By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — A second federal judge on Thursday extended a block barring the Trump administration from freezing grants and loans potentially totaling trillions of dollars.

U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island granted the preliminary injunction in the lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen Democratic states after a Trump administration plan for a sweeping pause on federal spending stirred up a wave of confusion and anxiety across the United States.

In his ruling, McConnell said the executive branch was trying to put itself above Congress and by doing so “undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.”

“The Executive has not pointed to any constitutional or statutory authority that would allow them to impose this type of categorical freeze,” McConnel wrote. “The Court is not limiting the Executive’s discretion or micromanaging the administration of federal funds. Rather, consistent with the Constitution, statutes, and caselaw, the Court is simply holding that the Executive’s discretion to impose its own policy preferences on appropriated funds can be exercised only if it is authorized by the congressionally approved appropriations statutes.”

The states say a litany of programs are still waiting for federal funds or some clarity on whether the money is going to be delivered. McConnell also said the state’s had demonstrated standing in this case.

“The States have introduced dozens of uncontested declarations illustrating the effects of the indiscriminate and unpredictable freezing of federal funds, which implicate nearly all aspects of the States’ governmental operations and inhibit their ability to administer vital services to their residents,” he wrote. “These declarations reflect at least one particularized, concrete, and imminent harm that flows from the federal funding pause — a significant, indefinite loss of obligated federal funding.”

Among the funding impacted is billions of dollars that would fund rooftop solar power in low-income neighborhoods, subsidizes low- and moderate-income households’ purchase and installation of electric heat pump water heaters and grants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful pollutants.

The White House previously said the temporary funding halt would ensure that the payments complied with President Donald Trump’s agenda, which includes increasing fossil fuel production, removing protections for transgender people and ending diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

The Republican administration has since rescinded a memo outlining the funding freeze. Still, many state government, universities and nonprofits have argued federal agencies continue to block funding for a range of programs.

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington has also extended an order blocking the funding freeze. AliKhan granted a preliminary injunction requested by groups representing thousands of nonprofits and small businesses.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD and KASTURI PANANJADY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rural cancer patients may miss out on cutting-edge treatments in Utah. Therapies for intellectual disorders could stall in Maryland. Red states and blue states alike are poised to lose jobs in research labs and the local businesses serving them.

Ripple effects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on U.S. biomedical research promise to reach every corner of America. It’s not just about scientists losing their jobs or damaging the local economy their work indirectly supports — scientists around the country say it’s about patient health.

“Discoveries are going to be delayed, if they ever happen,” said Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, former director of the National Cancer Institute.

It’s hard for patients to comprehend how they could lose an undiscovered cure.

Yet “all the people out there who have, you know, sick parents, sick children, this is going to impact,” said neuroscientist Richard Huganir of Johns Hopkins University.

The administration’s unprecedented moves are upending the research engine that has made the U.S. “the envy of the world in terms of scientific innovation,” said Georgetown University health policy expert Lawrence Gostin.

Among the biggest blows, if it survives a court challenge: Massive cuts in funding from the National Institutes of Health that would cost jobs in every state, according to an analysis by The Associated Press with assistance from the nonprofit United for Medical Research.

That’s on top of mass firings of government workers, NIH delays in issuing grants and uncertainty about how many already funded studies are being canceled under the president’s anti-diversity executive orders.

Earlier this week, lawmakers pressured Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the nominee to become NIH director, about the turmoil. Bhattacharya said if confirmed, he’d look into it to ensure scientists employed by and funded by the agency “have resources to do the lifesaving work they do.”

Funding cuts may leave rural patients more vulnerable

Patients who live in rural counties are 10% more likely to die of their cancer than those living in metropolitan areas, said Neli Ulrich of the University of Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Institute.

A third of patients travel more than 150 miles for care at the Salt Lake City cancer center. But for patients even further away — in Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming — because it’s also the regional hub for NIH-funded studies of new treatments.

So Ulrich’s center helps train local doctors to do at least some of the blood tests and other steps of clinical trials that let faraway patients participate without traveling — a program threatened if her university loses tens of millions in NIH cuts.

The issue: Most of the NIH’s budget — more than $35 billion a year — goes to universities, hospitals and other research groups. The grants are divided into “direct costs” — covering researchers’ salaries and a project’s supplies — and “indirect costs,” to reimburse other expenses supporting the work such as electricity, maintenance and janitorial staff, and safety and ethics oversight.

