White House budget office suspends federal financial aid programs
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(WASHINGTON) — The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has instructed all federal agencies to cease spending on any financial assistance programs if they suspect it might conflict with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders.
Agencies must comply beginning at 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday, according to the OMB memo obtained by ABC News.
However, the order does not specify which financial aid programs would have to be suspended.
Given the spate of orders issued this month — some of which have prompted lawsuits — the memo could have sweeping implications.
The federal government funds thousands of programs, including research projects, housing subsidies and educational grants.
“The use of Federal resources to advanced Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day to day lives of those we serve,” wrote Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the OMB.
Vaeth told agency chiefs they must “identify and review all federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.”
They are being told they must report back by Feb. 10 on all programs that apply.
“In the interim, to the extent permissible under applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activity 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, non-governmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” Vaeth wrote.
In response to the OMB memo, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement late Monday calling on the Trump administration to immediately “reverse course.”
“Congress approved these investments and they are not optional; they are the law,” Schumer said. “These grants help people in red states and blue states, support families, help parents raise kids, and lead to stronger communities.”
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump will meet with Senate Republicans Wednesday to try to get lawmakers “on the same page” on how to advance some of his major policy initiatives after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump will meet with Senate leadership and the rank and file after paying his respects to former President Jimmy Carter, who lies in state in the Capitol before his funeral on Thursday.
The president-elect wants to deliver on campaign promises, but how to move them forward has divided congressional Republicans.
Trump has pitched one massive bill that would include several of Trump’s top priorities: Immigration reform and energy production, and extending the tax cuts passed during his first term and other spending cuts. He’s also suggested that the bill should raise the debt ceiling or eliminate it altogether.
With small majorities in each chamber and little to no support expected from Democrats, Republicans plan to push “reconciliation” — a fast-track process limited to spending and revenue legislation that needs only a majority rather than the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to pass legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson faces resistance to the one-bill approach from fiscal conservatives in his conference. And some Senate Republicans are advocating for two bills — one on border issues and a second to deal with fiscal policy.
One of the key objectives in Wednesday’s meeting will be “how we get on the same page with the House,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Tuesday.
Barrasso said the “goal is the same,” whether it’s done with one or two bills, but he said a two-part plan would allow Trump to deliver on some of his promises and allow more time to address tax policy that doesn’t expire until the end of the year.
“It was a suggestion by [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune — this was before Christmas — he said, ‘Let’s get an early win on the border,'” Barrasso, R-Wyo., said. “It was an issue in the election and it is a big issue for the American people and it is a big issue for national security, and we just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with a focus on that, on taking the handcuffs off of American energy as well as military strength, and then have the longer time to work on the financial component of this.
“These issues and the urgency of the tax issue doesn’t really come into play until the end of the year to the level that these other issues have the higher urgency right now,” he said.
Trump reiterated his preference for one bill when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday, but said he could live with two.
“Well, I like one big, beautiful bill, and I always have, I always will, he said. But if two is more certain [to pass], it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early,” he said.
In the House, Johnson said he remains convinced that the one-bill strategy is the “best way to go,” but conversations with Thune are continuing.
“Yes, Leader Thune and I are on exactly the same page with regard to the objectives, and we’re determining right now the final sequence of the play call, so to speak,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “This is not some sort of, I feel like sometimes the media tries to make this an existential threat to the objectives or to what we’re doing with the legislation. It’s not that, this is two chambers deciding the best sequence of events, and we’ll get to a perfect alignment here in the next I think a couple of days.”
Johnson said he hopes to have a bill ready by the first week in April, but it remains to be seen if he can get fiscal conservatives in his conference, who have long opposed all-in-one bills like the one Johnson is proposing, on board.
The speaker pushed back on Tuesday about the one-bill approach being a kitchen sink approach.
“This is not an omnibus spending bill, but appropriation,” Johnson said. “This is reducing spending, which is an objective we talked about. I’ll keep reiterating this: that just because the debt limit is raised, to give stability the bond markets and to send a message around the world that we will pay the nation’s debt. We are doggedly determined to decrease the size of scope of government and to limit spending, cut spending so you can you’ll see both of those things happen simultaneously.”
Johnson also intends to handle the debt limit in the reconciliation bill — without Democratic support.
“That way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we again get to determine the details of that. If it runs through the regular order, regular process… then you have to have both parties negotiating. And we feel like we are in better stead to do it ourselves,” he said Tuesday.
But it remains to be seen whether Johnson can sell the fiscal conservatives in his conference on that idea. They nearly derailed the short-term government funding bill to avert a shutdown last month after Trump demanded that it dealt with the debt ceiling.
