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By Jake Pearson and Anjeanette Damon, ProPublica | When the federal courts first blocked the Trump administration’s funding freeze, Jessyca Leach was cautiously optimistic.
For days, the pause had prevented her from accessing the money she needs for her Phoenix health clinic to serve thousands of at-risk people, most of them poor and many of them members of the LGBTQ+ community. Things had gotten so bad that she had to lay off three employees and cut the salaries of her leadership team, including her own.
So when the funding started to flow again last week, days after the court orders, Leach hoped her ordeal would be over. It wasn’t.
Her federal dollars were accompanied by an ominous note from the payment processing arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Citing “Executive Orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments,” the agency said that it would continue “taking additional measures to process payments” and that its reviews “will result in delays and/or rejections of payments.”
“If it’s not there,” Leach said of the federal money that covers the salaries for 40 percent of her staff, “things get really bad, really fast.”
The notice Leach received was one of several indications over the past week that the Trump administration is not backing down in its fight to slash spending and dramatically reshape the federal government, despite multiple court orders explicitly restraining the president’s sweeping executive actions.
In some cases, to get around the judges’ rulings, the administration has cited a memo that it says is not subject to the existing orders. In others, it denied funding to organizations because their granting agencies are not defendants in one of the ongoing legal challenges. In others still, it has withheld funds by citing the agencies’ own judgment, not the president’s directives.
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