NIH directly negotiates with research groups, a process that grants managers say requires receipts and audits, to set rates for those indirect expenses that can reach 50% or more. But the Trump administration now plans to cap those rates at 15%. The administration estimates it would save the government $4 billion a year but scientists say it really means they’ll have to stop some lifesaving work.

They are “real expenses, that’s the critical point – they are not fluff,” said Ulrich. Using separate cancer center funds to cover those costs would threaten other “activities that are really important to us in serving our communities across the mountain West.”

A federal judge has blocked the move but until the court fight is done researchers aren’t sure what they can continue to afford.

‘Indirect’ costs directly support local jobs

NIH grants divided between researchers in every state in 2023 supported more than 412,000 jobs and $92 billion in new economic activity, according to a yearly report from United for Medical Research that often is cited as Congress sets the agency’s budget.

The AP tallied how much money would have been lost in each state under a 15% cap on those grants’ indirect costs. Those lost dollars alone would have cost at least 58,000 jobs, concluded an analysis assisted by Inforum, a nonpartisan economic consulting firm that conducts UMR’s economic impact reports.

Consider Hopkins, which runs about 600 NIH-funded clinical trials plus other laboratory research and is Baltimore’s largest private employer. “If we can’t do science and we can’t support the science, we can’t support the surrounding community either,” Huganir said.

Research cuts could leave new treatments on the brink

Huganir studies how the brain stores memory as people learn when he discovered a gene that, when mutated, causes certain intellectual disabilities.

After years studying the SynGap1 gene, “we have what we think is a really great therapeutic” almost ready to be tested in severely affected children. Huganir has applied for two new NIH grants key for moving toward those trials.

“The problem is for the kids, there’s a window of time to treat them,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”

NIH reviews of new grant applications have been delayed despite court rulings to end a government spending freeze, and it’s unclear how quickly they can get back on track.

“Everyone I know is basically freaking out because we suddenly don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to keep our labs open,” said neuroscientist Rebecca Shansky at Boston’s Northeastern University, who’s awaiting word on grants for her study of how the brain processes pain and trauma.

Even scientists with existing funding are left wondering if their projects — from transgender health to learning why white breast cancer patients in Oklahoma fare worse than Black patients in Massachusetts — will be caught in Trump’s anti-diversity crackdown. Some already have, even though studying different populations is fundamental to medicine.

“Those studies are very much threatened right now. People don’t know what the rules are,” said well-known Hopkins specialist Dr. Otis Brawley. “We’re actually going to kill people is what it amounts to, because we’re not studying how to get appropriate care to all people.”

AP journalists Shelby Lum and Adithi Ramakrishnan contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MATT OTT, Associated Press Business Writer

Applications for U.S. jobless benefits fell last week as the labor market remains sturdy ahead of an expected purge of federal government employees.

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell by 21,000 to 221,000 for the week ending March 1, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s significantly fewer than the 236,000 new applications analysts expected.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, which have remained mostly in a range between 200,000 and 250,000 for years.

The four-week average, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, inched up by 250 to 224,250.

Some analysts expect layoffs ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency to show up in the report in the coming weeks or months.

Earlier this week, two people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that the IRS is drafting plans to cut its 90,000-person workforce by as much as half through a mix of layoffs, attrition and incentivized buyouts. The people spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the plans.

The layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Already, roughly 7,000 probationary IRS employees with roughly one year or less of service were laid off from the organization in February.

Last week, senior U.S. officials set the government downsizing in motion via a memo dramatically expanding President Donald Trump’s efforts to scale back a workforce. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired, and now the Republican administration is turning its attention to career officials with civil service protection.

Government agencies have been directed to submit by March 13 their plans for what is known as a reduction in force, which would not only lay off employees but eliminate positions altogether.

Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market remains healthy with plentiful jobs and relatively few layoffs.

The Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added 143,000 jobs in January, significantly fewer than December’s 256,000 job gains. However, the unemployment rate ticked down to an even 4%, signaling a still very healthy labor market.

Overall, while layoffs remain low by historical standards, some high-profile companies have announced job cuts already this year.

Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Facebook parent company Meta have all trimmed their workforces already in 2025.

The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of Feb. 22 rose by 42,000 to 1.9 million.

