'Crisis deepening': White House say funding freeze remains after OMB memo pulled

29 January

The White House is making clear that even though the Trump budget office has rescinded its highly confusing and controversial memo declaring a massive and widespread freeze on possibly trillions of federal funding dollars, the actual funding freeze itself is still in effect and will be “rigorously implemented.” The rescission of the memo reportedly was merely a tactic to “get around” a court injunction.

“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” wrote White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Wednesday afternoon, after celebrations from the left, believing the memo’s rescission meant the policy was also rescinded. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

A federal court had placed a temporary, partial “stay,” or pause, on the OMB memo.

“This is just more confusion and chaos,” New York State Attorney General Letitia James said in response to Leavitt. “We will be in court this afternoon.”

“On the White House rescinding the memo,” reported CBS News senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs, “aides say it is not an end to the intended freeze of federal funding that clashes with Trump’s worldviews. It’s meant to get around the court injunction.”

“Bingo,” U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), one of the more vocal critics of the Trump White House, responded. “Crisis is deepening, not abating. They are trying to ignore the court order.”

“The funding shutdown is still in place. They are just doing it without the piece of paper,” he added.

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) added, “So they reversed the memo and then sent out this? Chaos.”

Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich reported on the White House’s apparent reasoning, telling viewers Wednesday afternoon, “Karoline Leavitt said in the briefing that this [OMB memo] was targeted at things like the $50 million that went to, uh, she said, condoms in Gaza. Initiatives like that are still subject to this freeze, anything that’s impacted by those executive orders, there were, I think, seven listed in the memo, but in the interim, the OMB has pulled back that memo itself, because that barred communication between OMB and agency heads and what, in fact, was impacted.”

The OMB memo specifically noted programs like the “Green New Deal” would be frozen, even though the Green New Deal was never fully passed or signed into law.

The White House’s claims about $50 million being sent to Gaza for condoms — repeated on live television Wednesday afternoon by President Donald Trump in a signing ceremony of the Laken Riley Act — also appears to be false.

“According to a comprehensive report issued in September by the US Agency for International Development (USAid), not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US in the past year went to Gaza,” The Guardian reported Tuesday. “In fact, the accounting shows, there were no condoms sent to any part of the Middle East, and just one small shipment, $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives, was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.”

“As Dan Evon of the non-profit News Literacy Project points out: ‘It’s also worth noting that this is not a Biden program. Trump, too, spent funds on sending contraceptives around the globe. In 2019, about $40m was spent on contraceptives by the Trump administration.’”

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