Trump's 'Anti-Woke' and DEI Funding Freeze Memo, Explained

Yahoo

29-01-2025

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The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) declared a wide-ranging freeze on grants and financial assistance across the U.S. government this week, causing outcry and confusion across federal agencies before it was rescinded two days later.
Legal action had already begun to challenge the OMB memo before it was abruptly canceled on Wednesday afternoon, but its issuance quickly caused widespread confusion and outrage at all levels of government. Staffers of some government programs and nonprofit organizations said they were concerned the freeze could severely impact their work or wipe it out entirely, while administration officials claimed the freeze was necessary to identify and root out 'woke' programs that do not align with Trump's far-right agenda.
In the roughly two-day span between its issuance and withdrawal, the OMB funding freeze created significant uncertainty as to how it would affect various programs — if it was allowed to take effect at all. But even though the memo has now been ostensibly canceled as of Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the rescission applies only to the OMB memo itself, not Trump's general freezes on federal funding as outlined in his executive orders since January 20. The memo was only rescinded '[t]o end any confusion created by' a district court's stay on the memo, issued Tuesday, Leavitt asserted.
Even though the memo was withdrawn, it still provides insight into further details of Trump's goals for altering the U.S. federal government through executive action. Here's what we know right now about the OMB memo, its aims, and how officials responded in the immediate aftermath.
According to the memo ('Memorandum M-25-13') signed by acting OMB director Matthew Vaeth, 'all federal assistance' including grants, loans, loan guarantees, and insurance was to be paused for programs that conflict with Trump's executive orders — specifically his orders prohibiting DEI programs, rolling back environmental regulations, enacting mass deportations, blocking abortion-related care, and outlawing trans identities, which the memo calls 'woke gender ideology.' Vaeth condemned in the memo what he referred to as 'Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.'
Vaeth's memo instructed all government agencies to perform a 'comprehensive analysis of all of their Federal financial assistance programs' to determine whether they will continue receiving federal funds. Those analyses were set to be due on February 10. It also demanded that all notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs), which are used to communicate opportunities for government funding, be paused. The memo specified that going forward, agencies would also be required to submit to oversight from 'a senior political appointee,' in order to 'ensure Federal financial assistance conforms to Administration priorities.' Exceptions 'may be granted on a case-to-case basis,' Vaeth allowed at the time.
On Wednesday afternoon, news agencies obtained another OMB memo officially rescinding the first. 'If you have questions about implementing the President's Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel,' the second memo reportedly read.
Even up to the moment the memo was rescinded on January 29, the full range of programs and agencies that would have been affected by the OMB memo was unclear. The memo demanded a halt to 'foreign aid' and assistance to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but officials have made few other public statements on the scope of those restrictions. During a press conference on January 28, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker stated that there had been 'no communication' with state governments regarding the funding freeze, and in fact, 'we literally were informed that [federal agencies] are not to speak with us.'
It's also remained dubious whether the Trump administration's statements about affected agencies and programs were themselves true. The administration claimed that the pause would not affect people receiving individual benefits from the government, like Pell grants and federal student loans, which the Department of Education says are not included in the scope of the memo. But the administration also said that Medicaid would not be affected, even as Medicaid portals in all 50 states suddenly went down on Tuesday — which White House officials blamed on a coincidental 'outage.' Websites for the Head Start educational program were also reportedly inaccessible during that time.
'You think it was an accident the memo came out last night, and today our state agencies couldn't access those systems? It's not. The intention is to disrupt,' Pritzker told reporters on Tuesday.
It also seemed likely that the freeze would have affected federal school lunch programs, potentially blocking low-income children from obtaining food during the freeze. GOP Rep. Rich McCormick defended that likelihood on CNN this week, and bizarrely appeared to advocate for child labor in the process, arguing that children in poverty should be 'going to work at Burger King [or] McDonald's' instead of 'stay[ing] at home and get[ting] their free lunch' during summer vacation.
In a sense, the memo was already being enacted before it was even issued. According to the Associated Press, the Department of Justice stopped providing legal assistance to people facing deportation last week, and nonprofit groups were informed they should 'stop work immediately' on helping those clients.
However, on January 28, shortly before the memo's edicts were set to take effect, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan issued a stay on the funding freeze. AliKhan's order theoretically pushes the freeze's start date to Monday, February 3 at 5 p.m. That order came as a result of a lawsuit filed against the OMB and Vaeth by several groups on Tuesday, including the National Council of Nonprofits, the American Public Health Association, Main Street Alliance, and SAGE, which advocates and provides services for LGBTQ+ elders. That lawsuit argues that the OMB memo is 'arbitrary and capricious' in its edicts, violating multiple articles of the Administrative Procedure Act.
A freeze on foreign aid, separate from the OMB freeze, was also instituted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week, specifically blocking the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) from distributing HIV/AIDS treatment abroad. Following public outcry, Rubio later announced a waiver for 'life-saving humanitarian assistance' during the 90-day freeze, which covers 'core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance.' The scope and legality of that freeze were similarly unclear this week.
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During his press conference this week, Pritzker called the OMB mandate 'illegal' and vowed to challenge it in court. 'I know these are challenging times, and the Trump administration is trying to confuse the American people. That's why it's so important that we speak plainly,' he said.
A group of Democratic attorneys general also promised to file suit against OMB regarding the freeze. 'It is astonishing that President Trump, through an agency most Americans have never heard of, would take an action so clearly unlawful that would impact so many Americans in so many ways,' Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a press conference this week, per Politico. New York Attorney General Letitia James — who previously presided over Trump's civil fraud case in her state — agreed, saying Trump 'has exceeded his authority [...] violated the Constitution, and he has trampled on a coequal branch of government.'
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who also signed onto the AGs' legal action, told reporters that the OMB memo did not have the power to override Congress. 'Congress is given the power to appropriate the funding,' Raoul said. 'The executive branch cannot unilaterally disregard those appropriations passed by a separate and equal house of government.'
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