What did Donald Trump do today?
He broke the basic functioning of the federal government (or tried to).
Yesterday, news broke of a Trump memo ordering all executive branch departments to freeze virtually all grant and loan programs funded by the federal government indefinitely. Today, that order took effect, to enormous confusion and chaos.
A great deal of the federal government's work is done through third parties, whether that work has to do with science. education, national defense, agriculture, policing, services for veterans, or many other essential government functions. The organizations doing this work include state and local governments, nonprofits, private businesses, farms, schools, research centers, and government contractors. Many of them rely on these grants to make payroll or cover other operating expenses for the work they do on behalf of the government, so a sudden halt can immediately force programs employing American workers to shut down.
It is difficult to overstate the enormous number of programs familiar to ordinary Americans that this sudden stoppage of funding will affect—but also, because of confusion and internal contradictions created by the order, difficult to say exactly what would be affected. According to the Trump administration itself, in a document listing about 2,500 different programs, a very small fraction of them would include:
- Meals on Wheels (food aid to disabled senior citizens)
- home heating assistance
- family farm subsidies
- tools to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material
- nuclear waste cleanup
- medical research through universities and hospitals
- police training and equipment purchase
- environmental cancer risk assessment
- after-school programs
- bridge inspections
- Department of Defense school programs (K-12 education for the children of U.S. military personnel)
- Fulbright scholarships
- municipal water testing
- Head Start programs (early childhood education)
- rural nursing availability programs
- homelessness prevention
- crop insurance
- child lead poisoning prevention and remediation
- counseling and suicide prevention for veterans
- the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
- local first responder support
- K-12 teacher training
- assistance marketing US goods in foreign countries
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food assistance for low-income families)
- rape kit testing
- school renovations
- community health centers
- school breakfast/lunches
- emergency drug treatment and intervention
- HIV prevention
- human trafficking prevention
- natural disaster relief and rebuilding
- instruction in languages critical for military and diplomatic purposes
- youth physical fitness
- elder abuse investigation and prevention
- cybersecurity research
- renewable energy research
- small business innovation grants
- oil and gas mapping
- flood mitigation and prevention
- compensation for injured miners
- wildfire management
- reclaiming and repurposing abandoned pit mines
- carbon capture and sequestration
- monitoring of toxic spills
- Small Business Administration loans
- pipeline safety and security
- conservation of game lands
Trump administration officials who could be reached for comment were themselves uncertain as to which programs would be affected. Asked whether the freeze would affect Medicaid, press secretary Karoline Leavitt hesitated, then told reporters she would get back to them.
90 million Americans receive medical care through Medicaid.
Later, the White House said Medicaid was exempt—and yet, state officials found they were locked out of Medicaid portals. Similar confusion played out over Pell grants, Head Start, and various food assistance programs.
Under the constitution and federal law, Presidents have no authority to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress for specific purposes, as virtually all federal grants and loans are. In particular, the president is explicitly barred for applying political litmus tests to appropriations passed into law by Congress. Trump's order said that he was withholding funding as a way of identifying and eliminating "wokeness," as well as "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies."
The memo did not specify what part of suicide prevention programs for combat veterans was "woke," or whether it was infant nutritional programs or nuclear waste cleanup that was Marxist.
Because red states tend to be the most heavily reliant on federal funds, Trump's freeze would affect his areas of greatest support first.
A federal judge issued an emergency injunction against the freeze that will stay in effect at least through Monday afternoon.
Why does this matter?
- Presidents don't get to pick and choose which parts of the law they follow, or which parts of their jobs they think Americans are entitled to.
- Even without going into effect, this created more chaos and dysfunction in the day-to-day business of the United States government than any hostile foreign power could hope to achieve.
- Even by Trump standards, this is a clusterfuck.