US to cut $600 million in public health grants to Democrat-led states, Bloomberg reports

Feb 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is expected to cut about $600 million in public health grants to California, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

These grants are being terminated because they do not reflect the agency’s priorities, an HHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The New York Post first reported last week that U.S. President Donald Trump’s budget office had instructed the Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claw back more than $1.5 billion from the Democratic-led states because the money was being mishandled.

Last month, HHS paused about $5 billion in Public Health Infrastructure Grants to states but reversed the decision just hours later, Bloomberg News reported.

The department canceled more than $11 billion in federal grants to states last year that were allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic and were being used for tracking mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues.

(Reporting by Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City and Devika Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus)