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Now OMB has rescinded the memo without comment just as suddenly, less than a day after its implementation was halted by a federal judge.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freeze that forced the administration to reverse direction, as Punchbowl News explained even before the OMB memo was rescinded: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.
Most of Democrats’ factions are opposed to any change in party objectives, strategy or even tactics.
Regular “regular”/consistent voters and the overwhelming majority of elected officials (including almost all of the party elite) are aligned on this.
Pelosi has again spoken on behalf of the party apparatus rebuking Bernie.
Democrats are split between several factions:
1. swing voters who usually vote Democrat (less ideological, low information);
2. The mainstream partisan electorate that mostly cares about wins but is unable to steer the party anywhere except by the time and in the context of presidential and other major turnout primaries (more moderate, less ideological);
3. The partisan get out the vote operation which also cares very much about wins but that is often involved in liberal advocacy too and is therefore resistant to critiques of liberalism (more liberal, specially on culture);
4. leftwing artists, journalists and other cultural workers (liberals but mostly care about culture);
5. the professional advocacy staff of the liberal “groups” (mostly cultural issues and environment);
6. the staff of leftwing ideological media and politicians, many academics (progressive);
7. liberal-progressive voters (leftwing on culture and economics);
8. economic-progressive voters (more focused on economics e.g. 2016 Bernie);
9. anti-American leftists (minority nationalists, cosmopolitan humanitarians, pacifists, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, etc);
10. elected officials (mostly lacking ideology or willing to take any risks that don’t personally and immediately benefit themselves -beholden to their funders and to party elites-);
11. party elites (former very high ranking officials and permanent party leadership -DNC- and funders, mainstream media personalities -same as #10-).
There is a need to reduce the organizational influence of the advocacy groups and the cultural influence of anti-American leftists, but also of the party elite.
The problem is lower ranking politicians have absolutely no backbone and very little incentive to stick their necks out (in a wave election the remaining electeds live in deep blue places, while potential candidates in purple places have to care more about funders and party elites and can’t be seen as rocking the boat).
Democrats have become as internally autocratic since the Clintons as Republicans since Trump.
The Biden re/de-nomination debacle showed just how broken the governance and culture of the party are.
If the Bernie wing is going to increase its influence and the Warren wing going to keep its current influence, they must push the party further in the direction of a formal coalition model of governance.
The way the DNC (and its several bodies) is elected must be reformed as a first step.
The way the House and Senate Caucuses operate also need to change.