The White House order that shows its struggles with grants.
What's behind the new executive order on federal grantmaking and how to digest its changes.
On Thursday, the White House issued a lengthy new executive order directing what it portrayed as an overhaul of federal grantmaking, which it blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic, undocumented immigration, anti-white sentiment, people not getting to show their asses on social media to their satisfaction, and this Administration’s usual crap about transgender folks.
That framing seems to have absorbed plenty of the attention, and I have had one or two social media interactions from folks who seem bothered by any conversation or analysis not focusing on that. I’m not asking you to not feel your valid feelings, especially if you justifiably feel personally attacked.
I am, however, going to ask that you keep feeling them while also looking at some things that I would be concerned I had let out into the world if I was this White House. Please note that I’m saying this as someone who worked in Trump I and until very recently minded the Department of Labor’s grants portfolio. There are several things I have seen, but struggled for weeks to figure out how to write about. Well, here we are. Among them: why some very non-Trump grant projects are still alive despite the best efforts of the Administration.
The short of my takeaways from the order: I think the Trump Administration is struggling with federal financial assistance. You don’t emphasize and install the things in this order if that’s not the case. They have been letting things slip into the world that they don’t want because some of their appointees aren’t doing a good job. They also are losing legislatively in trying to kill some programs—Job Corps operators were just told the government is restarting new enrollments, for example—and they don’t feel like they’re able to fund the projects they want.
This order won’t fix that, even if it makes the process of building federal grants—and applying for and running them—much harder along the way.