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Friday, February 14, 2025

Chaos ripples through country as Trump orders federal funding freeze

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17 days ago
20250128
FILE - President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Miami to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Jan. 27, 2025, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Miami to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Jan. 27, 2025, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Mark Schiefelbein

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump plunged the U.S. gov­ern­ment in­to pan­ic and con­fu­sion on Tues­day by paus­ing fed­er­al fund­ing while his ad­min­is­tra­tion con­ducts an across-the-board ide­o­log­i­cal re­view to up­root pro­gres­sive ini­tia­tives, set­ting the stage for a con­sti­tu­tion­al clash over con­trol of tax­pay­er mon­ey.

Ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials said the de­ci­sion to halt loans and grants — a fi­nan­cial life­line for lo­cal gov­ern­ments, schools and non­prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tions around the coun­try — was nec­es­sary to en­sure that spend­ing com­plies with Trump’s re­cent blitz of ex­ec­u­tive or­ders. The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent wants to in­crease fos­sil fu­el pro­duc­tion, re­move pro­tec­tions for trans­gen­der peo­ple and end di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion ef­forts.

But a vague­ly word­ed memo is­sued by the Of­fice of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, com­bined with in­com­plete an­swers from the White House through­out the day, left law­mak­ers, pub­lic of­fi­cials and av­er­age Amer­i­cans strug­gling to fig­ure out what pro­grams would be af­fect­ed by the pause. Even tem­po­rary in­ter­rup­tions in fund­ing could cause lay­offs or de­lays in pub­lic ser­vices.

“This sort of came out of the blue,” said David Smith, a spokesper­son for the Shawnee Mis­sion School Dis­trict in Kansas, one of count­less dis­tricts that re­ceives fed­er­al fund­ing. Now they’re try­ing to fig­ure out what it means “based on ze­ro in­for­ma­tion.”

Re­lat­ed Sto­ries

Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials said pro­grams that pro­vide di­rect as­sis­tance to Amer­i­cans would not be af­fect­ed, such as Medicare, Med­ic­aid, So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty, stu­dent loans and food stamps. They al­so de­fend­ed the fund­ing pause, say­ing Trump was fol­low­ing through on his promise to turn Wash­ing­ton up­side down if elect­ed to a sec­ond term.

How­ev­er, the ef­fects were be­ing felt far from the na­tion’s cap­i­tal. Or­ga­ni­za­tions like Meals on Wheels, which re­ceives fed­er­al mon­ey to de­liv­er food to the el­der­ly, were wor­ried about get­ting cut off.

“The lack of clar­i­ty and un­cer­tain­ty right now is cre­at­ing chaos,” spokes­woman Jen­ny Young said. She said “se­niors may pan­ic not know­ing where their next meals will come from.”

The Na­tion­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion post­poned this week’s pan­els for re­view­ing grant ap­pli­ca­tions. Of­fi­cials in Prichard, Al­aba­ma, feared they wouldn’t re­ceive in­fra­struc­ture fund­ing to fix their leak­ing drink­ing wa­ter sys­tem. Re­pub­li­can lead­ers in Louisiana said they were “seek­ing clar­i­ty” to en­sure noth­ing was “jeop­ar­diz­ing fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty of the state.”

“Trump’s ac­tions would wreak hav­oc in red and blue com­mu­ni­ties every­where,” said Sen. Pat­ty Mur­ray of Wash­ing­ton, the top De­mo­c­rat on the Sen­ate Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee. “We are talk­ing about our small towns, our cities, our school dis­tricts.”

The full scope of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­view was spelled out in a 51-page spread­sheet sent to fed­er­al agen­cies and viewed by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Each line was a dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive, from pool safe­ty to trib­al work­force de­vel­op­ment to spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion.

Of­fi­cials were di­rect­ed to an­swer a se­ries of yes or no ques­tions for every item on the list, in­clud­ing “does this pro­gram pro­mote gen­der ide­ol­o­gy?” or “does this pro­gram pro­mote or sup­port in any way abor­tion?” Re­spons­es are due by Feb. 7.

Tril­lions of dol­lars are po­ten­tial­ly un­der re­view. Grants that have been award­ed but not spent are al­so sup­posed to be halt­ed if they might vi­o­late one of Trump’s ex­ec­u­tive or­ders.

