Trump rescinds $1.5 billion in CDC and EV funds from four blue states

On Feb. 5, 2026, OMB Director RVRussell Vought authorized two simultaneous agency-level rescissions totaling $1.5 billion. The Transportation Department was directed to rescind $943 million in NEVI formula funds from 🏔️Colorado, 🌽Illinois, 🌴California, and 🦆Minnesota.

The CDC was directed to rescind $602 million in public health grants from the same four states. Every targeted state has a Democratic governor and a Democratic-controlled legislature — a pattern critics immediately flagged as politically motivated targeting.

The NEVI program was created by the bipartisan 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law during his first term and which Congress passed with significant Republican support. The $943 million represents formula allocations the four states had already received, planned, and in some cases begun deploying for EV charging stations in low-income and rural communities.

The administration had already frozen NEVI funds program-wide via a January 2025 OMB directive; a federal court partially blocked that freeze. The February rescissions appear designed to achieve the same outcome through a different administrative mechanism — agency-level rescissions rather than an OMB-wide directive.

The CDC cuts eliminated four categories of public health programming

HIV-prevention grants targeted Black women and gay and bisexual men — populations with disproportionately high HIV incidence rates — were cut entirely

Programs providing pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) navigation for LGBTQ youth were terminated COVID-19 health disparity grants, which funded community health workers in minority communities that suffered higher pandemic mortality rates, were rescinded Intimate-partner violence prevention research programs were also eliminated Public health advocates said the cuts would take years to rebuild and would reverse hard-won reductions in HIV transmission rates in affected communities.

The legal foundation the administration is using is contested. A rescission request under the Impoundment Control Act requires Congress to affirmatively approve the cancellation within 45 days, or the funds must be released.

The administration did not submit formal ICA rescission requests to Congress — it directed agencies to rescind the grants administratively, bypassing the ICA process entirely.

The GAO had already opened 39 investigations into similar practices. 🌽Illinois AG KRKwame Raoul argued in his federal lawsuit that this approach violates both the ICA and Article I's Appropriations Clause.

🏔️Colorado Gov. JPJared Polis said on Feb. 6 that Colorado had not received formal written notice of the rescissions despite news reports confirming them, calling the process 'chaotic and opaque.' He said his administration was consulting with the state attorney general about legal options.

🦆Minnesota Gov. TWTim Walz, who ran as Kamala Harris's vice-presidential nominee in 2024, called the cuts 'an act of political retribution' and said the state would 'fight this in every available forum.' 🌴California's attorney general joined a multistate legal coalition challenging the rescissions.

Republicans on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees were largely silent — a contrast to the bipartisan backlash the January 2025 blanket freeze generated. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who had called pocket rescissions a 'clear violation of the law' during the USAID episode, did not issue a statement specifically addressing the February cuts. The silence reflected broader Republican calculation: opposing targeted rescissions from blue states carries less political cost than opposing a government-wide funding freeze that hit red-state programs too.

The cuts fit a documented pattern of disproportionate enforcement against Democratic-led states. An analysis by the Brookings Institution published in January 2026 found that states with Democratic governors had received rescission notices, grant termination letters, and program pauses at 3.4 times the rate of Republican-led states per capita in federal grants. The pattern extends across agencies: DOT, CDC, EPA, HUD, and DOE have all disproportionately targeted blue-state programs in their administrative actions since January 2025.

The affected communities — low-income residents in urban and rural areas who would have benefited from EV charging infrastructure, and Black, LGBTQ, and low-income populations targeted by the CDC health programs — have the least ability to absorb the loss through private alternatives. PrEP, for example, costs approximately $20,000 per year without insurance or a federal assistance program. States cannot easily replace $1.5 billion in federal funding from their own budgets, particularly in the middle of a fiscal year.