The Trump administration plans to terminate $600 million in CDC grants to California, Minnesota, Colorado, and Illinois, as reported by the New York Times, the New York Post, and The Hill. A list of these grants has been circulated to Congress. We provide the full list below.
The vast majority of grants cut are operational funds to state and local health departments to support projects such as public health workforce recruiting, retention, and training, and to update and improve IT and data infrastructure.
The administration also circulated a set of talking point examples of grants to be terminated, cherry-picking the most luridly “DEI” language from grant descriptions, titles, and funding programs. You can read the full examples here. The language from these talking points has been reproduced in much of the press coverage. These examples total $33 million in funds to be cut, or approximately 5.5% of the $600 million total.
It is unclear whether all of the talking points refer to grants on the congressional list. For example, a grant to Colorado to “Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities” was not on the list of grants to be terminated shared with Congress.
Many of these grants are Public Health Infrastructure Grants (PHIGs). The administration “paused” then restored this $5B national program over 24 hours on January 23-24. All but 5 PHIGs in these four states are on the list of grant to be terminated.
While we don’t yet know why some PHIGs may survive while most others are terminated, it’s notable that 4 of the surviving 5 PHIGs are in “red” counties. In Colorado, the only surviving PHIG is to El Paso County, where 54% of voters cast their ballot for Trump in 2024. El Paso County is also represented by a Republican member of Congress (Jeff Crank, CO-5) at the moment. In California, 2 surviving PHIGs are in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, which also voted for Trump over Harris in 2025. A 3rd surviving in PHIG in California is in Orange County, a traditional Republican stronghold and home to an outsized proportion of wealthy Trump donors. The final surviving PHIG in California is in Sacramento County, and it is the only surviving PHIG outside a Republican stronghold.
Grant Witness will be launching a CDC grant termination tracker shortly. If you have information about CDC grants being terminated, please fill out our CDC reporting form.