“The use of Fed­er­al re­sources to ad­vance Marx­ist eq­ui­ty, trans­gen­derism, and green new deal so­cial en­gi­neer­ing poli­cies is a waste of tax­pay­er dol­lars that does not im­prove the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” wrote Matthew Vaeth, the act­ing di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, in a memo dis­trib­uted Mon­day.

Vaeth wrote that “each agency must com­plete a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of all of their Fed­er­al fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance pro­grams to iden­ti­fy pro­grams, projects, and ac­tiv­i­ties that may be im­pli­cat­ed by any of the Pres­i­dent’s ex­ec­u­tive or­ders.” He al­so wrote that the pause should be im­ple­ment­ed “to the ex­tent per­mis­si­ble un­der ap­plic­a­ble law.”

The pause on grants and loans was sched­uled to take ef­fect at 5 p.m. ET, just one day af­ter agen­cies were in­formed of the de­ci­sion.

De­moc­rats de­scribed the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion as capri­cious and il­le­gal. They ar­gued that the pres­i­dent had no right to uni­lat­er­al­ly stop spend­ing mon­ey ap­pro­pri­at­ed by Con­gress.

New York At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Leti­tia James planned to ask a Man­hat­tan fed­er­al court to block the fund­ing pause.

“There is no ques­tion this pol­i­cy is reck­less, dan­ger­ous, il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al,” she said.

Sep­a­rate­ly, group of non­prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tions filed a law­suit in Wash­ing­ton say­ing that the fund­ing pause is “de­void of any le­gal ba­sis or the barest ra­tio­nale.”

The is­sue dom­i­nat­ed the first brief­ing held by White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt. She said the ad­min­is­tra­tion was try­ing to be “good stew­ards” of pub­lic mon­ey by mak­ing sure that there was “no more fund­ing for trans­gen­derism and wok­e­ness.”

She de­nied that Trump was de­lib­er­ate­ly chal­leng­ing Con­gress to es­tab­lish his dom­i­nance over the fed­er­al bud­get.

“He’s just try­ing to en­sure that the tax mon­ey go­ing out the door in this very bank­rupt city ac­tu­al­ly aligns with the will and the pri­or­i­ties of the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” she said.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency con­firmed that it would im­ple­ment the pause to “align fed­er­al spend­ing and ac­tion with the will of the Amer­i­can peo­ple as ex­pressed through Pres­i­dent Trump’s pri­or­i­ties.” The De­part­ment of En­er­gy al­so said it was con­duct­ing a re­view of its spend­ing.

The fund­ing pause is the lat­est ex­am­ple of how Trump is har­ness­ing his pow­er over the fed­er­al sys­tem to ad­vance his con­ser­v­a­tive goals. Un­like dur­ing his first term, when Trump and many mem­bers of his in­ner cir­cle were un­fa­mil­iar with Wash­ing­ton, this time he’s reach­ing deep in­to the bu­reau­cra­cy.

For ex­am­ple, fed­er­al em­ploy­ees are be­ing asked to re­port their col­leagues if they try to con­tin­ue di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion ini­tia­tives.

“They are push­ing the pres­i­dent’s agen­da from the bot­tom up,” said Paul Light, an ex­pert on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of pub­lic ser­vice at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

He al­so said there are risks in Trump’s ap­proach, es­pe­cial­ly with so many vot­ers re­liant on Wash­ing­ton.

“You can’t just has­sle, has­sle, has­sle,” Light said. “You’ve got to de­liv­er.”

Fears about in­ter­rup­tion in gov­ern­ment ser­vices were ex­ac­er­bat­ed as states re­port­ed prob­lems with the Med­ic­aid fund­ing por­tal, where of­fi­cials re­quest re­im­burse­ment for pro­vid­ing health­care to poor res­i­dents.

De­moc­rats con­demned the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, con­nect­ing the is­sue to the fund­ing pause.

But Leav­itt said the por­tal would be back on­line soon.

“We have con­firmed no pay­ments have been af­fect­ed — they are still be­ing processed and sent,” she post­ed on so­cial me­dia.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers JoNel Alec­cia, Mo­ri­ah Balin­git, Collin Bink­ley, Matthew Daly, Lisa Mas­caro, Adithi Ra­makr­ish­nan, Aman­da Seitz, Michael Sisak and Tam­my We­ber con­tributed to this re­port.

WASH­ING­TON (AP)


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