FEMA announced in April that it was ending the funding to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.” The program saved taxpayers more than $150 billion over 20 years, the plaintiffs said.

A group of 20 mostly Democrat-led U.S. states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block the Trump administration from terminating a multibillion-dollar grant program that funds infrastructure upgrades to protect against natural disasters.

State prosecutors want to restore $4.5 billion in canceled funding and to declare that FEMA's acting administrator is serving "unlawfully."