{"id":23577,"date":"2025-02-11T13:28:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T20:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-officials-say-570-million-in-federal-funds-still-frozen-despite-court-order\/"},"modified":"2025-02-11T20:28:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T20:28:46","slug":"colorado-officials-say-570-million-in-federal-funds-still-frozen-despite-court-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-officials-say-570-million-in-federal-funds-still-frozen-despite-court-order\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado officials say $570 million in federal funds still frozen despite court order"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Michael Bennet, with Gov. Jared Polis behind him, speaks at a news conference marking the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act in Brighton in 2023. (Chase Woodruff\/Colorado Newsline file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Two weeks after President Donald Trump\u2019s administration launched a chaotic attempt to freeze federal spending, more than half a billion dollars in congressionally authorized funds are still being unlawfully withheld from public and private entities across Colorado, state leaders said in a letter Monday.<\/p>\n

In apparent defiance of federal court injunctions blocking the freeze from going into effect, more than $570 million in obligated funding remains \u201cinaccessible for Colorado grantees,\u201d Gov. Jared Polis and U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper wrote to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies, local governments, state agencies and nonprofit organizations entitled to funds from a range of programs continue to report that they cannot access their federal grant portals or receive reimbursements due to them under their federal grant contracts despite both the court order and the promises from the agencies,\u201d the Democratic officials said.<\/p>\n

The spending freeze is just one part of the second Trump administration\u2019s unprecedented efforts to expand executive power in its early weeks in office. Along with attempted shutdowns of congressionally established federal agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the move runs contrary to long-settled separation-of-powers principles in the U.S. Constitution, and have raised legal alarm bells across the executive branch.<\/p>\n

Vought, who was confirmed by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate last week, is an influential proponent of radical legal theories that assert sweeping presidential powers to \u201cimpound\u201d federal spending and order mass firings of civil servants. He was a principal architect of Project 2025, a wide-ranging and controversial set of policy proposals for the incoming Trump administration led by the conservative Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n

The OMB\u2019s Jan. 28 funding freeze was quickly put on hold by the courts, including through a temporary restraining order issued in a case brought by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and his counterparts in 21 other states. But Weiser said Friday that the administration was \u201cnot complying\u201d with the initial order.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither the Constitution nor federal spending statutes allow the president authority to take such action,\u201d Weiser\u2019s office said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Colorado and the other plaintiff states filed a new motion asking the court to go further in enforcing its previous order. A U.S. District Court judge granted the states\u2019 motion for enforcement Monday, ordering the administration to \u201cimmediately restore frozen funding\u201d while the litigation is pending.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country,\u201d wrote Judge John J. McConnell.<\/p>\n

Polis, Bennet and Hickenlooper wrote to Vought that Colorado grantees seeking to access their funds are encountering a variety of problems, including grants labeled \u201csuspended\u201d or missing entirely from their systems. Billions of dollars in federal assistance authorized by two landmark laws enacted under former President Joe Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, top the list of funds that remain frozen.<\/p>\n

Intermittent issues accessing funds have also been reported by Colorado early childhood education programs that receive Head Start grants, while Hickenlooper\u2019s office has cited impacts to rural hospitals and emergency services across the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consequences of this continued uncertainty are severe and could have a devastating effect on the programs and people this funding supports,\u201d they wrote. \u201cCompanies are considering staff furloughs. Employers in rural communities are rescinding job offers. Long-standing Colorado businesses, some with over 40 years of operation, now struggle to pay contractors working on facility expansions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The officials asked Vought to answer a series of questions, including to \u201cdescribe the steps you have taken or will take to resume the disbursement of funds in compliance with court orders,\u201d by Feb. 14.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

one part of Trump administration\u2019s efforts to expand executive power<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,315,1651,25],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-sen-john-hickenlooper","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23577"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}