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The Trump administration’s sudden freeze on all federal grants, announced in a memo from the Office of Management and Budget late Monday night, threw state and local governments into chaos as they tried to figure out how they were supposed to provide any services — Medicaid, education programs, Meals on Wheels — without the federal funding Congress appropriated for them. Nonprofit groups were hit too, possibly even harder in some cases, because remember how we decided over the last few decades to “privatize” a huge range of government services and subcontracted them out, mostly to nonprofits, because the private sector is more efficient?
After a lot of confusion, the White House “clarified” that the freeze wasn’t total, and that everything would be fine because the freeze only applied to funding for very bad things that the American People gave Trump a mandate to eliminate, like human and civil rights, and keeping the planet habitable.
Leaving aside the “mandate” bullshit, it was still screamingly illegal, because federal law forbids the executive branch from blocking the disbursement of funds Congress has appropriated for particular purposes, even when a president dislikes those things. Late Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge blocked the funding freeze altogether because it’s unconstitutional as fuck, which we hope was the actual phrasing of the order. Then while I was writing about all this, the White House rescinded the whole thing, and we’re sure that sometime this afternoon, Trump will announce that he never thought it was a good idea to begin with, that Democrats were behind it, and he deserves all the credit for stopping it, until he does it again later and more sneakily.
Update: Or maybe it’s not rescinded. You’ll have to wait and find out, now won’t you? More at end of story.
Hey, folks, does this sound familiar? It’s simply another variation on one of Trump’s favorite ways of misgoverning: Introduce a vaguely defined policy, watch it sow chaos, and then backpedal a little to see how much of the original shitty idea Trump and crew can still get away with. After that, start gaslighting like crazy and insisting that the policy has been clear from the start, and absolutely legal, and why did you idiots all overreact, huh?
It’s weaponized incompetence: The administration’s own fuckups, adjustments, and failures add chaos and fear to whatever it’s doing, and that chaos is a political weapon that makes it difficult to even pin down what the administration is up to. Also, whatever it is, it’s perfect and good for America, because Trump is good for America, you see.
We saw that plenty of times in Trump’s first term, especially in the implementation of Trump’s notorious family separation policy, but also during the pandemic and other disasters.
The initial policy memo freezing government grants was a masterpiece of the genre: a sweeping (and illegal) freeze on every federal grant payment so the administration could redact anything banned by his (often illegal) executive orders last week. As the memo from OMB claimed,
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. This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.
Never mind that most of that stuff is rightwing talking points, not anything definite. For example, there’s no such thing as the “green new deal,” which was a set of proposals for tackling climate change, but never became real legislation. And also never mind that Trump can’t unilaterally end climate-related spending under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. He would need Congress to explicitly repeal that stuff.
By Tuesday afternoon, the White House offered a new explanation: Heavens no, the administration wasn’t illegally holding up all federal grants, despite that word “all” in the memo. Instead, the illegal freeze would only apply to the particular categories of programs mentioned in another paragraph of the first memo:
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.
See, it’s very specific, despite that “including, but not limited to” phrase. Or the seeming blanket ban on grants to “nongovernmental organizations” and the huge array of services they provide. Anyway, it was perfectly clear. Why were you complaining so much? Wow, you’re dumb.
And so on. The “clarification” insisted that “direct aid to individuals” wouldn’t be affected, supposedly, although by complete coincidence the federal website for processing Medicaid and Head Start payments to states and to providers was shut down most of Tuesday. Daycares sent kids home early, doctors rescheduled appointments, and state health agencies couldn’t get reimbursed for services already provided to patients on Medicaid.
Eventually, the site resumed operations Tuesday, but only after states and nonprofits made a lot of noise and threatened to sue. Members of Congress were deluged with complaints, too, which they wasted no time in passing along to the administration. One former official in the Biden administration told NBC News that the order from OMB was “super terribly written, and for that reason, it’s unclear exactly what it impacts, which is why you’re going to see absolute chaos today and the ensuing days, unless they further clarify it.”
At Tuesday’s press conference, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted everything Trump was doing was “within the confines of the law,” and that if any agencies had a problem with it, they could call up Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to head OMB, although he hasn’t been confirmed and can’t do anything yet
Oh yes, and whatever Leavitt says, embargoing appropriated funds remains illegal.
