Freeze on grant funding temporarily halted by federal judge | Hacker News Reader

Freeze on grant funding temporarily halted by federal judge

bloomberg.com

49 pointsanigbrowl65 comments

It’s not just about whether these executive orders stick. It’s about draining the energy and resources of good people by forcing us to keep fighting all the time. Rope a dope.

Right. The strategy this time around should be universally concerning: our system is built for drawn-out consideration, not handling rapid-fire edicts from an executive who doesn't understand (or doesn't wish to understand) the division of power between branches of government.

Trump appears to be signaling that he's going to sign orders and memos until the other branches roll over through attrition. I hope they remember their coextensive powers before that strategy actually works.

I'm hoping a result of this shitshow is a curtailing the power of the executive. We've been slow-walking our way towards this by congress abrogating their responsibility under both parties. Probably requires actual restructuring of congressional elections and seniority systems though, which is... well going to be hard.

I agree completely!

It would also require Congress to actually pass more legislation. A lot of the 'ruling by executive order' culture came as a result of the increasing polarisation of the legislature and subsequent lack of compromise.

This. The left needs to admit that they are guilty of this too and exercise forbearance to stop this cycle if they lucky enough to get the chance.

Don't worry, no such result will happen, as the other party is already showing they have just as little interest in actually changing things - they're going to keep everything "same old". [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/politics/ken-martin-dn...

If we make it through this intact and another, more serious and compassionate group of adults manage to regain legislative power they absolutely must exercise forbearance try to curtail the power of the President to rule through Executive Orders -- left, right, and center. This is no way to run a country.

I am hoping the interest payment portion of the debt overtakes everything before then and just resolves everything.

Gotta hand it to the conservatives. They have been relentlessly working toward it since post Nixon era in every level of government and the media. It’s a fresh approach to fascism that is going to be studied in history alongside the “classic” ones.

All conservatives want is less government interference and less taxes! They never voted for any of this.

They voted for this. If they don’t think they did, it’s only because they are ignorant fools.

All of the conservatives I know have given up and vote for the democrats. For one thing, Trump primaries / purged all the conservatives from the GOP during his first term.

Sorry but there are absolutely people out there, maybe not the traditional principled republican voters, but still Trump voters who wanted a strong man / dictators.

My wife walked into my office about an hour ago with a message from her school related to grants being halted, and how they're going to try to respond. It wasn't anything that directly affected her studies, but there are undoubtedly fallout and cascading effects that this could exercise on schools.

If nothing else, a lot of this mad-cap swinging of the executive-order hammer has exposed how much of our society depends on the existing provided infrastructure.

A lot of our society depends on good-faith participation and restraint when wielding power.

Pausing the flow of so much money, even for a short while, seems like it would be disruptive to the economy.

What did the project 2025 people expect was going to happen?

The utter indifference to human suffering is very distressing.

> What did the project 2025 people expect was going to happen?

Given that one of their goals was "de-emphasizing college education" and encouraging high school graduates to focus on a (Christian, of course) family, and raising children... I don't think they much care.

watching peoplein r/conservatives jumping happy with this news. I understand there is waste to some degree, but it feels dystopian.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conservatives/comments/1ibznfh/all_...

I hate it when articles don't link to the actual legal source, so here it goes.

The case in question: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69583571/national-counc...

It'll be interesting to see if the court has the authority to make this ruling.

I assume the administration will push this to the Supremes.

A pause is not a stop.

What people are worried about is that their program is going to be cut after the review. It's better to stop the review now before it starts by making a whole bunch of "the sky is falling" claims. The sky might be falling, but it doesn't hurt to panic.

If you look at the spreadsheet (which is hard, because it's a PDF), you'll see that each agency needs to list the political overseer so the administration can, if they want, find out how to kill it. As far as I know there's never been a list like this, ever. I wish it was a real spreadsheet because the objective text is clipped.

https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/instructions_f...

I’m more worried about the elimination of separation of powers that this executive order will imply if upheld.

