The Dictatorship
Trump is daring anyone to stop his illegal funding freeze
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When President Donald Trump named Russel Vought to run the Office of Management and Budget, I warned it was a sign that his administration intended to seize total control of federal spending from Congress. Two weeks ago, I said that if Vought were confirmed, billions of dollars in projects would go unfunded at the president’s whim, no matter what legislators have said.
I was wrong. They didn’t even wait for Vought to be confirmed.
Instead, on Monday night, OMB’s acting director, Matthew J. Vaeth, sent a memo across the federal government ordering a freeze of “all Federal financial assistance.” The memo insists on calling this a “pause.” A federal judge intervened on Tuesday afternoon, issuing an administrative stay to hold off on the OMB order being fully implemented until Monday at soonest. But beyond the immediate and likely catastrophic impact of halting, even briefly, any portion of the $3 trillion in annual spending Vaeth cites, the memo serves as a reminder that any “temporary” power that Trump claims for himself won’t be easily relinquished.
While Vaeth was anything but vague about the reasoning behind the funding freeze, the scope of the pause itself has been wildly confusing.
“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,” Vaeth wrote in the memowhich was first reported by Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket. It then required federal agencies to go through all grants and loans that it doles out to ensure that they align with the firehose of executive orders that Trump has issued. In the meantime, Vaeth ordered agencies to “temporarily pause” any programs that could contradict those orders “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
While Vaeth was anything but vague about the reasoning behind the funding freeze, the scope of the pause itself has been wildly confusing. While exempting programs that provide assistance “directly to individuals,” as well as Social Security and Medicare, the order could potentially affect a big and broad swath of programming. Accompanying the memo was a nearly 900-page spreadsheet for officials to plug in the details of their programs and identify which funding is legally required to be distributed before March 15, when the current short-term spending bill runs out of money. And because the two-page memo lacked specific guidance, the odds are good that program officials — with the encouragement of their newly installed political minderswho the order tasks with overseeing this process— will err on the side of shutting down anything that could conceivably fall into one of Vaeth’s ideological buckets.
For a glimpse at how this will play out in the short term, look to the halt on foreign aid handed down last week. That freeze didn’t just call for a review but a “stop work” order for all currently funded programs. On Monday, several U.S. Agency for International Development staffers were placed on leave for supposedly violating the pause — a warning to others who might want to keep doing their jobs in the face of a blatantly illegal order. Since that halt, a sense of confusion and concern has reigned in the international aid community.
The mess will surely worsen now that domestic programs are included. Not even the administration seems to know the scope of what it’s asking: When reporters asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, at her first briefing, if Medicaid would be affected, she replied, “I’ll check back on that and get back to you.” OMB itself issued a follow-up that said Medicaid, SNAP, Pell grants and “other similar programs” will not be paused.
The shifting guidance has had nigh-cartoonish consequences. The spokesperson for Meals on Wheels on Tuesday told HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney that “the uncertainty right now is creating chaos for local Meals on Wheels providers not knowing whether they should be serving meals today.” (Leavitt said at her briefing that the group would not be included in the pause.) The idea that a program as innocuous seeming as Meals on Wheels could see its funding frozen may seem absurd. But as we saw with “anti-woke” laws in Floridavagueness prompts pre-emptive cooperation and censorship from those who fear retaliation. Can anyone say with a straight face they know for sure whether MAGA views feeding the elderly as overly “inclusionary” for old people?
Aside from being a major crisis for these organizations, the memo from OMB is a bright red warning sign that any funding the White House “temporarily” pauses could easily become permanently blocked. Under the Impound Control Act of 1974it doesn’t matter if Trump doesn’t like how federal money is being spent. He simply doesn’t have the power to withhold, or “impound,” funds that Congress has appropriated. There are a few exceptions to this, but as University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos noted on Blueskyeven temporary pauses are illegal under the Impound Control Act. But in his Senate confirmation hearing this month, Vought said that he thinks the act is unconstitutional. He has argued in the past that a president can unilaterally withhold whatever funding doesn’t align with his vision. And if Congress doesn’t like it, Vought says, that’s too bad.
