AMNA NAWAZ: A broad federal funding freeze announced by the Trump administration last week and blocked by a pair of judges is destabilizing a wide range of programs despite the court interventions.

Over the past few days, some health care and Head Start programs report they have sporadically been blocked from funding, forcing some to shut down.

Political correspondent Lisa Desjardins has been investigating what's happening and joins us now to share what she has found.

So, Lisa, what have you found?

Who's being affected here?

LISA DESJARDINS: Right.

"News Hour" has been in front on this.

I have been doing three days of reporting with Ali Rogin as well to figure out what's happening here.

And I want to talk about two specific areas, one, Head Start programs around the country and also community health care centers.

Both of them are funded in large part through the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS.

Here's what we know.

There have been funding problems in the last week and day.

Head Start programs in 27 states have felt these sporadic funding freezes, many of them still feeling it.

Those serve 20,000 kids and families, the affected programs.

Now, community health centers in at least nine states over the past few days have also been blocked from accessing and being able to get their funding.

Now, Head Start programs, of course, are focused on early childhood learning and families.

Some of them have already spent some of this money, and they needed to recoup it as part of the program.

In Washington state, Head Start programs have had these blocks.

They call them rolling blackouts.

JOEL RYAN, Washington State Association of Head Start: So this created an incredible amount of chaos and confusion across our community.

It meant a lot of programs, even up until yesterday, were worried about paying their rent, paying their staff.

And, at the end of the day, what really impacts are the kids and the families.

They're the ones that are depending on childcare.

And if their childcare is closed, that means they miss work.

LISA DESJARDINS: And there was a program that had to close in Washington state because of this.

Now, I want to stress this is sporadic.

Some programs are able to access the funds.

Some aren't.

At the same time, I want to talk about the other major program that we're looking at, the community health centers across this country.

Ali Rogin has done incredible reporting here.

She documented that it's happened in at least nine states.

And one of them is the state of Virginia, where one center was closed at one point because of the problem.

The issue is the Payment Management Services, it's called also PMS, that has these health centers waiting for their funds.

One of -- the CEO in Virginia of the community health centers told us this all has been happening with no warning.

TRACY DOUGLAS, Virginia Community Healthcare Association: But all of a sudden, it went down with no notification, nothing.

We had to hear from health centers texting me to let us know, well, we can't get into the PMS system again.

So I say that with the asterisk that now we are in a life of uncertainty.

And we have never, frankly, ever been in this situation.

LISA DESJARDINS: Now, an important reminder that community health centers in this country serve one in 10 Americans and they serve one in five people in rural America.

AMNA NAWAZ: This comes after the funding freeze proposal, but that has been blocked by the courts.

Do we know what's behind these blocks that they're seeing?

LISA DESJARDINS: We asked HHS, because at first it seemed like that's where all of this was coming from.

And, in fact, for these two groups, that's where the issue is.

So let's explain what HHS responded to us with last night and then again today, when we asked about community health centers, wrote us that: "Some payment management system users experienced technical issues last week.

The system is back up and running now, but users may be experiencing lags due to the high volume of requests."

So they're saying something happened with the system and now they're just trying to process all the people that were backlogged.

Well, let's think about this.

What we know is last week that funding freeze went in place.

Trump administration folks were saying it was not supposed to affect some of these programs, but they did feel it temporarily.

So the switch went off, the switch went back on.

And now there's a thinking that somehow the system couldn't manage that.

However, we don't know for sure that that's the case here, because our Laura Barron-Lopez, as she's reported in this very chair many times before, has been asking the Trump administration repeatedly, are you following the court orders that say to reinstate all of this funding?

She has not gotten a response.

So we really don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes.

AMNA NAWAZ: At the same time, we know the funding freeze is affecting many of those programs who have had funding restored.

So what about the wider programs that have felt the same jolt?

LISA DESJARDINS: Right, it's important to know there's a universe of programs that are concerned here about grants and ultimate funding.

Some of them are individual, tailored, like Women's Infant and Children program that helps mothers and fathers who are dealing with low-income salaries.

And one of those we talked to is a woman named Sarah Manasrah, who lives in New York City.

She's got a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old.

And she says she really depends on the eggs and the other healthy foods that she can get from WIC.

And last week, that funding grant pause, the fear about it really put her in a bad situation, really fearful, because so much for her is at stake.

SARAH MANASRAH, WIC Recipient: Threatening to take away literally fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk and formula from babies is really the worst thing I can think of and it's not acceptable.

So it's not only about the stress.

It's also about being able to maintain our health and it's about us being able to live and survive.

So that's really what's at stake here.

LISA DESJARDINS: She's still funded, but it's a climate of fear.

Trump allies have said that's the kind of program that they want to look at.

AMNA NAWAZ: You have also been looking at a number of other programs in government and out under scrutiny because of the Trump administration's efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

What's the latest?

LISA DESJARDINS: It's not really clear what's applying there.

And we know that programs around the country are having unexplained blocks on some of these and outside of HHS that they think may be related to these DEI executive orders.

Now, one program we talked to was a domestic abuse shelter.

Our Kyle Midura spoke to them in Pennsylvania.

And the manager there, Lauren Peterson, said, DEI for them means that they are including everyone, especially vulnerable populations.

They have a DEI site on their Web site.

And she said, it's important for us that we make sure to include everyone.

That's a big stake item for us.

Meanwhile, we know that there are problems in funding elsewhere, including with some mental health programs, some substance abuse programs, DHS, USDA, all of these unexplained funding blocks that we're watching very carefully.

AMNA NAWAZ: And we're going to continue to watch those all.

Lisa Desjardins, thank you.

LISA DESJARDINS: You're welcome.