The Education Department will release $1.3 billion in previously withheld grant money for after-school programs, days after 10 Republican senators sent a letter imploring the Trump administration to allow frozen education money to be sent to states.

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and State Superintendent Mo Green held a joint press conference Monday to announce the lawsuit.

The Education Department will release $1.3 billion in previously withheld grant money for after-school programs, days after 10 Republican senators sent a letter imploring the Trump administration to allow frozen education money to be sent to states.

The Trump administration still hasn't released more than $5 billion in previously approved federal education funding, including $130 million still owed to North Carolina.

Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Monday that Minnesota has joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general and two states in suing the Trump administration over alleged frozen funding

The Trump administration says the funds, which were supposed to go to schools July 1, are under review. Democratic attorneys general and governors are suing to restore the money.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave the Trump administration free rein to gut the Department of Education on Monday — voting 6-3 to lift a federal judge's order blocking the dismantling — in what Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted in a scathing dissent as an "abuse of our equitable authority" that she "cannot condone.