Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) rescission of its funding freeze memo was President Trump’s “first major loss” of his second White House term.
“This is Trump’s first major loss. When we fight, we win. We may not have majorities in the House and the Senate, but we DO have the power to loudly educate and mobilize against the mass looting the Trump admin is attempting against our veterans, healthcare, education, and more,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a Wednesday post on social platform X, less than an hour after the news about the reversal broke.
The Office of Management and Budget sent out a memo Wednesday rescinding an order that temporarily halted “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”
The new memo, which was signed by Matthew Vaeth, the office’s acting director, was issued following a push from GOP lawmakers, The Hill reported. Since the funding freeze was instituted, Republican senators have received a number of calls from constituents and community leaders expressing concern and confusion over the loss of federal grants.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the reversal “is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”
“Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction,” she said in Wednesday’s post on X. “The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s statement is another jab since Trump’s win over former Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Ocasio-Cortez has become one of the president’s sharpest critics, going after several of his executive actions and skipping the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Her approach to Trump is different from other Democrats, like Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.), who met with the president earlier this month at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and showed openness to working with the commander in chief.
“She understands the importance of being seen doing and saying something. The alternative is letting Trump suck up all the media oxygen again, and that has proven disastrous for Dems,” one progressive Democratic commentator in New York told The Hill.
