A 3-year-old girl gets an MMR vaccine at a clinic in Texas in March. Texas was among the states with the most public funding grants canceled by the Trump administration earlier this year. (Photo by Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images)

After the Trump administration slashed billions in state and local public health funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, the eventual impact on states split sharply along political lines.

Democratic-led states that sued to block the cuts kept much of their funding, while Republican-led states lost the bulk of theirs, according to a new analysis from health research organization KFF.

The uneven fallout underscores how politics continues shaping health care in the United States. The nearly 700 CDC grants were worth about $11 billion and had been allocated by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, state and local health departments had spent or planned to spend the money not just on COVID-related efforts, but also on prevention of other infectious diseases, support for mental health and substance use, shoring up aging public health infrastructure, and other needs.

The CDC grant terminations initially affected red and blue states about evenly, according to KFF. California, the District of Columbia, Illinois and Massachusetts — all led by Democrats — had among the largest numbers of terminated grants.

But then nearly two dozen blue states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration in April, asking the court to block the grant terminations. They argued the federal government lacked the authority to rescind funding it had already allocated.

“The Trump administration’s illegal and irresponsible decision to claw back life-saving health funding is an attack on the well-being of millions of Americans,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in an April statement announcing the lawsuit.

“Slashing this funding now will reverse our progress on the opioid crisis, throw our mental health systems into chaos, and leave hospitals struggling to care for patients.”

A federal judge sided with the blue states and blocked the cancellations  — but she limited her injunction to the jurisdictions that filed in the lawsuit.

Nearly 80% of the grant cuts have now been restored in blue states, according to the KFF analysis, compared with less than 5% in red states.

Now four of the five states with the most canceled grants are led by Republicans: Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. California, which is dominated by Democrats, kept all of its grants that had been initially terminated.

In the West and Midwest, Democratic-led Colorado — which joined the lawsuit — had 10 of its 11 grant terminations reversed. Its Republican-led neighbors that did not sue, including Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, lost all of their grants, according to the KFF analysis.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the photo caption. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org

Left to right, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are sworn in before the start of a hearing with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the U.S. Capitol on June 12, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Three Democratic governors from states that leave immigration enforcement to the federal government said Thursday they oppose President Donald Trump’s decision to send more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines into Los Angeles without the consent of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The lengthy and tense U.S. House hearing where the trio appeared — highlighted by a shouting match among members and accusations of Nazi tactics — came as the nation’s capital prepared for a major military parade and Trump’s birthday Saturday, along with thousands of “No Kings” protests across the country.

In Los Angeles, a U.S. senator was tackled and removed from an immigration press conference by federal law enforcement agents accompanying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The governors, whose states have submitted an amicus brief to a lawsuit by Newsom challenging Trump, said the decisions to bring in the military should be made by local officials.

“It’s wrong to deploy the National Guard and active-duty Marines into an American city over the objection of local law enforcement, just to inflame a situation and create a crisis, just as it’s wrong to tear children away from their homes and their mothers and fathers, who have spent decades living and working in our communities, raising their families,” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee.

The hearing with Govs. Pritzker, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Kathy Hochul of New York marked the second time House Republicans have called in leaders in blue states that have policies of non-cooperation with federal immigration officials in enforcement efforts. Those policies do not bar immigration enforcement from occurring.

Republicans brought in the mayors of Boston, Chicago and Denver in March.

The eight-hour hearing came after multi-day protests in Los Angeles sparked when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers began widespread immigration raids at Home Depots in their communities in an effort to carry out the president’s mass deportation efforts.

The governors stressed that the president’s decision to send in the National Guard set a dangerous precedent and posed a threat to democracy.

Republicans on the committee defended the president’s actions and instead accused the governors of violating federal law because of their state policies, dubbed as “sanctuary cities.” Immigration policy is handled by the federal government and states and localities are not required to coordinate with officials.

Shouting match over Noem

More than four hours into the hearing, video circulated of California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla being forcibly removed and handcuffed by Secret Service agents while trying to ask a question of Noem during a press conference in LA.

Democrats on the panel, such as Arizona Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, slammed the video and raised concerns that a “sitting senator was shoved to the ground.”

It led to a shouting match, with Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost asking the chair of the panel, James Comer of Kentucky, if the committee would subpoena Noem.

Comer said Frost was out of order and tried to move on.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was next in line for questioning, heckled Frost and said that Democrats “can’t follow the rules.” Comer eventually told Frost to “shut up.”

Pritzker said that he could not “believe the disrespect that was shown to a United States senator” who was trying to ask Noem a question.

“That seems completely irrational,” Pritzker said.

Democrats on the panel such as Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez and Dan Goldman of New York called for Noem to appear before the committee.

“Anyone with two eyes that can see, can see that was authoritarian, lawless behavior that no person in America, much less a senator conducting congressional oversight, should receive,” Goldman said.

‘People are living in fear’

The Democratic governors defended their immigration policies and criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, pointing to ICE officers wearing face coverings to arrest immigrants.

“People are living in fear in the shadows,” Hochul said. “People can’t go to school, they can’t worship, they can’t go get health care. They can’t go to their senior center. What is happening has been traumatic.”

Several Republicans including Reps. Comer, Tom Emmer of Minnesota and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, took issue with comments by Walz at a commencement speech in May, in which he accused the president of turning ICE agents into a modern-day Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany.

Republican Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri said that Walz should apologize.

Walz said that as a former history teacher, he was making an observation about ICE tactics — such as wearing a face covering to arrest people — that were similar to those used by secret police.

The top Democrat on the panel, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, defended Walz’s statement, and said that ICE is operating like a modern-day Gestapo.

Lynch pointed to the video of the international Tufts University student who was approached by masked men on the street and taken into a van for writing an op-ed in defense of Palestinian human rights.  

“ICE agents wearing masks and hoodies detained Rümeysa Öztürk and those of you who watched that, that abduction, when you compare the old films of the Gestapo grabbing people off the streets of Poland, and you compare them to those nondescript thugs who grabbed that student, that graduate student, it does look like a Gestapo operation,” Lynch said.