With Congress inactive, that leaves enforcement most likely up to the courts.
Speaking of Congress, the ranking Democrats from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees wrote to OMB on Monday night to demand that Vaeth “reverse course to ensure requirements enacted into law are faithfully met and the nation’s spending laws are implemented as intended.” House Democrats are meanwhile out of town for the week but holding an emergency virtual caucus meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the “illegal Republican funding freeze.”
But it seems congressional Republicans are more than happy to give up their power of the purse. The GOP-controlled Senate shows no signs of delaying confirmation of Vought or any of Trump’s other nominees, even as the president effectively strips legislators of their authority. Amazingly, House Appropriations Chair Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., is apparently unclear on whether appropriations even count as “laws” rather than a “directive.” (They do, but it really shows how far we’ve come from when the House Appropriations chair was one of the most powerful positions in the country.)
With Congress inactive, that leaves enforcement most likely up to the courts. Democratic state attorneys general are already preparing a lawsuit to get the freeze overturned, and further briefings will soon move forward in the suit from an NGO that prompted Tuesday’s administrative stay, setting us up for a potential speed run to the Supreme Court. Given Chief Justice John Roberts’ views about the separation of powersit’s hard to see him lining up against the Impound Control Act and its clear support for Congress’ Article I control over federal spending. But as the Prospect’s Daniel Dayen notedit’s clear that the administration wanted to be sued over this action and that Trump’s advisers are confident their cause will prevail among enough justices to win out.
As the matter winds through the courts, Democrats can’t sit back and let this slide. There needs to be members of Congress hitting every local news station to explain why popular programs like Head Start might be shuttered if deemed a “DEI initiative,” how the GOP is glad people’s medical bills aren’t being paidand exactly who is to blame. Further, it should be a no-brainer that any funding bill that requires Democratic support — including keeping the government open in mid-March — must include clear language repudiating Trump’s cash grab before it receives a single Democratic vote. Anything less will be an open invitation for this administration to continue attacking both our constitutional system and the millions of Americans who depend on the funds Trump is illegally slashing.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
The Dictatorship
Appeals court declines to reinstate Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order
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The Dictatorship
Social Security is the latest front in Trump and Musk’s attack on trust in government
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Standing next to President Donald Trump in the Oval OfficeElon Musk conjured an image of a Social Security system riddled with fraud that was as vivid as it was make-believe. For example, Musk said that large numbers of 150-year-olds are receiving Social Security benefits. But, as Wired notedwhen recipients’ birth dates are default or incomplete, the programming language that Social Security’s benefits system was written in defaults to 1875. What Musk came across was a programming quirk, not fraud.
But since Musk is now one of the key nodes of the right’s ever-mightier misinformation machine, his falsehood was quickly spread to untold millions as more (fake) evidence that the federal government is a mess. And it gets worse: The Social Security Administration’s top official, Michelle King, a civil servant with decades of experience, resigned in protest after a confrontation in which she refused to give the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the incredibly sensitive information about every American stored in Social Security’s databases.
Trump has always both exploited and encouraged distrust in government.
It’s not clear whether DOGE now has that access, or what they would do with it. And if that makes you deeply uneasy, know that that anxiety is perfectly fine with the Trump administration.
In the 1960s, as much as three-quarters of the public told pollsters they trusted the government to do what is right either most of the time or always; today that number sits in the low 20s. The reasons for the decline are complex, but Trump has always both exploited and encouraged distrust in government; the fact that it is so widespread is a key reason he is president right now.
