I was very closely watching the saga of OMB’s disastrous effort to freeze funding for a vast number of federal programs, and wrote about why it was actually revoked at New York.
This week the Trump administration set off chaos nationwide when it temporarily “paused” all federal grants and loans pending a review of which programs comply with Donald Trump’s policy edicts. The order came down in an unexpected memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday.
Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge. Adding to the pervasive confusion, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately insisted on Wednesday that the funding freeze was still on because Trump’s executive orders on DEI and other prohibited policies remained in place. But there’s no way this actually gets implemented without someone, somewhere, identifying exactly what’s being frozen. So for the moment, it’s safe to say the funding freeze is off.
Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller.
Democrats have been quick to claim that they helped generate a public backlash to the funding freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded:
“A Monday night memo from the Office of Management and Budget ordering a freeze in federal grant and loan programs sent congressional Republicans scrambling and helped Democrats rally behind a clear anti-Trump message. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump as ‘lawless, destructive, cruel.’
“D.C. senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned that thousands of federal programs could be impacted, including veterans, law enforcement and firefighters, suicide hotlines, military aid to foreign allies, and more …
“During a Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze “relatable” to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”
In other words, the funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived “win.” More broadly, it suggests that once the real-life implications of Trump’s agenda (including his assaults on federal spending and the “deep state”) are understood, his public support is going to drop like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil in his paws. If that doesn’t bother Trump or his disruptive sidekick, Elon Musk, it could bother some of the GOP members of Congress expected to implement the legislative elements of the MAGA to-do list for 2025.
It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment. OMB could very well issue a new funding-freeze memo the minute the injunction stopping the original one expires next week. If that doesn’t happen, there could be new presidential executive orders (like the ones that suspended certain foreign-aid programs and energy subsidies) and, eventually, congressional legislation. Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.
It’s true, nonetheless, that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo. Sooner or later the malice and the fiscal math that led to this and other efforts to destroy big areas of domestic governance will become hard to deny and impossible to rescind.
10,000 Voters in PA just had their polls moved. And they don’t know.
The Republican Board of Elections in Lackawanna County just changed voting locations for 21 precincts.
And the voters don’t know.
10 to 15,000 PA voters could show up at their regular polls, find them closed, and not know where to vote.
It’s Friday before election day and postcards announcing the change won’t be in the mail until tonight. What if they don’t arrive? Or don’t get read? One smallish ad is running on Saturday in one local paper. What if no one notices?
The Democrats are organizing a volunteer effort for people to stand at the old polls and give directions to the new. But the polls are open in PA from 7am to 8pm. It’s 21 precincts. They need a lot of people.
But this is easy, significant GOTV for people who were uncomfortable with traditional doorbell ringing or phone calling. All you have to do is stand there and give directions.
Scranton PA is only 90 minutes from NYC.
To help, e-mail AlanEGross@aol.com or Calyndha@aol.com. Put “POLL GOTV” in the subject line.
What meaning, if any, can be ascribed to Novak’s (i.e., Rovian) claim today (see excerpt) that Zogby is now essentially calling the race for Bush based on the latter’s current read of the polls?
WASHINGTON — Pollster John Zogby surprised the political world back in April with a long-range prediction that John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush for president. On Monday this week, Zogby told me, he changed his mind. He now thinks the president is more likely to be re-elected because he has reinforced support from his base, including married white women.
That conclusion would be a surprise for frantically nervous Republicans and cautiously upbeat Democrats entering the campaign’s final days. In fact, nobody, including Zogby and all the other polltakers, can be sure who will win this election. Yet, it is clear that President Bush’s strategists have succeeded in solidifying his base to a degree that makes it much harder to defeat him next Tuesday.
Thanks, Ruy, for this and Memory Lane.
It does much to lighten the burden of an oppressed and lifelong Dem.
I personally don’t believe the LA Times poll on Florida, nor do I believe the alleged 9-point lead for Kerry from the suppressed CBS survey (a 4-point lead for Kerry seems reasonable, though a bit high on the Kerry side.) Both results seem implausible (though of course either could be right.), so why not release all the polls? We politically knowledgeable folks can sift through them and root out the clearly wrong-looking ones. Unfortunately, the media doesn’t always do the same (Exhibit A: Gallup.)
Incidentally, I read that Kerry’s lead among likely voters in the LAT’s Ohio poll was 6 points, larger than the RV margin. In fact, that also seems too large to be believed.
I’m starting to think the polls are even more UNreliable than I first thought… Great piece in the WP today… Refusals, caller ID, etc. are making it incredibly difficult to actually reach a random sample of Americans…According to the story, “less than one in five calls produces a completed interview — raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm or too lonely to hang up…”
If Gallop has Kerry leading in PA by 2 and in Iowa by 1, then he must really be up by 5 or 6, judging by their previous accuracy.
Kerry in a Landslide!
Transparency International publishes a Corruption Perception Index for countries. It may be worthwhile to publish something similar for state election processes. Consider: very few people are fretting at the moment about transparency or reliability of voting in Utah or Maine. The idea of 60,000 absentee ballots vanishing is almost inconceivable. In Florida or Ohio, on the other hand, the lack of transparency and likelihood of hanky-panky is practically a given. In worst-case situations, like voting in the Soviet Union, the certainty of the vote rises to 100% and the trustworthiness of the vote as a measure of actual voter desires approaches zero.
Is there a statistical methodology that can be applied in addition to standard polls that would anticipate for fraud? Or at least, like in moral hazard questions, quantify the susceptibility of particular voting arrangements to abuse?
absentee ballot link= http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6346293/
Have you heard anything more about the supposed CBS/NY Times Florida poll (discussed on both MyDD and Atrios on Wednesday) that had Kerry up by 8 or 9 and was returned for further investigation due to the “implausibility” of this scenario. (A further version of this rumor was that the new, adjusted results still had Kerry up 4 … but there’s been nothing yet released.)
What are the internals on that Florida poll? Strange that a CBS poll showing Kerry up 9 in Florida is suppressed while a Gallup and LA Times poll showing Bush up 9 is published. Both are equally wrong – Florida is ties and turnout will determine the winner.