Trump’s White House Rescinds OMB Federal Aid Freeze Memo
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Trump’s White House Rescinds OMB Federal Aid Freeze Memo

Trump’s White House Rescinds OMB Federal Aid Freeze Memo

On Tuesday, a judge temporarily halted the funding freeze.

Um, what?

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out a memo rescinding its previous memo that froze federal aid.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the lawsuit and temporary administrative stay on the freeze led to the backdown.

Numerous nonprofits and NGOs sued, claiming the freeze violated the Administrative Procedure Act:

Plaintiffs allege that the implicated federal grants and funding “are the lifeblood of operations and programs for many . . . nonprofits, and even a short pause in funding . . . could deprive people and communities of their life-saving services.” They argue that Defendants’ action was arbitrary and capricious, violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and exceeded OMB’s statutory authority.

Along with their complaint, Plaintiffs sought a temporary restraining order “barring the OMB and all of its officers, employees, and agents from taking any steps to implement, apply, or enforce Memo M-25-13.”

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan placed an administrative stay on the funding freeze instead of a temporary retsraining order

“The purpose of a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction is to preserve the status quo while the court considers the merits of the case,” wrote AliKhan.

To get that order, the plaintiffs have to prove numerous factors.

“Given the weighty legal issues in this case, and to properly evaluate the merits of Plaintiffs’ motion, the court will require full briefing from the parties and a motions hearing,” added AliKhan. “While the court awaits full briefing and argument, it may issue a brief ‘administrative stay.'”

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Comments

UnCivilServant | January 29, 2025 at 1:27 pm

I wager someone pointed out that fighting the current claims in court would be slower and with a lower chance of success than recind, moot, and reissue using different procedures more resistant to the current angle of attack.

Somebody in the WH jumped the gun on that release. A freeze had better be specific and well thought out. There are needed freezes and they should be isolate maybe in batches. Other freezes are not needed at all and should be left alone. Tiny littles charities just near me get a pittance from DC and the rest from normal funders like me and my neighbors. Then there are the big time abusers that operate like extensions of a political party. There are differences to be made or Congress will kill this effort grave yard dead.

    Azathoth in reply to Whitewall. | January 29, 2025 at 4:29 pm

    Ah, so once again, the left did the right thing and the right, as always with you, was, sadly, in the wrong.

    Amazing how a court could give careful consideration to anything or that a case could be brought, scheduled and processed in any way in the hours that elapsed between the announcement of the freeze and the leftist ‘judge’s’ injunction.

    But you defend it.

      Whitewall in reply to Azathoth. | January 29, 2025 at 5:38 pm

      You don’t know what you are talking about

      Milhouse in reply to Azathoth. | January 29, 2025 at 6:21 pm

      Once again Azathoth lies through his fangs.

      As he knows very well, the judge did not give careful consideration to the case; that’s the whole point of a temporary injunction, to preserve the status quo while a case is being prepared, and avoid irreparable harm to the plaintiffs in case they turn out to be right.

        Azathoth in reply to Milhouse. | January 30, 2025 at 10:18 am

        No.

        A temporary injunction is to preserve the status quo while a case is being determined.

        NOT “while a case is being prepared”.

        This ‘case’ was put forth within hours of the order being signed. There was no time for the harm required to have been done.

        It is lawfare, plain and simple.

        And you will grovel to defend such evil.

    artichoke in reply to Whitewall. | January 29, 2025 at 4:48 pm

    So if those tiny little charities get just a pittance of their funding from DC, presumably they could weather a temporary pause in that DC funding while the case is argued, exceptions clarified, etc. They can make their case!

      Whitewall in reply to artichoke. | January 29, 2025 at 5:44 pm

      Volunteer at a tiny little charity like I am talking about and you will get a different point of view. The key word is volunteer. Time is not a luxury to organizations like this .

      mailman in reply to artichoke. | January 30, 2025 at 4:57 am

      I would hazard a guess that any tiny little charity spends significantly more of the money it collects on those its supporting than those massive mega charities with massive head quarters and incredibly high paid executive officers ever spend on the people they support.

      Id be more than happy for funding to continue to those tiny little charities while every cent is stopped for scrutiny to the large corporate charities who spend very little on the people they supposed to be supporting.

