The Democratic Party and its allies in news media and the executive branch of the federal government are celebrating the White House Office of Management and Budget rescinding a memorandum intended to align federal spending with President Donald Trump’s executive orders. But the celebrations are likely to prove short-lived.
Trump’s effort to halt federal spending on specific grants that contradict his directives continues at pace. Nonprofit groups hit by those freezes will sue again, and Trump can be expected to triumph over all of them, restoring the presidency’s briefly lost impoundment power.
During his first week in office, Trump issued executive orders implementing the will of the people, as expressed in his election win, not to have their hard-earned tax dollars given to far-left nonprofit groups that wake up every morning determined to undermine American values. This included Protecting the American People Against Invasion, which was designed to end funding for organizations that help illegal immigrants enter and stay in the United States. It included Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, designed to end support for activists’ racially divisive programs, materials, and training of federal agencies. And it included Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, to stanch funding for nonprofit groups that promote the false idea that there are more than two sexes.
Unelected career bureaucrats at federal agencies were obstructing OMB efforts to take an inventory of grant programs so it could see which ones violated Trump’s orders. So the OMB issued memo M-25-13 ordering a “temporary pause” of all agency activities “implicated” by the executive orders.
In a narrow sense, the memo had its desired intent. The agencies are now delivering the inventory of spending to the OMB. But the memo was arguably too broad, and recalcitrant bureaucrats used that vagueness to thwart Trump and sow confusion.
Although the memo was clear that the pause was not to take effect until 5 p.m. Tuesday, by that morning, bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services had put up a banner warning of disruptions to state Medicaid reimbursements. The reimbursement portal became inoperative for many states. If the bureaucrats who made these decisions cared about delivering uninterrupted services, they could have asked the OMB whether Medicaid spending was affected. They didn’t, and it wasn’t. The OMB issued a second document making this explicitly clear — Medicaid funding was not subject to the freeze. But the headlines of Democrat-friendly outlets had already been published, and party officials piled on with their falsehoods.
The activist targets of Trump’s spending freeze then sued in federal court. Tellingly, they did not claim that Trump violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. They probably know that neither Train v. City of New York, which dealt with the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, nor Clinton v. City of New York, which dealt with the Line Item Veto Act, dealt with the Impoundment Control Act. The Supreme Court of SEC v. Jarsekey is unlikely to look kindly upon the creative power blending schemes of that 1974 law.
Instead, nonprofit organizations claimed that the OMB memo violated the Administrative Procedures Act by arbitrarily and capriciously casting too wide a net on which programs were to have their spending frozen. Someone in the White House then decided it was better legally or politically not to fight over memo M-25-13 but instead to battle over the specific programs individually. That is probably a wise decision.
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The OMB spending freeze memo rescission is a political setback for Trump, but a minor one. Thinking they smell blood in the water, Democrats are emboldened to lie about what the administration is trying to do. They know compliant media will repeat their falsehoods. But the memo wasn’t a total loss. Agency heads are now submitting information they weren’t before, and bureaucrats who sabotaged federal programs instead of seeking OMB guidance have outed themselves.
More importantly, the legal fight over the president’s power not to send money authorized by Congress to nonprofit groups that violate executive policy will continue. The nation voted against illegal immigration, DEI programs, and transgender ideology. They deserve to have their voices heard in executive grantmaking decisions. Trump is going to fight to make that happen.