After his meeting with senators, Trump will meet with groups of House Republicans at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida this weekend.
“He’s bringing in big groups of House Republicans to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend three days in a row to meet with and talk with all of our team members about what’s ahead of us and the challenges and how we can accomplish all this together,” Johnson said, though the speaker is not expected to attend.
(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) — The man who in 2016 showed up to a popular pizza restaurant with a gun, claiming there were children being trafficked in the basement, died in an officer-involved shooting on Thursday outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, according to authorities.
Edgar Maddison Welch was armed when he tried to take action against “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that spread during the election cycle of 2016.
It falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department had discovered a child sex trafficking ring in the basement of Comet Ping Pong Pizza in Washington, D.C. The conspiracy theory falsely claimed that the criminal ring was run by operatives from within the Democrat Party.
Welch fired three shots at the restaurant in an effort to “self investigate” the ring, which didn’t exist. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
An officer made a traffic stop on the vehicle after observing that it belonged to Welch, who had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, the statement said.
“A vehicle stop was made by the officer and during his interaction with the driver, the officer recognized the front seat passenger as the person with the outstanding warrant for arrest,” according to the KPD.
“The officer who initiated the traffic stop approached the passenger side of the vehicle and opened the front passenger’s door to arrest the individual,” according to Kannapolis Chief of Police Terry Spry.
During the traffic stop, it was discovered that Welch was armed. Officers called for him to drop his gun, but he “failed to comply,” according to the statement.
“When he opened the door, the front seat passenger pulled a handgun from his jacket and pointed it in the direction of the officer,” he said in the statement, referring to Welch by his position within the vehicle.
“That officer and a second officer who was standing at the rear passenger side of the Yukon gave commands for the passenger to drop the gun,” Spry said.
His statement continued: “After the passenger failed to comply with their repeated requests, both officers fired their duty weapon at the passenger, striking him.”
Welch died two days later at a nearby hospital, Spry said.
The incident is being investigated by an outside police agency to determine if there was any wrongdoing.
(WASHINGTON) — Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the leaders of Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” have found themselves at odds with some of Trump’s far-right supporters over their support for H-1B visas, which allow foreign skilled professionals to work in America.
The debate was sparked over the Christmas holiday when Laura Loomer, a conservative social media figure who faced criticism when she traveled with President-Elect Donald Trump on some campaign stops, criticized Trump’s appointment of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as his senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence.
Criticizing a post from Krishnan where he advocated the removal of country caps for green cards, Loomer called the appointment “deeply disturbing,” prompting an online battle between the business leaders who say the work visas are essential to employing high-qualified foreign workers and Trump supporters who argued it was a way for business leaders to have cheap labor rather than provide job opportunities for Americans.
Both Ramaswamy and Musk made numerous posts on X claiming H-1B visas are essential because American culture doesn’t prioritize success in science and engineering careers compared to other countries.
“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” Ramaswamy posted on X.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he added.
Musk, who has said he once worked in the United States on an H-1B visa, said he has depended on these work visas for the operation of his tech companies and that they are essential due to the number of skilled workers needed to handle the rise of new technologies.
“OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process,” he posted. “HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.” Loomer and other far-right conservatives have also argued that the expansions of such programs would go against Trump’s immigration crackdown.
While she and others have accused Musk and Ramaswamy of hindering Trump’s aggressive immigration proposals, the business leaders have argued that any such reforms would not hinder the program’s extensive vetting process.
“Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote on X.
“This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA,” he said, referencing two foreign-born basketball stars.
Now, the business leaders are being accused of using Trump for their own personal gain.
“We are substituting a third world migrant invasion for a third world tech invasion. Same shit,” Loomer posted on X. “Except this invasion won’t be done by rapist foreigners who look and smell like garbage. It will be done by career leftist tech billionaires who hate Trump deep down inside.”
Further showing a divide among conservatives over the issue, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley also weighed in, pushing back on a post from Ramaswamy and arguing American workers should be prioritized over foreigners.
“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” she said. “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”
In June, David Sacks, who will be the president-elect’s AI and crypto czar, interviewed Trump for his “All In” podcast and asked Trump if he would expand H-1B work visas for tech workers after fixing the border — to which Trump said “yes.”
In that same episode, Trump also promised to award all international graduates with green cards, saying, “I want to do, and what I will do, is you graduate from a college, I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country. That includes junior colleges, too.”
His campaign later walked back that promise, saying there would be a vetting process.
“He believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America,” Karoline Leavitt, incoming White House press secretary, said in a statement to ABC News at the time. “This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”
ABC News’ Zohreen Shah contributed to this report.