    CommoChief in reply to Whitewall. | January 29, 2025 at 5:06 pm

    IMO no ‘charity’ should be receiving any taxpayer funding. The govt at any level has zero business in handing out taxes to ’causes’ of any kind. Individuals are more than capable of handing over or withholding any potential contributions. a

    The gov’t collects taxes ultimately under threat of armed force to gain compliance. Those funds should never be handled out to non essential functions and certainly not to someone’s ‘do gooder’ cause.

    RandomCrank in reply to Whitewall. | January 29, 2025 at 5:27 pm

    I agree with you. I strongly support the idea of combing the various grants, but this was a case of shoot first, ask questions later. At the very least, it is an example of poor communications. I watched the new press secretary’s briefing, and read the transcript on the White House site, and she couldn’t even answer whether or not it applied to Medicaid. That was later cleared up, but it was a stumble.

    When she said in the briefing that it wouldn’t apply to payments to individuals, that was not enough. A specific example is Meals on Wheels, which delivers food to 2+ million poor seniors, and in a de facto sense does welfare checks (not money, but “are you okay”) at the same time. Last night, on the local TV station, they interviewed the head of a Meals on Wheels program who was NOT alarmist but sought to counteract fear, but when I saw it I hit the ceiling for a couple hours.

    Look, folks, you might not like those programs, but the fact is that the federal government’s tentacles go far. Meals on Wheels is done by private organizations with government money, and its delivery people are typically volunteers. The recipients don’t get money, they get a meal. Trump cleared it up to my satisfaction this morning, but it was just dumb to scare people like that.

    I doubt that anyone here depends on MoW, but plenty of elderly in my rural county do. If there’s any DEI involved, I’d be shocked to say the least. There are a bunch of other efforts just like that which rely on some government money but mainly volunteers, another example being the local food bank where I drop off 10+ loaves of homemade bread every Tuesday, and produce from my 15 raised garden beds in the summer.

    I really don’t care if it’s R or D with this. The point is that you don’t want this or that dweeb in this or that state or national capital idly waving their hand and scaring the hell out of people. Maybe they shouldn’t be scared, but guess what? Half the population is below average, and many of those people depend on stuff like this. I hope those people in D.C. have learned a lesson.

      Whitewall in reply to RandomCrank. | January 29, 2025 at 7:52 pm

      Thank you and well said.

        RandomCrank in reply to Whitewall. | January 29, 2025 at 9:52 pm

        I am no liberal, but I have a thing about food. I half joke that I would feed no matter whom, and then be on the firing squad the next day. In America, everyone should get to eat, no matter what, even if it’s their last meal.

      c0cac0la in reply to RandomCrank. | January 30, 2025 at 1:22 am

      You pretty much make the point that the govt should stay out of the welfare business. Therefore, they shouldn’t fund it either. Let the people decide what or how much they can do for others in need.

      mailman in reply to RandomCrank. | January 30, 2025 at 5:38 am

      My mum used to be a MoW driver and it always made me chuckle that a little old lady well in to her 80’s was delivering to the young uns, who were merely in their 70’s! 😂

I would say the freeze had exactly the right effect. The people who screamed the loudest should be the first to be audited to ensure that money they needed so badly was appropriated correctly, and is being spent according to the Federal restrictions on it.

    RandomCrank in reply to georgfelis. | January 29, 2025 at 9:55 pm

    Read my long comment above. The people I feed do not beg, and I think I have come to know them well enough to know that that they wouldn’t scream. There are people who we simply help. Not every layabout, but there are people who need help and always have. Do not ignore those people.

This should moot the current case….but, that District Judge is a Super Leftist, so it won’t be surprising if she doesn’t grant the motion for dismissal that’s certainly going to be imminently filed.

IMO, Trump should simply issue an order that any grant of aid needs to be personally reviewed and approved by him, creating a kind of pocket veto that would be tough for a court to circumvent; a judge can’t force Trump to sign anything just as Trump couldn’t force a judge to sign anything because of separation of powers.

    Paula in reply to TargaGTS. | January 29, 2025 at 2:44 pm

    I hope somebody from the Trump Administration reads this.

    RandomCrank in reply to TargaGTS. | January 29, 2025 at 5:31 pm

    Given that the feds are funding shit through continuing resolutions, my guess (and that’s all it is) is that Trump has at least some authority to do this. And he should. But his administration should be more careful. You know, “common sense?” I’ll leave it at that in this comment. For more, see my long comment above.

