Pennsylvania’s governor says the Trump administration has unfrozen billions in grants and loans

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Pennsylvania’s governor says the Trump administration has unfrozen billions in grants and loans

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Monday that President

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s administration has freed up billions in federal aid that the Democrat had accused it of withholding illegally and unconstitutionally.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

said in a news conference that more than $2 billion that his administration had identified as either frozen or held up by an unspecified review was now accessible to state agencies.

Shapiro

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

in federal court over the aid on Feb. 13, after federal courts had

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

rejected the Trump administration’s sweeping pause on federal funding and questioned whether the Trump administration was ignoring court orders.

Trusted news and daily delights, right in your inbox

See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.

Shapiro also said he pressed his case in conversations with senior Trump administration officials while he was in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. The U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia, which represents the federal agencies named in the lawsuit, did not immediately comment on Monday.

In federal court in Rhode Island, Trump administration lawyers, however, have argued that the government’s move to freeze funds was legal and asked a judge to reject a request by nearly two dozen Democratic states for a preliminary injunction.

Administration lawyers characterized the freeze as simply a “pause” to consider how best to use federal funds. They contended the case was moot since the Office of Management and Budget had rescinded its memo in late January

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Much of the stalled grant funding identified by Shapiro’s administration was passed by Congress in signature laws signed by former President Joe Biden, including his

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, the Inflation Reduction Act, and his 2021

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

The lawsuit had said aid was being withheld from programs that distribute money to upgrade energy efficiency in homes, plug abandoned gas wells, clean up abandoned mine land, improve municipal water and sewer systems and reimburse industry for cutting their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Five federal agencies were named as defendants: the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Interior and Transportation.

None have commented on the lawsuit, except for the Department of Energy, which said it was complying with the court orders. However, the department didn’t say whether it had released funding that Shapiro’s administration accused it of holding up.

___

Follow Marc Levy on X at:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Pennsylvanias #governor #Trump #administration #unfrozen #billions #grants #loans

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up