Hand back the purse, Mr. President
By Jamelle Bouie / The New York Times
Donald Trump is waging war on the American system of government.
On Monday afternoon, his Office of Management and Budget ordered a pause on nearly all grants, loans and other forms of federal assistance, affecting as much as $3 trillion in funds including cash for education, disaster relief, small business loans and hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to state, local and tribal governments. Countless organizations, including research universities and women’s shelters, were left adrift, scrambling for answers.
The only real explanation, from the OMB memo, was that this was a necessary step to root out the malign influence of “Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies” from government. If this sounds delusional, that’s because it is. But now, it seemed, millions of Americans would have to suffer while the president’s apparatchiks chased down the specters of their fevered imaginations, confident that they’d find the source of their cultural alienation in the disbursement of funds to a veterans’ suicide hotline or free lunch for low-income school children.
On Tuesday, 23 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration in an effort to block the freeze, and a federal judge issued an administrative stay to preserve the status quo until next week, as initial litigation begins to play itself out. Democrats have also condemned the White House, with some Senate Democrats suggesting something like a slowdown of all business if the White House does not relent.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/bouie-hand-back-the-purse-mr-president/