NEW YORK, United States (CMC) — New York Attorney General, Letitia James, is leading a coalition of 22 other attorneys general suing to stop the implementation of a new Trump administration policy that orders the withholding of trillions of dollars in funding providing essential services to millions of Americans, including Caribbean immigrants.

The new policy, issued by the president’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), puts an indefinite pause on the majority of federal assistance to states.

James said the policy would immediately jeopardise state programmes that provide critical health and childcare services to families in need, deliver support to public schools, combat hate crimes and violence against women, provide life-saving disaster relief to states, and more.

The coalition is seeking a court order to immediately stop the enforcement of the OMB policy and preserve essential funding.

“Immediately blocking the majority of federal funds to states is unconstitutional and dangerous,” James said, adding “millions of Americans rely on federally funded programs every day to get the health care they need, support their families and stay safe in their communities”.

She said that the policy has already unleashed chaos and uncertainty, with law enforcement halting drug enforcement efforts, Medicaid portals shutting down, and other critical services being thrown into disarray.

“Today, I am leading a coalition of attorneys general to uphold the law and ensure that essential services in states across our country can continue.”

The OMB policy, issued late on Monday, directs all federal agencies to indefinitely pause the majority of federal assistance funding and loans to states and other entities beginning at 5:00 pm (local time) on Tuesday.

But in the lawsuit, the coalition said the “OMB’s policy has caused immediate chaos and uncertainty for millions of Americans who rely on state programs that receive these federal funds”.

“Essential community health centres, addiction and mental health treatment programs, services for people with disabilities, and other critical health services are jeopardised by OMB’s policy,” the lawsuit states.

It notes that in New York alone, the state’s Department of Health is set to receive about US$40 billion in federal funding in fiscal year 2025 thus far, with hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to providing health care in rural and underserved areas of the state.

“OMB’s policy would pause support for the US (United States) Department of Justice’s initiatives to combat hate crimes and violence against women, support community policing, and provide services to victims of crimes,” according to the lawsuit.

The coalition said that the OMB policy would also halt essential disaster relief funds to places like California and North Carolina, where tens of thousands of residents are relying on Federal Emergency Management Assistance (FEMA) grants to rebuild their lives after devastating wildfires and floods.

The lawsuit states while the administration has attempted to clarify the scope and meaning of the OMB policy, states have already reported that funds have been frozen, jeopardising services like Medicaid across the country.

As part of their lawsuit, the coalition argues that the OMB’s policy violates the US Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act by imposing a government-wide stop to spending without any regard for the laws and regulations that govern each source of federal funding.

“The president cannot decide to unilaterally override laws governing federal spending,” the coalition, said, noting that OMB’s policy “unconstitutionally overrides Congress’s power to decide how federal funds are spent”.

Caribbean-American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette Clarke also strongly condemned the “unconstitutional suspension of Congressionally-approved domestic and international grant funding”.

“Today, we have witnessed Donald Trump order one of the most transparently unconstitutional actions ever before taken by an American president — an illegal decision that was openly and proudly written by the authors of Project 2025, Donald Trump’s step-by-step manifesto to destroy American democracy,” Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

She said make no mistake, the “action represents a significant step towards achieving that goal”.

“Through his illegal decision to suspend federal funding, we will see non-profits doing essential humanitarian work collapse. We will see small businesses in communities across the country close their doors.

“We will see seniors and children miss meals and go hungry, we will see our international allies like Haiti be struck with irreparable instability, and we will see our nation’s most vulnerable lose the safety nets they need to survive,” Clarke added.