Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes Sues Trump Regime to Restore Grants for Public Health

In another strike against the cruel machinations of the Musk/Trump/Vance Central Committee, Kris Mayes and 22 other State Attorney Generals have again gone to court to get the MAGA-Project 2025 Administration to release/return $12 billion in public health grants to the states.

These funds were canceled with no warning to the receiving state agencies and can, if not returned, cause irreparable harm to “infectious disease management, fortifying emergency preparedness, providing mental health and substance abuse services, and modernizing public health infrastructure.”

Commenting in an office press release, Attorney General Mayes stated:

“I cannot overstate how reckless and illegal these cuts are. By slashing these grants, the Trump administration has launched an all-out attack on Arizona’s public health system—harming the entire state but hitting rural communities the hardest. These cuts target the very places that rely most on this critical funding. Eliminating it would devastate our already precarious system and cost jobs across Arizona, from doctors to tribal health workers. I will fight this every step of the way…With this single threat, Secretary Kennedy has all but ensured that more Arizonans will get sick and die the next time we suffer an infectious disease outbreak, or god forbid, another pandemic.”

The press release outlines more specifics on how these cuts ($239 million for the Grand Canyon state) could harm Arizonans, including:

• “Many healthcare providers’ jobs, particularly in our county public health offices, and ongoing health care provider training 
• Employees at every tribal grant partner (Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, Gila River Health Care, White Mountain Apache Tribe, and the Cocopah Indian Tribe) and Northern Arizona University employees  
• The critical effort to modernize our state’s outdated disease surveillance system, MEDSIS 
• Grants for rural county health departments, non-profits, and other organizations that support providing telehealth services, utilizing Community Health Workers (CHWs) to conduct outreach and education, linking community members to available services, improving public health data collection, and supporting a centralized patient transfer system  
• Infrastructure, support, training, technical assistance, and health service delivery for those suffering from behavioral health needs, particularly in rural communities 
• Flu, measles, and other routine vaccination efforts in form of mobile vaccine clinics and other community vaccination efforts, reducing the availability and accessibility to vaccines, thereby potentially increasing the severity of disease outbreaks.”

Later, the Attorney General released a video statement where she said:

Hi. I’m Attorney General Kris Mayes. Today. I sued the Trump Administration and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for slashing Public Health grants that Arizona is relying on to provide health care to communities across our state, but particularly rural and tribal communities. Arizona stands to lose nearly 240 million dollars in funding that helps pay the salaries of nurses at Public Health clinics, mental health care services, vaccines, and infectious disease tracking. But Arizona didn’t ask for this. Congress did not vote for it and RFK Jr. doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally pull this funding. That’s why I’m suing to stop it. I cannot imagine what Robert F. Kennedy Senior would think of what his son has done. He dedicated his life to fighting for people across Rural America, marching with farm workers, and shining a light on poverty and places like Appalachia and in the Mississippi, Delta, that most politicians ignored and now 60 years later, his son, and Donald Trump are punching those same communities in the gut, ripping away, their health care, cutting off, life-saving funding, and turning their backs. On the very people that RFK senior fought to lift up. It’s shameful. As Attorney General, I will not sit quietly while elite politicians in Washington DC abandon rural Arizona or our state’s tribes to pay for the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”