Donald Trump’s recruited in his attempt to freeze federal aid. The Office of Management and Budget (WBO) of the White House announced on Wednesday that the order to suspend federal aid, according to a statement that has obtained the Washington Post. The decision comes less than 24 hours after a federal judge ordered to temporarily suspend the measure to be able to assess whether the president is exceeding his powers.
The acting director of the OMB, Matthew J. Vaeth, has sent the statement to the federal agencies announced that the decision issued on Monday is “terminated.” Then federal agencies were ordered to pause all aid and loans to previously check if they were agreed with the “priorities” of the presidential agenda.
The announcement unleashed chaos and confusion at all administrative levels, since it could affect millions of dollars in state and local aid, directly affecting thousands of homes. Even some state agencies reported that for several hours they could not access federal funds for the Medicaid program. The OMB had assured that Social Security and Medicaid would be two exceptions to freezing. Only Medicaid covers more than 72 million Americans with low income.
The appeal accepted by the federal judge to temporarily block the OMB order argues that the executive action violates the first amendment and a government law on how executive orders should be applied. The judge had suspended the measure until next Monday.
Likewise, on Tuesday, the general prosecutors of 22 states also announced different plans to present legal resources pointing out that the OMB’s decision is unconstitutional, since it intends to intervene on the powers of the Congress that, according to the Magna Carta, is who has the main one Authority when deciding how taxpayers’ money is spent. Probably, the numerous resources presented against the OMB measure end in the Supreme Court and become one of the great judicial cases about where the limits of the Executive Power are.
Democracy Forward, the legal group that presented the resource that slowed the freezing of aid, has celebrated the annulment of the measure by the OMB. “While we hope that this allows millions of people in communities from all over the country to breathe with relief, we condemn the harmful and insensitive approach of the Trump-Vance administration to unleash chaos and the damage to the American people,” said the director’s director of the group, Perryman, in a statement issued on Wednesday.
The suspension of federal aid to review whether they were aligned with the “priorities” of the presidential agenda was part of Trump’s ultraconservative campaign against all those programs that have to do with the policies of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the Green agenda In addition, what the budget office tried to do is known as Impoundment (Fund retention, a practice that is limited by the Fund Retention Control Law.
The rule establishes that presidents can only use the retention power by submitting requests to the Congress on the funds that do not want to spend and then legislators must approve those requests within 45 days; Otherwise, the funds are released. The performance of the OMB did not seem to fit with the criteria of the law.
The freezing of federal aid could have had a catastrophic impact on the most vulnerable groups. For example, dining programs in schools for the most vulnerable children were likely to be affected. Likewise, the Meals On Wheels organization, which receives federal financing from the Nutrition programs of the Older America Act, explained to the CNN that if the memorandum was applied “presumably would interrupt the service to millions of vulnerable elders who do not have other means to buy or prepare meals ”.
The OMB Reulate is not the only rectification of the first orders of the Trump government. The new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, approved on Tuesday night a new exception for humanitarian assistance, after the president freezed foreign aid. In a statement to groups that work with American funds in humanitarian aid programs around the world, Rubio established that all that vital humanitarian aid would be exempt from the suspension.
Under this umbrella, all those programs that work with “basic medicines to save lives, medical services, food, refuge and subsistence assistance, as well as reasonable administrative supplies and reasonable administrative costs to provide assistance” were collected as vital. Now, it also attached a small print that said that this category would not apply to those programs that were involved in “abortions, family planning conferences … gender programs” or diversity, “transgender surgeries or other assistance that is not to save lives” .
One of the great doubts regarding this change ordered by Rubio is whether the HIV prevention and attention program in Africa (which a priori had been frozen) would also enter the exceptionality.
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