BOSTON — The Trump administration’s announcement of a freeze on federal grants and loans cast a cloud of confusion over non-profits, local governments, and schools that would be impacted by the abrupt decision.
The fiscal standstill that could affect trillions of dollars nationwide was supposed to take effect at 5 p.m. Tuesday, less than 24 hours after a vague memo was sent to federal agencies.
U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan temporarily blocked part of the Trump administration’s plans to freeze all federal aid until Monday.
The constitutional clash over taxpayer money is leaving multiple sectors in limbo, including health care, housing programs, education initiatives, and infrastructure projects.
Fenway Health, which receives about $20 million dollars a year in federal funding, is now analyzing how the freeze could impact the more than 30,000 patients it serves every year and the life-saving research it conducts.
“We were expecting something like this,” said Dallas Ducar, Fenway Health’s Executive Vice President for Donor Engagement and External Relations. “There was an emotional reaction that so many of us felt. A visceral reaction.”
Ducar said the nonprofit, known as a longstanding lifeline for the LGBTQ community, is now preparing for a “worst-case scenario.”
“Everyone is working to ensure that the most marginalized individuals out there in Boston and elsewhere are able to receive life-saving care,” she told Boston 25 News. “To ignore the lives of those people, those Americans, it really contradicts the very values that we stand for.”
Trump’s federal aid hold poses a potential dramatic impact on the 50 federally qualified health centers in Massachusetts.
According to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Care Centers, more than one million people statewide rely on community clinics.
Those clinics rely on the federal government for close to 40 percent of their budgets, approximately $130 million dollars statewide.
“Instead of following through on the promises the president promised to help people, including working people, poor people, he is, instead, stripping funding from the very families that rely on these precious resources,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell.
The Trump administration said programs that provide direct assistance to Americans will not be affected if the fiscal standstill moves forward.
That includes Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, despite access to Medicaid portals being down across the country for hours Tuesday.
Massachusetts is among nearly two dozen states that are filing lawsuits to stop the White House from pausing trillions of dollars in federal funding.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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