President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget has just ordered all federal agencies to halt nearly all federal grants and loans to ensure compliance with the president’s executive orders against spending for “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.”

This does not include “Social Security, Medicare and other programs providing direct aid to individuals.”

Here’s more from Roll Call:

President Donald Trump’s budget office on Monday ordered all federal agencies to temporarily block disbursement of grants and loans — other than for Social Security, Medicare and other programs providing direct aid to individuals.

The memo says the temporary pause, effective starting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, is intended to ensure agencies are complying with Trump’s executive orders to root out “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies” from programs within their purview.

It’s not immediately clear how wide-ranging the pause will be in practice, due to the Office of Management and Budget’s ability to grant exceptions on a “case-by-case basis,” language exempting direct aid to individuals and a clause that states the pause is subject to what’s “permissible under applicable law.”

But the new administration is clearly painting with a broad brush, at least at the outset.

“Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities,” acting OMB director Matthew Vaeth wrote in the memo. “This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.”

The memo also makes clear that oversight of each federal assistance program will be assigned to “a senior political appointee to ensure Federal financial assistance conforms to Administrative priorities.”

Democrats are very unhappy about this. I know, shocker.

Such lunacy. Because just the Senate Majority Leader points out, Biden made a similar move at the beginning of his administration:

“I think that’s a normal practice at the beginning of administration until we have an opportunity to know how the money is being spent. And I think Biden did that and he obviously pulled money back on the border wall and other things that he didn’t want that had been funded previously. So, you know, we’ll see kind of what the extent of it is and what their, you know, what they intend to do in a more fulsome way. But, for now. I think it’s just this is kind of a preliminary step that I think most administrations take.”