RELEASE: Mayor & City Council of Baltimore Joint Statement on Federal Freeze of All Grant & Loan Funding

BALTIMORE, MD (Tuesday, January 28, 2025) – Today, Mayor Brandon M. Scott, City Council President Zeke Cohen, Comptroller Bill Henry, and the entirety of the City Council of Baltimore including Councilmembers Mark Parker, Danielle McCray, Ryan Dorsey, Mark Conway, Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer, Vice President Sharon Green Middleton, James Torrence, Paris Gray, John Bullock, Phylicia Porter, Zac Blanchard, Jermaine Jones, Antonio Glover, and Odette Ramos released the following joint statement on the Trump Administration’s unprecedented freeze on federal grant and loan funding.

“Today, we are assessing the devastating impact of the Trump Administration’s unprecedented, politically-motivated freeze on federal grant and loan funding. By our initial estimation, this order puts potentially billions of dollars destined for our city at risk. Despite the lack of clarity in the hastily-issued order, we are working with city agencies, Governor Wes Moore’s administration, our state government delegation, our Congressional delegation, and all of our community partners who could be potentially impacted on outlining exactly what the ramifications will be.

“What we do know now is that the impacts will be devastating. It will make it harder for hard-working Baltimoreans to feed their families and make ends meet, it will severely hamper our law enforcement and civilian violence intervention work from making our streets safer, it will mean our most vulnerable residents will lose access to services, and it will temporarily halt many efforts to strengthen our city’s aging infrastructure.

“This order is nothing short of an intentional effort by the Trump Administration to cripple cities like ours in an effort to unilaterally and illegally achieve a blatantly political agenda within the federal government. The City will do everything in our power to prevent this from happening, including filing suit in federal court, which we are already in the process of doing.” 

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