMB used a footnote on an appropriations memo in July to tell the CDC center directors they were not allowed to move funding into the blocked programs.
At the start of the new administration, the White House began to apportion money to the CDC on a month-by-month basis, citing the need for external reviews.
That practice stopped when the agency received a two-month apportionment through the end of the fiscal year, according to CDC employees, but some grants were delivered late while others remained blocked with little to no communication from administration officials.
State and local health departments have been left in the dark, unsure if they will be able to spend the money before it expires at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Some programs will end Aug. 31 if the funding isn’t renewed.
But CDC staff say they are not allowed to communicate with grantees about award status, in part because the situation could change at any given time.
“It’s good news with an asterisk,” said Sharon Gilmartin, the executive director of the Safe States Alliance.
“Unfreezing the funds at least lets the grants start to move through the system and have a chance to get out the door,” Gilmartin said, though there’s still a possibility they don’t.
An executive order earlier this month gave political appointees extraordinary control over the federal grantmaking process, including the ability to terminate existing grants at any time. Stakeholders are also wary that the White House could decide to claw back the money through a rescission request.
“Now it’s up to HHS and DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency] to do the right thing and get the grants to those to whom they’ve been appropriated,” Gilmartin said.