Yet if electing Trump is a symptom of distrust toward the government, the early days of his administration indicate he will give Americans even more reason to believe that the government can’t solve problems, doesn’t keep its promises, and never deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Among the victims of this alternately haphazard and malevolent approach is a group that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Farmers who signed contracts with the government to begin conservation and renewable energy projects on their land, that obligated the government to reimburse them for the cost of those projects, have seen the funds frozen. That leaves them holding the bag for loans they took out and money they invested on the assumption that the government would keep its end of the agreement. One farmer told The New York Times he would “never do anything with any government agency ever again.”
This story is playing out with various government programs across the country. Small nonprofits that receive federal funds to provide services like Head Start or rides for the elderly to dialysis treatment have had to lay off workers or shut down entirely because of the funding freeze. The Solar For All program had signed contracts worth $7 billion with states, localities and nonprofits to set up community solar projects; the Trump administration froze the funds and left many projects in limbo. Last week, the administration essentially shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leaving consumers more vulnerable to financial scams. And the White House plans to lay off thousands of IRS workers, which will likely reverse the progress the agency had recently made in improving customer service.
The next Democratic president and Congress will have an enormous challenge.
These are just a few of the actions the administration has taken, but the result will be the same: a government that gives people poorer service, can’t be trusted to keep its word, and isn’t there when we need it. In the future, how many people will want to enter into contracts with the government like the ones those farmers did? How many talented and idealistic young people will choose to go into public service after watching thousands of civil servants summarily fired?
This is a tragic irony of the destruction currently in progress: A genuine, good-faith effort to improve government efficiency could save money, help Americans by improving the delivery of services and boost people’s faith in government. It would be an extremely worthwhile undertaking; there is plenty of room for improvement in how the federal government operates. This administration, however, is not operating in good faith, and it seems determined to give people more reasons to believe that government can’t do anything right.
Many conservatives dislike government for ideological reasons; whether it does its job well or poorly, they’ll still say they don’t trust it. But there are millions of Americans who judge government based on what they’ve heard and what they’ve experienced. Long after Trump and Musk are done slashing and burning their way through Washington, their suspicions will remain.
That means the next Democratic president and Congress will have an enormous challenge when they try to make the case that government can be an ally rather than an impediment. Not only will they face the practical task of rebuilding what Trump and Musk have destroyed, they’ll have to rebuild trust as well — and that could be even harder.
The Dictatorship
Trump faces another lawsuit from religious leaders over his immigration moves
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The Trump administration is facing yet another lawsuit over the president’s executive orders on immigrationthis time from Catholic bishops in the U.S. who accuse the administration of breaking the law when it abruptly halted federal funds for refugee resettlement programs.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed the complaint in a federal court in D.C. on Tuesday, accusing the administration of violating Congress’ appropriation powers and of suspending the funding “without public notice and opportunity to comment” as required by law.
The funding pause has left the conference with “millions of dollars in pending, unpaid reimbursements for services already rendered to refugees,” forcing the conference to lay off 50 employees and causing “irreparable damage” to its programs and its relationship with the refugees it serves, the complaint says.
The USCCB is one of several national organizations — most of them faith-based — that receives federal funding to help refugee populations settle in the U.S. Those groups have been left in limbo since late January, when the Trump administration announced an immediate pause in funding for refugee resettlement agencies as it reviews foreign aid programs.
The Trump White House has faced resistance from religious organizations over its sweeping immigration crackdown. Last week, 27 Christian and Jewish groups sued the administration for ending a policy that restricted immigration officials from conducting operations in places of worship. The complaint follows a similar lawsuit from Quaker groups, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a Sikh temple.
President Trump and his allies have also attacked religious leaders for criticizing the administration’s deportation efforts. Last month, Trump denounced an Episcopal bishop who pleaded with him to “have mercy” on immigrants in a sermon, calling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.” Vice President JD Vance and “border czar” Tom Homan have publicly sparred with Pope Francis over immigration as well, with Vance and Homan, who are both Catholic, essentially telling the head of the Catholic church to mind his own business.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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