Morally indignant Senate Democrats piled on President Donald Trump’s federal funding freeze Wednesday, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announcing a coordinated response with Democratic governors to come.
The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo on Monday issuing a pause on all federal grants and loans aiming to eradicate ‘wokeness’ and the ‘weaponization of government’ to improve government efficiency. The memo claims nearly $3 trillion was spent in 2024 on such assistance programs.
The White House insists this freeze does not touch programs including Social Security, Medicare, or other entitlement payments, but Schumer called Trump’s action ‘chaotic,’ ‘careless,’ and ‘cruel’ at the Democratic leadership’s weekly press briefing.
‘In one instant, in the blink of an eye, in the dark of night, Donald Trump committed one of the cruelest actions that I have seen the federal government do in a very long time,’ Schumer said, claiming Trump had shut off ‘billions, maybe trillions of dollars that average American families need.’
The minority leader said there are ongoing discussions between Capitol Hill Democrats and various Democratic governors on a coordinated response to Trump’s action. Two dozen blue state attorneys general have already announced legal action to keep the federal grant, loan and other aid flowing.
Democrats said they have received an avalanche of phone calls from local officials, non-governmental organizations, charities and individual constituents demanding to know if OMB’s memo meant taxpayer dollars they rely on to serve people were about to disappear.
‘Chaos reigned. I got calls from a whole lot of Republican town supervisors and mayors, asking, what about flood prevention? What about sewer construction projects?’ Schumer said. He recounted additional calls from food bank operators, nonprofit groups that treat addiction and church groups worried they would not be able to make payroll.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that the OMB memo would not impact individuals who receive direct assistance from the federal government. She described the pause as ‘temporary’ and likened it to simultaneous efforts by the Trump administration to freeze hiring and regulations in an effort to shrink the government.
‘Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,’ the memo, obtained by Fox Digital, reads.
A federal judge on Tuesday imposed a stay on Trump’s action, delaying it until Monday as a torrent of lawsuits against the administration were announced this week.
New York Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday led a coalition of 22 other attorneys general suing to stop the implementation of the memo.
In a statement from James’ office, she said the policy ‘puts an indefinite pause on the majority of federal assistance to states’ and would ‘immediately jeopardize state programs that provide critical health and childcare services to families in need, deliver support to public schools, combat hate crimes and violence against women, provide life-saving disaster relief to states, and more.’
Republicans have mostly backed Trump, insisting that the new presidential administration has a right to examine how taxpayer dollars are spent.
‘This is not unusual for an administration to pause funding and to take a hard look and scrub of how these programs are being spent and how they interact with a lot of the executive orders that the president signed,’ Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters, though he expressed hope that the White House would ‘further clarify what exactly will be impacted by this.’
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democratic appropriator, said Trump’s actions have endangered chances for a bipartisan spending agreement when the government funding deadline arrives in March.
‘It is extremely difficult to agree to a compromise on anything if the White House is going to assert that they control the funds, we don’t,’ Murray said. ‘So this is really putting that in jeopardy.’