Left: President-elect Donald Trump speaks with reporters after meeting French businessman Bernard Arnault at Trump Tower in New York, Monday, Jan. 9, 2017 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Right: New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press briefing, Friday, Feb. 16, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews).
A coalition of 19 states is accusing the Trump administration of usurping the authority of Congress in its “unlawful” dismantling of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), alleging that the president and his associates are deliberately starving the department of funding and staff to thwart its mission of enhancing “the well-being of all Americans.”
The plaintiffs — which include New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, and Michigan — filed the 96-page complaint on Monday in Rhode Island’s U.S. District Court alleging that the administration and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. violated the separation of powers by intentionally incapacitating “one of the most sophisticated departments in the federal government” in violation of the laws that created HHS as well as the laws it is required to “regulate and enforce.”
Since President Donald Trump took office, he and his administration have fired thousands of full-time employees and gutted numerous long-standing agencies within the department. In March, the administration announced that it would be undergoing a dramatic restructuring headed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which would reduce the number of agencies within the department from 28 to 15 and terminate between 65,000 and 85,000 jobs
The coalition is being led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has been a frequent thorn in the side of Trump and his family since taking office in January 2019.
“This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us,” James said in a statement Monday. “When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant patients, and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy — you are putting countless lives at risk.”
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James specifically noted that even the World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), which provides lifesaving care to more than 137,000 first responders and survivors from the 9/11 terrorist attack, is currently unable to certify new cancer diagnosis due to the loss of physicians.
While the administration has promised that the WTCHP and other similar programs will remain active through the “Administration for a Healthy America,” an internal memo obtained by NBC News reportedly revealed that many of the employees required to keep such programs in place have already been placed on administrative leave and told they will be fired in June.
According to the filed complaint, the gutting of HHS has resulted in the states facing numerous mounting health crises without the help of a federal safety net.
“These actions are both plainly illegal and a moral failing. More Americans will suffer from illness, injury, and death without these commonsense programs,” said Nick Brown, the attorney general of Washington state, which also signed onto the lawsuit. “A robust public health system that serves communities with the most barriers to appropriate medical care is vital.”
In addition to the layoffs and reorganizations, the states assert that many of the employees left at HHS have been intentionally prevented from doing their jobs, including designing and implementing new health policies, collecting and distributing scientific data, issuing funds promised to the plaintiffs, and responding to “any manner of public inquiry.”
“Dismantling HHS by terminating the people necessary for it to meet its own mandates, and paralyzing it by means of a confusing reorganization, is an unlawful effort to undercut the will of Congress who ordered the agencies and programs to run,” the complaint states. “It is an agency action that contravenes not only the laws that created the Department, its agencies, and the appropriated funds it administers, but also the laws that the Department and agencies regulate and enforce.”
The states are seeking a court order declaring the administration’s actions as being in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedures Act as well as a directive enjoining the government from implementing the president’s directives at HHS.