Congress writes laws and sets the budget. Trump has said he’s not going to enforce laws he doesn’t like and will use emergency declarations to enforce rules he made up. Now he’s saying he’s going to ignore the budget congress passed.

Also, if the Supreme Court does uphold it, then we’ll know for sure that they’re ceding power to Trump, so he’ll have cemented in his dictatorship in under two weeks. Hitler took 53 days.

To be fair, Trump is far from the first to practice selective enforcement. As long as cannabis remains schedule 1, the DEA could raid every dispensary and farm in states that have "legalized" it, the only thing stopping them is our presidents turning a blind eye. All those "10 ridiculous laws still on the books" listicles operate on the same principle: nobody cares to enforce them, and since nobody is enforcing them, there isn't enough political will to repeal them, either.

Which is to say SCOTUS will absolutely approve of Trump refusing to enforce laws he dislikes, for better and for worse. The emergency declarations to enforce unconstitutional rules he just imagined like an LLM hallucination will likely be far worse, and even if SCOTUS says no, I doubt he will obey them (SCOTUS has no enforcement powers, after all).

I don't see a strategy here other than just blowing things up... And that's concerning me. Why are they doing so much self-destructive shit.

I've read some folks saying this is a long game seize power or establish new norms. I would really like it if there were some logic or rationale behind it. But I don't see any reasoning that's longer than "It's giving money to ______"

Erode institutions to erode public trust in institutions. You then a) free up budget to spend on your buddies and b) derisk regulation and/or public criticism from these institutions

Fascism's power is situated on lying to a 'chosen majority' and telling them they are special, unique, destined for greatness, etc. (often by simultaneously giving them insecurity - that if they don't take up the mantle of chosen majority they are losers, worthless, no one will love them, they deserve to suffer, etc.) so that you can use them to get rid of opposition, and then split off small groups repeatedly, until finally screwing the chosen majority too over because they no longer have enough power to resist.

A critical part of this is controlling information; people need to be convinced not to unite, because if they notice what is happening early on, they can brute force victory through sheer numbers.

Another element of that is maintaining/gaining control of institutions with 'true believers' who are willing to commit cruelty to satisfy the party's ambition is a critical part of progressively removing minorities without the chosen majority realizing that they might be next.

Additionally, making the situation uncomfortable and scary to get people to voluntary leave whittles down the population of people who might be capable and motivated to resist. And making it seem like they have more power than they do and making it unclear what will cause harm to them can cause people to 'obey in advance', giving up power to the party which they do not have.

Go look at the deferred resignation offer the OPM nust sent to the entire executive branch. Moving forward, reliability and loyalty will be rewarded, not competence or doing your job. Also, a witch hunt is coming.

The memo applies to the entire executive branch except the military and immigration enforcement.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42859552

Americans have been voting for significant change since Obama ran on "Hope and Change" and delivered neither. Harris promised Even More Of The Same and people said 'No, but For Real this time.'

People. Do. Not. Want. All. This. And they voted for someone, again, who said they'd change things. Let's go.

All what? Tell me what "people" don't want and I will tell you why people don't know what the heck they are talking about. This site is focused on expertise. Would you want "people" to tell you why you need that helper class? Stuff. Is. Complicated.

Sorry man, democracy and all that.

let's hope so.

The elites running the show failed to either sufficiently explain why the country is doing what it is, or deliver enough bread and circuses to the population for that not to matter.

Will they course correct before the system breaks? Only time will tell.

That's 100% accurate.

You're 100% correct. People tried the nice way with Obama and now they're choosing the hard way with Trump. We are over-the-moon happy with these actions.

What's this 'we', your personal friend group?

Trump supporters

Yeah I'm not buying that Trump supporters are disappointed Obama voters, given that Trump was one of the main promoters of the 'birther' conspiracy theory.

This unwillingness to understand the Trump movement is why Trump is successful and not a more moderate republican or democrat.

I am more than willing to understand the Trump movement and think I do understand it better than most. I took issue with the lack of consistency in your comments above.

