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Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge.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freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded: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.
DemDude: see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34157-2004Dec3.html which indicates that if the GOP attempted to suppress turnout in Demcoratic areas of Ohio they weren’t very successful:
“Second myth: The Bush campaign won by mobilizing GOP strongholds and suppressing turnout in Democratic areas.
“Reality: Turnout in Democratic-leaning counties in Ohio was up 8.7 percent while turnout in Republican-leaning counties was up slightly less, at 6.3 percent. John Kerry bested Bush in Cuyahoga County (home of Cleveland) by 218,000 votes — an increase of 42,497 over Gore’s 2000 effort. In Stark County (Canton) — a bellwether lost by Gore — Kerry won by 4,354.”
As for Diebold, how many times does it have to be pointed out that Ohio did not use Diebold’s e-voting machine? (Most Ohio counties used puncchcards. A few used an older Diebold machine which does leave a paper trail.)
As I’ve said before, I as a Democrat am not at all despondent over this election. It’s hard to beat an incumbent president in time of war, and Kerry was in some respects not the ideal candidate, yet he came close. For 2008, all we have to do is to get 1.4% of the electorate to change its mind. But we’re never going to do thi if we keep trying to persuade ourselves that we don’t have to because we “really” won (at least the electoral vote) anyway…
No doubt an honest vote count would diminish Bush’s margin even further. Yet, I don’t believe Bush stole his popular majority — it’s just too hard to steal 3+ million votes all over the country without getting nailed somewhere. I’m finally persuaded, however, that, yes, the election was probably stolen in Ohio. There is lots of compelling evidence — too much to present here. Jesse Jackson gives a pretty good quickie summation in htttp://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse30.html. The bummer is that there isn’t much that can be done about it. Given that the Ohio Secretary of State is also Bush’s state campaign manager and Diebold’s shamelessly pro-Bush admission, it is unlikely that any black box shenanigans can be proven. No doubt, many, if not most of the stolen votes were suppressed and never cast in the first place, as frustrated voters in African American precincts were misled to non-existent polling sites, or discouraged by long lines caused by few voting machines. Add to that bogus felon disenfranchisement and other GOP “ballot security” scams, and it’s not hard to imagine 120K votes for Kerry in Ohio being turned into vapor. Yes, we should protest, demand a full recount and raise hell about it. But even if we get conclusive proof, the US Supreme Court would surely screw the Democrats again. The GOP vote theft machine can only be dismantled by Democratic victories in statewide and state legislative races, so that genuine ballot integrity reforms can be implemented.