Too bad, but there were some innocents thrown by the wayside
But he has to get a handle on this crap

    But, the freeze was not a simple halt to everything. It was a freeze to investigate all of this voluminous aid. Then you can turn it back on to the few that it is actually appropriate.

      gonzotx in reply to GWB. | January 29, 2025 at 2:26 pm

      But it would have taken an awful long time and small businesses would have to close probably
      Better to go line by line by line

        JohnSmith100 in reply to gonzotx. | January 29, 2025 at 3:13 pm

        No, all at once is shock and awe,

        artichoke in reply to gonzotx. | January 29, 2025 at 4:50 pm

        He’s zero-basing the funding. To create urgency and get this done before the 2026 election cycle, he’s freezing as much as possible, then working backward. It’s tough, but the enemy is very tough and needs to be put on the defensive with reduced resources to fight administratively.

          RandomCrank in reply to artichoke. | January 29, 2025 at 5:34 pm

          Do you really want to scare the shit out of 2+ million poor senior citizens who rely on Meals on Wheels? Look, I am pretty conservative, but that comes damn close to the “cruel” line with me. I am not any kind of liberal, but kill me now, I have this soft spot about food. You don’t put a “pause” on food, or even come close to suggesting it. This country can feed everyone, so we should.

        c0cac0la in reply to gonzotx. | January 30, 2025 at 1:28 am

        This the kind of bleeding-heart liberal argument that keeps a corrupt machine going. The quickest way is to just burn it all down and rebuild. Four years isn’t a long time to be micromanaging these decisions.
        Any decision will have collateral damage, you have to look at the big/long-term picture.

We’re broke, and the federal government gravy train just runs on autopilot, pissing away billions. It’s supporting NGOs that undermine our laws as well as funding our enemies. Hopefully they can figure out how to make this stick.

Nonprofits that are vitally addicted to govt handouts. You can’t make this garbage up.

What is going to be interesting, to me, are the APA challenges. Did all those NGOs actually all go through the required Notice and Comment process? Unlikely, since tey are mostly some sourced contracts.

The problem for these lefty wokiesta NGOs is that the EO suspends the bulk of the funding for the truly wretched crap they do. ‘Refugee Resettlement’ and ‘Assistance to Migrants’ may be worthy goals for a ‘charity’ particularly for a a ‘charity’ steeped in a religious tradition. However the federal govt and its taxpayers shouldn’t be covering the expense of Catholic Charities or Lutheran Charities or any other ‘charity’. Each year hundreds of millions of $ worth of taxpayer $ are for forcibly taken from individual taxpayers and handed over to ‘charities’ such as these to do what? To assist illegal aliens to circumvent our federal immigration laws, to transport them,.feed them,.house them, hand them prepaid debit cards and sometimes cash. Same for all sorts of lefty wokiesta policy preferences. This entire edifice of institutionalized theft and mal administration must be destroyed.

If you have a business that relies on government largest in order to exist and you are not a government contractor selling things to the government itself. You probably need to rethink your business strategy because your business strategy sucks

    CommoChief in reply to Ironclaw. | January 29, 2025 at 4:28 pm

    Exactly. If your ‘business’ model or NGO/Charity model is dependent upon taxpayer funding of wokiesta nonsense there was ample warning there steps were coming. If you deliberately avoided seeking new sources of revenue and/or contributions or found that absent use of govt to confiscate then redistribute taxes your model wouldn’t generate revenue/contributions to continue operating …that’s on you.

      artichoke in reply to CommoChief. | January 29, 2025 at 4:52 pm

      Yes it’s good to shock and punish those folks for their irresponsibility. If it pushes them over the edge, it’s likely a matter of “good riddance”.

2smartforlibs | January 29, 2025 at 7:44 pm

I guess reading comprehension is lacking. It never froze all spending and it hasn’t been rescinded.

    RandomCrank in reply to 2smartforlibs. | January 29, 2025 at 9:58 pm

    True, it didn’t. Also true: The Trump admin did a bad job of communicating it. They scared people who should not have the government scaring them.

amatuerwrangler | January 29, 2025 at 8:45 pm

DJT should install a program of zero-based budgeting. Pick 3 0r 3 agencies and require that their budget be stripped down to bare metal and every dollar requested be stated and justified. The following year 2 or 3 others until all have been through the drill. The idea of just taking the existing budget and adding a few percent to the numbers is what leads to the waste.

Part of this mess is the theater of the signings of the Executive Orders. Every order should be accompanied with a memo specifically describing what the order is meant to achieve and how it will be done.

does this orange jerkoff ever think anything through?