Think about the marginal Trump voter, not the die hards. The marginal voters are the ones who put him in office

If that was what you meant in the first place then maybe should have written it as such. I see little evidence for your claim.

My view of the most recent election is that Trump did not attract a lot of marginal voter support (if anything, he had less than in 2020) but that Harris failed to attract any at all because she didn't define her policies well, didn't communicate well, and spent too much time chasing non-Trump Republicans while ignoring everyone to the left of that.

It's very easy to understand. You're terrible people, dumb people and you try to inflict suffering to make yourselves feel good.

Sorry but not wanting to fund left wing pet causes throughout the world doesn't make me terrible.

Seeing the farce of US Taxpayer funded "NGOs" dismantled is exactly what I voted for

It appears that PEPFAR data systems are still down. Is the administration defying the court order or is there another reason for the outage?

https://data.pepfar.gov/

https://www.datim.org/

I did some digging and it appears the problem is the following:

1. There was a "STOP WORK" memo issued by the administration that caused all this chaos.

2. Since the court injunction a "resume work" memo has not been issued so PEPFAR activity has been at a standstill.

There is a risk that decades of work fighting the AIDS epidemic has gone to waste.

At this point I have to wonder if judicial intervention will have any effect; a court ruling only matters if the administration decides to obey it. There's a lot of frozen funds which legally cannot be frozen due to them either not being subject to executive control (e.g. Medicaid funds[0]) or because there are contractual obligations for dispersal (e.g. many infrastructure projects), so it seems unlikely that a little thing like the law is going to make a difference here.

As someone in higher ed, this all worries me greatly. My position may not be federally funded, but if layoffs occur to balance the budget, I'm relatively low on the seniority ladder.

[0]: https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/trump-freezes-federal-gr...

He'll just fire any civil servants that follow through and obey court orders that he disagrees with. And as president he has immunity, while they're going to have to lawyer up to try to sort it all out. So as a civil servant employee at what point do you just put your head down and do what your direct boss says?

My assumption is that it's within the administration's rights to cancel the funding, but it's like that scene in The Office where Michael tries to "declare bankruptcy" by just saying the words out loud.

The actual executive order is laughably vague, it couldn't be less serious if it was written in crayon. And their additional guidance was not much better:

>Q: Is this a freeze on all Federal financial assistance? A: No, the pause does not apply across-the-board. It is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President’s Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest.

This is hilariously daft. The administration is not aware that the "green new deal" included things like highway funding and buying school buses. Does DEI include reduced lunch programs? If you are currently getting a grant to upgrade metering in your city, are you supposed to stop or not? It's a drunk stepdad's shopping list.

I suspect the court is actually going to make the administration do a bit of reading and have to identify each grant that they are going to cut.

Why do you assume the executive has this power? The president has an explicit constitutional duty to faithfully execute the law. The president has no line item veto power. Maybe this Supreme Court will make up this power in the future. But it doesn’t exist at this moment.

Oh, there's a section in the actual memo that talks about "ending the wokeness agenda". I was going to say it feels like it was written by Trump himself, except far too eloquent. Maybe by Musk, then.

  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/embassy-us-flag-blm-gay-pride.html

That didn't take too long.

Expect the current administration to spend more time in court than any other.

Of course, this won't be anything new for Donald...

Rescinded.

I have been consulting with startups in the SF Bay Area, many of them are in their B-series and C-series funding rounds ; offices in SF skyscrapers and general SV / San Jose area. In the C-series I have been involved in long enough, I can count the closet Trump supporters on more than one hand. At the B-series companies, it's more than just one person.

Personally, I'm not among them, but I don't lean into "Orange Man is Hitler" either. I grew up in a place where I know what real extremists do actually look like.

Treating those with different opinions, is brewing the "fascism" we are hearing so much about but aren't going to see, not in this presidential term at least. We need to try actually talking to people more.

But these people are never going to admit they are Trump supporters. If you think you are someone that could they should believe they could have a rational conversation with them, ask yourself if you still believe the "fine people" hoax, and check what Snopes (yes, Snopes) has to say about that hoax before replying here.

