Congress
Trump still wants a spending fight with Congress, even after memo debacle
The Trump administration has been spoiling for a legal fight over its power to ignore Congress’s spending laws since the president was last in office. But sending Washington into a tailspin over a poorly written memo was not part of the plan.
While the Trump administration intends to ax funding for initiatives it views as out of step with its priorities — like foreign aid, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and environmental spending — it didn’t mean to blow up funding for a broader suite of programs as it did when the White House budget office on Monday released a memo that brought all federal financial assistance programs to a grinding halt, according to two senior administration officials, granted anonymity to speak about private conversations.
The memo appeared to be a brazen and sweeping attempt to challenge Congress’s power of the purse under a theory from Trump’s appointee for White House budget office director, Russell Vought, that the executive branch is not required to spend dollars that do not align with its goals.
And it was — the White House just didn’t intend for it to be quite so sweeping.
Trump’s inner circle was irked about the OMB memo, complaining Wednesday that it had not gone through the proper channels and wasn’t vetted. Its broad wording created a political and a legal problem — arousing anger and concern even from some Republican lawmakers worried their constituents would be hurt and putting the administration in a thorny legal position that has already resulted in one judge halting the spending freeze and a second poised to do the same.
“It was just poorly written from policy people, not comms people — and so people took that first line and ran with it, which was a ‘freeze of federal funding,’” said one of the senior administration officials, arguing that the memo should have been more narrow in scope.
The confusion ironically left conservatives long critical of safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program scrambling to clarify that those dollars remained untouched.
The administration since tried to course correct by rescinding its first memo in an attempt to assuage some of the immediate panic and confusion.
But even without it, the president’s aggressively written executive orders that preceded the memo have created their own disruption — leaving billions of dollars of federal spending up in the air as agencies review whether they are complying with orders to gut Biden administration plans for the environment and other Democratic priorities, including many that were approved by Congress.
Clarity may only come once the courts weigh in. While legal experts believe the administration’s argument won’t hold up, Vought and others appear eager for a confrontation on the matter in court, perhaps anticipating that a conservative-dominated Supreme Court would rule in its favor.
The legal fights over the executive branch’s authority to withhold spending are already underway, particularly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made clear that it was only the memo — not the federal funding freeze to these same programs — that had been rescinded.
For instance, federal funding remains on hold for environmental initiatives undertaken by past administrations, including the Inflation Reduction Act’s $7 billion Solar For All program and its National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, which was singled out in Trump’s executive order as an example of the spending he wanted to halt.
James Capretta, who was associate director of the White House’s budget office under former President George W. Bush, said the Trump administration’s “very expansive view of” what federal spending the executive branch can cancel or delay, actions known as impoundments, got mixed up in confusion over the memo.
“I think their intention was to do something pretty expansive — to halt new spending until the new people coming in have a chance to review what’s going on,” said Capretta, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “They just wrote it in way too expansive of a way, covering all kinds of things that are governed by laws that they have to change first if they want to change how the money is spent.”
“The impoundment issue is still there, but it’s going to be tested, I think, later when they’re ready,” Capretta added.
Trump’s White House is making no apologies for freezing congressionally allocated dollars that don’t align with his agenda — a chopping block that includes everything from infrastructure payments to diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government. And the administration is still furious with the media for stoking fear of broader cuts, something officials argue was never going to happen.
But officials also privately acknowledge that their OMB document was not ready for primetime — reminiscent, to some, of the slapdash early moves during his first term, when a ban on migrants from majority-Muslim countries and other orders were quickly halted following legal challenges — and overly broad.
“Everyone got freaked out and confused by the guidance memo,” the senior administration official said. “If you go back into the history of guidance memos, there are probably none that have warranted any coverage — let alone wall-to-wall coverage.”
Still, given the broad wording of many of Trump’s executive orders, federal agencies will almost certainly need more specific instructions from the White House budget office to translate the president’s broad policy statements into actions. At least one senior Trump official acknowledged Wednesday that rescinding the OMB memo would do little to resolve questions about what exactly is being cut, and that another memo will likely be needed.
Neither the White House nor a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget responded to a request for comment.
Inside the federal agencies affected by the confusing guidance from the White House, the chaos has not abated. Grantees, informed via email on Tuesday that all award recipients will temporarily be unable to receive new disbursements, remain in limbo. And even after subsequent guidance from some administrators that certain payments will still be available, many who oversee aid programs are proceeding with caution, not knowing what else may be in the offing.
“It’s a mess — no one knows what we are allowed to be doing and telling grantees,” said one official at the Department of Justice. “We have no clear and understandable guidance from leadership. Meetings are being cancelled left and right. We are trying to get back to the rhythm assuming the regular course of business is in place. But everyone is really cautious.”
Also thrown into chaos were the hundreds of clinics around the country that provide free and subsidized contraception, testing for sexually transmitted infections and other services to millions of low-income people through the Title X family planning program. The clinics this week struggled to get answers to questions about the funding as Health and Human Services staff have been barred from communicating externally.
“People were trying to get in [to our government payment system] and nobody could get in, and they were getting different types of messages,” said Clare Coleman, the president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. “We didn’t know when that hold was going to be lifted.”
Though funding has resumed, Coleman warned that some clinics in the network receive no other source of funding, and would have to close if Title X is disrupted again. For now, many are pinching pennies so they have a cushion and are able to continue operating if that happens. Coleman fears, however, that many won’t be able to survive — particularly if Medicaid funding is frozen as well.
“I don’t care how many days of cash you have on hand, that’s existential,” she said.
Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed to this report.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley rescheduled a planned vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general late Friday in a preemptive move as negotiations between the Trump administration and GOP holdouts continue.
The vote, now set for Tuesday after a scheduled Thursday vote was postponed, isn’t an indication that a deal allowing for Blanche’s confirmation is near, so much as it is a nod to Judiciary Committee rules that require three days of notice for a panel meeting.
There is no sign that President Donald Trump is about to acquiesce to the unflinching demands of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wants a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS substantially pared back.
Cornyn, who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate, wants the Justice Department to nullify a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and limit the scope of a tax audit immunity component of the pact.
Trump told reporters earlier Friday the fund is “dead” but added “I wish it weren’t.”
“I’d like to see them compensated,” he added, referring to people he considers victims of government abuse, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To advance Tuesday, Blanche needs to pick up Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another senator on the panel with similar concerns. He can’t lose any GOP votes if he wants to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee.
“Chairman Grassley wants Todd Blanche’s nomination to be successful,” said a Judiciary Committee spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Noticing the markup gives more time for the White House to secure the votes for the President’s nominee. Grassley would like to see Blanche confirmed before the August recess as he has an excellent record restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is zeroing in on one of House Republicans’ biggest contests — a purple district in Nebraska — when he starts his recess campaign sprint.
Scalise will travel to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in the Omaha area for an event with Republican Brinker Harding in the coming days, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to share plans not yet made public. Republicans are digging in to defend the seat, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential race and is among Democrats’ best pick up opportunities this fall as they seek to flip the House.
Harding is running against Democratic consultant Denise Powell to replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. Bacon, a moderate-leaning Republican, flipped the Omaha district red in 2016.
After Nebraska, Scalise is planning to travel across the country throughout August, including to defend GOP incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ and Zach Nunn’s key battleground seats in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
He’ll boost candidates working to flip blue districts like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Derek Merrin in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Mike LiPetri in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scalise also plans to travel to Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina and Texas for campaign events over the August recess.
President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.
Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.
“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.
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