Again, this really is how Trump operated in his first term, too. Family separation is a prime example: It was originally pushed in early 2017 by John Kelly when he was the secretary of Homeland Security, and framed explicitly as a way to scare people from coming to the US because their children would be taken from them. The supposed deterrent effect was also pushed by the administration as the first incidents started to be reported, in December 2017. And when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions formally announced the “zero tolerance” policy in May 2018, he was very explicit that the goal was to deter undocumented immigration, although he framed it as parents “smuggling” their own children across the border.
If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law […] If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.
The mechanism for family separation was to charge virtually all people crossing illegally with “improper entry by an alien,” a misdemeanor offense that could result in six months in prison. As a result, children would be placed in baby jails run by Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, because hey, presto, they were now “unaccompanied minors.” But everyone knew that the goal was taking away the kids as a deterrent, and officials said so openly well before the policy officially went into effect. (We eventually learned that thousands more kids were taken before the official announcement, too, and that there were no records of which children belonged to which parents.)
But then the shit hit the fan and Americans were outraged by horrifying accounts of screaming children, even babies, being taken from their parents, and of migrants being told their kids were just being taken so they could be given a bath, and not being returned to them. The cruelty seemed arbitrary, but very much the point. Border Patrol agents gave parents a number to call to find out where their kids were being held. It was a wrong number. Sometimes parents from Indigenous communities, who didn’t speak English or Spanish, were told they could get their kids back, but only if they signed a document they couldn’t read, which actually resulted in the parents’ rapid deportation without their children. Other parents were given a “choice” of being deported with their children, or without their children, but not to stay in the US and pursue an asylum case, even if that was what they wanted.
It turned out We The People didn’t like any of that, so Trump’s second Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen started insisting that there was no family separation policy at all. Trump look to lying that his policy was all Democrats’ fault, and accusing Democrats who condemned the policy of supporting rape.
Nielsen also insisted this was all fine, because the kids were being fed and had beds to sleep in, never mind the psychological torture of being separated. The parents were to blame for coming here illegally, after all.
Then in June 2018 ProPublica released a secret recording of very young children crying for Mami and Papi in a Texas Border Patrol jail. Nielsen tried to pretend it wasn’t child abuse, but two days later, Trump signed an executive order to stop the policy — but also ordered, contrary to a court order, that families be jailed together indefinitely. (And big surprise, that’s what Trump still wants to do.) There was never a plan for family reunification until a judge ordered it, and even then, the administration didn’t want to, so it told the ACLU to do it.
At every step, Trump and his people followed the same playbook we’re seeing now: an extreme, probably illegal policy order, followed by backpedaling, lies, and constant gaslighting. (They lied that there was a database connecting all children with their parents. No such thing existed.)
Not surprisingly, Trump and his second term crew now want to resume family detention, and family separation too, but to do it “humanely,” so it will be OK. And when it proves unpopular, they’ll tell us again that it isn’t happening, and that the families have it coming, and it’s Joe Biden’s fault. And also, umm, where did those kids go this time? Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing.
So here we are in Trump II: The AGAIN WITH THIS? We’ve got red state governors begging and pleading for the government to continue to exist, judges telling Trump not this time bub, and the media actually paying attention and saying the magic words “Meals on Wheels,” and what do we see? Trump but immediately backs down. We were promised a newly efficient crew of flying monkeys who’d have all their ducks in a row and get right to work making with the creative destruction. They don’t seem yet to have arrived.
But do not get comfortable and Do Not Congratulate: These sick bastards never get tried of trying.
UPDATE: Shortly after OMB appeared to rescind the policy, Karoline Leavitt de-clarified that only the memo to all federal agencies had been rescinded, but not the funding freeze, so THERE.
On Elon Musk’s Truth Social knockoff, Leavitt twote that
This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.
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.
She also told reporters that the recission of the memo magically should make the court cases against the freeze go away, which doesn’t seem to be the case, because the judge in a second lawsuit against the freeze — this one by state attorneys general — decided to go ahead and grant an injunction in that case as well. U.S. District Judge John McConnell said during a hearing Wednesday afternoon, “I’m inclined to grant the restraining order. […] I fear … that the administration is acting with a distinction without a difference.”
We’ll update you again on the latest twists tomorrow. The incompetence is just as absurd as ever, and ain’t nothing actually resolved.
OPEN THREAD.
[NBC News / AP / NBC News / WaPo (2018) / Update: NPR / Politico]
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