The Trump administration’s expansive freeze on federal grants and other executive spending roiled Washington on Tuesday, drawing howls from Democrats — and a few well-placed Republicans — who say the president is abusing his powers at the expense of public services.
It is also sparking confusion and fear among a broad group of stakeholders outside the Beltway — including schools, local governments and medical researchers — who rely on federal funds as a matter of course.
Amid the turmoil, the Medicaid payment portals went dark in states across the country, sounding alarms over whether millions of patients in the program — including low-income children and nursing home residents — would lose access to care. Democrats quickly linked the portal outage to the executive spending freeze — a connection that was denied by administration officials, who said Medicaid spending was exempt from the budget suspension.
Still, the chaos is creating headaches for GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, who are scrambling to demonstrate their governing chops after winning control of Congress and the White House in November’s elections. Instead, they’ve spent a large part of Trump’s first week defending the president’s early executive actions and managing the internal GOP clashes that have erupted in their wake.
None, thus far, has proven as controversial as the federal spending freeze, which has the potential to delay — or in some cases threaten — trillions of dollars in funding for programs that affect every state and congressional district in the country.
Democrats maintain the freeze is illegal, since Congress already approved the money in question and directed where it should be spent. On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the order until at least next week.
“They’re going to court right away on this horror,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday, referring to officials in his home state.
The White House has defended its decision, which was announced Monday by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), saying it’s merely a temporary “pause” in some federal outlays designed to let the various agencies review their programs to ensure they align with Trump’s priorities. Any funding for diversity programs or environmental initiatives, for instance, would almost certainly be in jeopardy.
“President Trump is looking out for you by issuing this pause because he is being a good steward of your taxpayer dollars,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Yet that argument isn’t sitting well with a long and growing list of lawmakers in the Capitol, including some Republicans who have typically rallied behind their White House ally.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, is among those warning that Trump’s policy will hurt working-class people everywhere.
“There is benefit in taking a look at federal spending,” Collins told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol. “But this is far too sweeping and will have an adverse effect on the delivery of services and programs.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) is another of the GOP critics. He said he’s already hearing concerns from constituents in his district, based in Omaha, and he hopes the policy is “short-lived.”
“It was appropriated, so I don’t see how they can just stop it,” he told reporters in Florida, where House Republicans are huddling this week for their annual issues retreat. “There’s no reason for the disruption.”
Other Republicans are also looking for answers as Trump’s new directive draws mixed reactions within his own party.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior member on the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that he’d “like to know what the game plan is here,” noting “some agencies like centers that help abused children, they rely on their grant money to meet their budget.”
“I want to try to find out what’s happening here and get people back home what to expect,” Graham said, adding, “I don’t mind redeeming things. I just want to find out what happened and what’s the end game.”
“People are asking, like, what does this mean? And how long does it last? Reasonable questions,” he said.
The OMB also asked agencies more than a dozen questions in another document, including whether programs anticipate funding obligations before March 15, if funding is being directed toward nongovernmental groups that provide services “directly or indirectly” to “illegal aliens,” and if programs “promote gender ideology” or abortion “in any way.”
Another question also targets funding it said could be “implicated by the directive to end discriminatory programs,” including “illegal DEI” and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” mandates, “programs, preferences, and activities, under whatever name they appear.”
More than 2,000 accounts across a host of agencies are listed in the spreadsheet, ranging from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Veterans Affairs (VA), Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Energy, and others.
The wide-ranging list of accounts agencies are asked to answer questions for includes mentions of “Special Education Preschool Grants” under the DOE, the “VA Casket or Urn Allowance Program,” the “Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program,” which the VA said puts resources toward suicide prevention efforts, the space operations account for NASA and the “Preservation of Historic Structures on the Campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)” under the Interior Department.
However, the OMB has also issued a memo clarifying its directive, particularly as fears rise on social media around the potential impact of the new order and terms like “FAFSA” and “Medicaid” trend on X.
The OMB emphasized that the pause “does not apply across-the-board” and “is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by” Trump’s recent executive orders, adding “any program that provides direct benefits to Americans is explicitly excluded from the pause and exempted from this review process,” including student loans.
They also said “mandatory programs like Medicaid and SNAP will continue without pause,” and funds for “small businesses, farmers, Pell grants, Head Start, rental assistance, and other similar programs” also will not be paused.
The move comes after Trump over the weekend axed 17 government watchdogs at agencies including the departments of Defense, State, Transportation, VA, Energy, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said Trump is “testing the limits of his power” when discussing the administration’s recent actions, but the senator also said he doesn’t “think any of us are surprised by it.”
“A lot of us have expressed some concern about the separation of power issue to him, even publicly,” Cramer told reporters. “But we’ll see how long it goes. He’s testing it. Some of it will require some pushback. You’ll see that, obviously.”