By JAKE OFFENHARTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University senior Maryam Alwan was visiting family in Jordan over winter break when she received an email from the school accusing her of harassment. Her supposed top offense: writing an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for divestment from Israel.

The probe is part of a flurry of recent cases brought by a new university disciplinary committee — the Office of Institutional Equity — against Columbia students who have expressed criticism of Israel, according to records shared with The Associated Press.

In recent weeks, it has sent notices to dozens of students for activities ranging from sharing social media posts in support of Palestinian people to joining “unauthorized” protests.

One student activist is under investigation for putting up stickers off campus that mimicked “Wanted” posters, bearing the likenesses of university trustees. Another, the president of a campus literary club, faces sanction for co-hosting an art exhibition off campus that focused on last spring’s occupation of a campus building.

In Alwan’s case, investigators said the unsigned op-ed in the Columbia Spectator, which also urged the school to curtail academic ties to Israel, may have subjected other students to “unwelcome conduct” based on their religion, national origin or military service.

“It just felt so dystopian to have something go through rigorous edits, only to be labeled discriminatory because it’s about Palestine,” said Alwan, a Palestinian-American comparative studies major. “It made me not want to write or say anything on the subject anymore.”

The committee informed her that possible sanctions for violating school policy ranged from a simple warning to expulsion.

The new disciplinary office is raising alarm among students, faculty and free speech advocates, who accuse the school of bowing to President Donald Trump’s threats to slash funding to universities and deport campus “agitators.”

“Based on how these cases have proceeded, the university now appears to be responding to governmental pressure to suppress and chill protected speech,” said Amy Greer, an attorney who is advising students accused of discrimination. “It’s operating as a business by protecting its assets ahead of its students, faculty and staff.”

Columbia is under financial pressure

On Monday, federal agencies announced they would consider cutting $51 million in contracts to the school — along with billions more in additional grants — due to its “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.”

​​​​“We are resolute that calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our university,” Columbia said in a statement following the announcement.

House Republicans have also launched their own review of Columbia’s disciplinary process. Their most recent letter gave administrators until Feb. 27 to turn over student disciplinary records for nearly a dozen campus incidents, including protests it claimed “promoted terrorism and vilified the U.S. military,” as well as the off-campus art exhibition.

A spokesperson for Columbia declined to specify what, if any, records were turned over to Congress and whether they included the names of students, adding that they could not comment on pending investigations.

The new disciplinary committee was created last summer. According to the university’s updated harassment policy, criticism of another country’s policies could be considered harassment if “directed at or infused with discriminatory comments about persons from, or associated with, that country.” The policy notes that “the use of code words may implicate” it.

Jewish students at Columbia are among those who have received the notices for taking part in pro-Palestinian protests. Other Jewish students have said that rhetoric at protests has crossed into antisemitism and that the administration has been too tolerant of demonstrators who created a hostile environment for people who support Israel.

Disciplinary committee works in secret

Under the office’s policies, students are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement before accessing case materials or speaking with investigators, ensuring the process has remained shrouded in secrecy since it began late last year. Aspect of the committee’s work were first reported this week by the online publication Drop Site News.

Those who have met with investigators say they were asked to name other people involved in pro-Palestinian groups and protests on campus. They said the investigators did not provide clear guidance on whether certain terms — such as “Zionist” or “genocide” — would be considered harassment.

Several students and faculty who spoke with the AP said the committee accused them of participating in demonstrations they did not attend or helping to circulate social media messages they did not post.

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student who served as a negotiator for pro-Palestinian protesters during the previous spring’s encampment, said he was accused by the office of misconduct just weeks before his graduation this December. “I have around 13 allegations against me, most of them are social media posts that I had nothing to do with,” he said.

After refusing to sign the non-disclosure agreement, Khalil said the university put a hold on his transcript and threatened to block him from graduating. But when he appealed the decision through a lawyer, they eventually backed down, Khalil said.

“They just want to show Congress and right-wing politicians that they’re doing something, regardless of the stakes for students,” Khalil said. “It’s mainly an office to chill pro-Palestine speech.”

According to some students, the disciplinary push may be reigniting the pro-Palestinian protest movement that roiled campuses last year.

In recent days, students have occupied multiple buildings at Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia University, to protest the expulsion of two students accused of disrupting an Israeli history class. Several students were arrested following an hourslong takeover of a building Wednesday night.