In the end there is no way the courts could force the Executive to deficit spend. I'm not sure I want to find out which way that will go right now -and I make no predictions whatsoever-, but it has got to be the case that in extremis the Executive can simply cut spending until the deficit is reduced to zero. Imagine that the deficit was 100% and inflation were raging at Argentine levels like 100% a year: an American Milei (which Trump is not far from being) would absolutely get away with cutting spending to the bone and telling the Congress and the courts to go pound sand.

My advice is to not push too hard on this at this time. The only real check on Trump's power right now will be the House impeaching, and that can only happen if House Republicans get angry with him, and it should be clear that cutting spending is making them angry before the courts start goading Trump into doing something that might trigger impeachment. I don't think people realize that the right-ward movement in the electorate is accelerating since the election, and doing things that further accelerate that before the midterms isn't going to help Trump's opponents in either party.

By that theory, if the President can choose not to spend money budgeted and authorized by Congress, they have an effective veto power over any legislation. Don't like trains? Defund Amtrak. Don't like highways? Defund DOT. Peace lover? Zero out the DoD.

This is why the Supreme Court is here - to adjudicate what is legal and to reconcile different responsibilities and theories. Regardless of what is "best for the country", the law says one thing and the President is doing something else.

First of all see the "impoundment power" and the Impoundment Control Act. It's not clear what the Constitution says on this matter, nor have the courts pronounced themselves on this. In the 90s the SCOTUS said that Congress could not give the President an explicit line item veto power, but impoundment is not the same thing.

Second, in extremis, it has got to be the case that the President can refuse to spend allocated moneys. The President must never be able to spend unallocated funds, but Congress can't make money appear out of nowhere. In extremis the dollar could stop being the world's reserve currency, and in extremis the U.S. could end up in a situation like Argentina's. Obviously there has to be a limit. I'm not saying we're there. But I am saying that the courts should thing ten times before saying that the President cannot impound spending.

Besides, consider all the constitutional provisions that we no longer adhere to. For example the Constitution says that Congress must set the value of the currency, but Congress does no such thing. For another the Constitution says that all debt issuance must be approved by Congress, but Congress merely sets a ceiling for debt issuance rather than approving each issuance. Some things -not many- the Constitution got wrong in ways that nobody even bothered to amend nor ever will.

In extremis, if it's the President that decides which parts of Congress to implement, then they have broken the separation of powers. Either the Supreme Court should explicitly rule that the President can weigh e.g. macroeconomic impacts when choosing not to implement laws Congress passed, or Congress should act to avoid those economic consequences.

Aside from today's specific issue, I'm very concerned about the decades-long trend of power being ceded by Congress to the Executive and Judicial branches. This is would be another big jerk in that direction.

"Current law thus often catches the executive branch in a vise: Presidents can neither spend money without an appropriation nor refuse to spend funds once Congress has provided them. From both directions, Congress has reinforced its “power of the purse”—its authority to control the use of federal money." - https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-primer-on-the-impound...

No, the extreme example here is about DEFICIT spending. If Congress passed a balanced budget then the President could not decide not to spend some of it.

Reality has a stronger vise than the ICA or the SCOTUS.

Aside from any given policy, the President deciding that the presidency gets a new power is a disturbing precedent.

FDR joins the chat

The question here seems to be whether the president can temporarily not spend money. Congress has the ultimate power of spending. When the spending is grants, does the executive have the ability to change where the money goes? In other words once the tap is open, it can’t ever close?

> My advice is to not push too hard on this at this time. The only real check on Trump's power right now will be the House impeaching, and that can only happen if House Republicans get angry with him, and it should be clear that cutting spending is making them angry before the courts start goading Trump into doing something that might trigger impeachment. I don't think people realize that the right-ward movement in the electorate is accelerating since the election, and doing things that further accelerate that before the midterms isn't going to help Trump's opponents in either party.

There isn't going to be another election in this country.

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