Trump administration rescinds order attempting to freeze federal aid spending
Category: News & Politics
Via: tacos • 4 weeks ago • 24 commentsBy: Sahil Kapur, Peter Alexander and Kate Santaliz (NBC News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
/ Updated By Sahil Kapur, Peter Alexander and Kate Santaliz
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday rescinded an order putting a widespread freeze on most federal grants and loans amid significant criticism, according to a new White House memo a source provided to NBC News.
A senior administration official confirmed the rescission Wednesday, which was ordered by the Office of Management and Budget.
The initial order, which sparked chaos and confusion across Washington, was temporarily halted by a federal district judge Tuesday evening. Democrats, who aggressively pushed back on the White House order, celebrated the rescission of the memo soon after it was reported Wednesday.
"Americans fought back and Donald Trump backed off," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "Though the Trump Administration failed in this tactic, it's no secret that they will try to find another, and when they do, it will again be Senate Democrats there to call it out, fight back, and defend American families."
The first directive from OMB came Monday night, directing federal agencies to "temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal."
The memo said the pause would allow the administration to review which programs were "consistent" with Trump's agenda. Social Security, Medicare and direct payments to individuals were not supposed to be affected, but because the memo was so vaguely worded, it wasn't clear exactly which aid would be halted.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that pulling back the memo was an attempt to "end any confusion."
"This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze," she wrote on X. "It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court's injunction. The President's EO's on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented."
Throughout Tuesday, the White House attempted to clarify the exceptions — including Medicaid — but by then, there was widespread confusion and reports of people and organizations unable to access systems to receive their federal aid.
Nonprofit groups that worked on health care and homelessness, for example, told NBC News that they were unable to get into websites to withdraw funds, and online portals to access Medicaid payments were temporarily down.
Democracy Forward, a progressive nonprofit group, filed the lawsuit against OMB that resulted in Judge Loren AliKhan issuing the order that temporarily blocked the freeze from going into effect.
"While we hope this will enable millions of people in communities across the country to breathe a sigh of relief, we condemn the Trump-Vance administration's harmful and callous approach of unleashing chaos and harm on the American people," Skye Perryman, the CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. "Our team will continue to bring swift legal actions to protect the American people and will use the legal process to ensure that federal funding is restored."
Sahil Kapur
Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
Peter Alexander
Peter Alexander is chief White House correspondent for NBC News.
Kate Santaliz
Kate Santaliz is an associate producer for NBC News' Capitol Hill team.
Gary Grumbach and Amanda Terkel contributed.
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This dizzying development brought to you by the Department of Government Efficiency Circus.
LMAO
Yes, because the court is responsible for the confusion.
Clearly our new press secretary’s core competency is going to be gaslighting the people with maximum conviction.
But, but, she's wholesome looking, the youngest Press Secretary ever and giving old men the tingles...
boy is she ever....
To be fair, she does clean up good.
Soon we will be hearing there never was such an order, that it was all "fake news" from the enemy of the people media that "hates trump".
He gave it a shot. True Trump form. Maybe it gets legs, but perhaps it won't. No harm no foul.
The next time may bring more damage than anyone could have imagined
Ooooh … what does this lever do?
Just more clear evidence of what a complete moron this guy is.
I'm sure you think that of Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk, George Washington Carver, Eli Whitney, Henry Ford, and the scientists that came up with the Covid vaccine Who dared to grab "the next lever"................./S
Lol. That went right over your head. [removed][✘]
This was the first venture into a bigly action, I can hardly wait for the next few.
He got his hands on the problem and it made them look small. Cofefe!
Trump is back at work- he announced today that he wants a 30,000 person detention camp for migrants at Guantanamo Bay.
Can't wait to hear that that cost will be.
Better call Sherrif Joe Arpaio and tell him to bring his tents.
Gitmo can't hold but a thousand detainees, never more than 800.
It doesn't have the facilities to house or feed 30,000 people let alone the support required from the Navy and USMC.
Another hairbrained idea from Fox that Trump just had to parrot.
The whole Naval base isn't that big. There are less than 9000 personnel on that base at any given time.
There aren't 30,000 "beds" in Gitmo.
Cots, maybe, left over from the Haiti and Cuban Crises from 1980 through 1995.
Once the hangars were filled, the Navy set up hundreds of tents to house economic refugees who were eventually returned to Haiti unless they had AIDS.
Hundreds of refugees with AIDS languished at Gitmo for 20 years
Trump now wants to hold repeat border jumpers in limbo, without any due process
and people question why he's getting tagged as a fascist?
Double what capacity?
Gitmo once held as many as 55,000 Cubans and Haitians.
Interesting reads
US turned away thousands of Haitian asylum-seekers and detained hundreds more in the 90s
I agree with you. It sounds quite permanent. But have they had due process? He does use the word "some."
Rack 'em and stack 'em just like they did in Auschwitz
I once unloaded and signed over a 108 undocumented Chinese immigrants in the 90's to Gitmo. They were promptly interviewed and processed. We were later told one of them qualified for immunity and the rest were returned to China.
Trump’s solution does sound kind of final.
Maybe we can train them, arm them and let them loose in Cuba, LoL.