What to take away from the Trump funding freeze.

How to think about the law and this week's mess--and where the administration likely wants to go next

The most important thing to remember about the Trump way of governing is it is a whim-based enterprise. From my years working with them on grants, even the most careful and committed plans can change within hours.

Whim-based enterprises are great at starting big bold action, but not terribly great at executing.¹ And no matter how you try to remold your tools, governing successfully is almost always about the execution.

Obviously, I have been thinking about this quite a lot as the Trump Administration tweets through its original plan to abruptly stop paying what appear to be lawfully entered grant agreements and contracts until it has tested them for wokeness.² As of the time I’m writing this, the answer is they won’t stop paying the money, at least for now, due to the speedy intervention of a federal court. Work Shift reported that workforce programs were/are among intended targets and will be frozen if somehow this judicial branch noise goes away.³

The workforce and broader federal grantee community is shaken and justifiably quite pissed. My understanding is some grantees received nonspecific warnings about award termination well before the now-rescinded White House memo. Now everyone is confused and likely very, very tired after two days of contemplating how their operation might continue to function, if at all.

I don’t think these grantees can assume their award is “safe” in the immediate term—even if they provide critical services to populations or stakeholders friendly to the new administration. This is the logical endpoint of a frustration that festered within the White House and secretary’s suites during the first Trump years: they don’t like spending any federal money if they can help it. Unfortunately, Congress keeps giving it to them and the law makes them send it out the door.

This means presumedly lawfully operating grantees may spend the next several months or years fighting to do what the government told them to do.⁴ This does not mean money will be taken away successfully, of course.

Tomorrow, I’ll have an analysis on the types of currently open funding opportunities that are “safest.” Next Friday, I plan on putting together a fuller survival guide for the people with money now.

Today, though, I think it’s important to look at the broad strokes of the legal situation and what this all could be leading to.⁵