Trump Federal Funding Freeze Order Sows Confusion, Fear
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From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. With an executive order on Monday night, Donald Trump sent the federal government into chaos as it appeared to order the freezing of funds to an unknown swath of government programs until and unless they came into compliance with the Trump administration's policy demands.

A second memo Tuesday and a court decision freezing the action have created even more confusion. We'll try to sort out what happened, what it means for the country, and what to look for going forward. It's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. You could be forgiven if you did not know the word impoundment before, say, Monday night.

But in his platform, Agenda 47, Donald Trump promised to use impoundment to, quote, squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy. Trump argued presidents should have wide latitude to spend less than Congress appropriated for government programs, saying the appropriation was a ceiling, not a floor.

That power has explicitly not resided in the presidency since Congress nearly unanimously passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act in 1974, a response itself to Richard Nixon's use of impoundment. On Monday, a Trump executive order sent the federal government into a scramble as it, on its face, appeared to freeze spending on many, many domestic programs.

Portals went down, Head Start programs wondered if they'd get shut down. No one really knew what was going on. A Tuesday memo attempted a semi-walkback, but an internal Office of Management and Budget memo also listed 2,000 programs that might be subject to scrutiny and or defunding.

So this morning, we're going to try to sort through what's going on insofar as we can know it and learn a bit more about impoundment and the legal theory that the Trump team is advancing, as well as look at how California officials are trying to respond. We're joined this morning by Sam Begenstas, law professor at the University of Michigan Law School and also former general counsel with the White House Office of Management and Budget. Welcome, Sam. Good morning.

We're also joined by Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer with Slate Magazine. Hi, thanks so much for having me on. And we've got Marisa Lagos, who's a politics correspondent with KQED, of course, and co-host of KQED's Political Breakdown. Welcome, Marisa. Hey, Alexis. Okay, there's a lot to sort through here. Mark, it's been a very confusing couple of days. You've been following things really closely.

Talk to me about the order that came out on Monday night and what it said. Yeah. So the original order was really, I think, shocking in its scope and sweep. The administration claimed that basically all discretionary funding, which is hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, needed to be put on hold.

federal programs, federal aid, federal awards, and that the administration was going to go through line by line all of these expenditures and make sure that they complied with the new priorities of the president. It only excluded Social Security and Medicare. Seemingly, a lot of other stuff, including possibly Medicaid, was swept up in that.

And so that set off pretty much panic throughout the federal government for many, many nonprofits, for states that rely on this funding that makes up a large portion of their budget and expenditures each year. There was just mass confusion about what money had suddenly stopped flowing and what money could still be accessed under the memo. Mm hmm.

Sam, as former general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget, was there any precedent that you were aware of that for this kind of action?

No, I mean, this is just an incredibly broad and aggressive step by a new administration to pause funding that had already been approved by Congress to basically say, look, the previous Congress might have passed a law and appropriated this money, but I'm not sure I agree with it. And as the president, I'm not going to follow it until I decide I'm going to agree with it, which is just contrary to

all of our basic constitutional principles. It's Congress that makes the laws. It's Congress that has the power of the purse. And it's very clear that one thing a president can't do is say, I don't agree with this law that was passed, so I'm just not going to follow it. That's contrary to the responsibilities of the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

What about the argument that the Trump administration in Agenda 47 and also it's touched upon in conservative legal theory that before 1974, the president did have these empowerment powers. And so therefore, it was actually Congress passing this 1974 bill, which which really changed the balance of powers between Congress and the executive branch.

Yeah, so I think that's not true. And I think if you look at the Supreme Court precedent, of which there's not a ton, but it's very clear the way it points here, and you look at the history, you can see why it's not true. It is true that on many occasions in the past, Congress has adopted

appropriations laws that say to the president, "President, you can spend up to this amount." And that happens today as well. Congress will pass an appropriations law that says no more than X amount for this purpose. And when Congress passes a law that says that, the president has discretion because Congress has given the president discretion. But when Congress says,

This is the amount of money that we are appropriating to be spent on this topic that has always been understood as something that the president is bound by. And the president is bound to spend that money until or unless Congress changes its mind, passes a new law rescinding some of the spending, which also happens from time to time. But there's really no good legal or historical basis for the argument that the Trump folks are making.

Mark, let's walk through what then happened after this Monday memo. There were all the things that happened yesterday, which were, you know, things moving fast. Well, I think we're seeing a pattern in the Trump administration that played out throughout his first presidency, which is that they burst out of the gate with this sweeping, expansive policy. And then when there's backlash, they start to walk it back.

but then also take advantage of a lot of the confusion that follows. So on Tuesday, OMB sent around another memo that was styled as a Q&A that purported to walk back the original memo or in fact, to just clarify its scope and to say that, for instance, Medicaid was not affected by this order, that Head Start was not affected by this order, that nutrition assistance like SNAP, which is what we now call food stamps, would not be affected by this order, but didn't

really provide a clear reason for why these programs should not be affected. Since again, the original memo was so incredibly broad and only exempted social security and Medicare. OMB and also some Trump administration officials then claimed that the media and malicious bureaucrats in the deep state had misinterpreted the original directive, that they were engaged in so-called malicious compliance, that they were

over reading it. I think that is not the case. I think that the original directive truly was as broad as Sam was describing. And that is why suddenly all of these portals for federal programs went offline. All of these programs for meals for children, shelter for homeless veterans were suddenly told you no longer have funding to keep your doors open tomorrow.

So I think OMB realized it went too far, walked it back, pretended that it didn't go too far in the first place, and is now using the confusion, I think, to put every agency and every recipient of federal funds on notice that their money can be taken away in an instant. That if something goes wrong, that if they're engaged in DEI or if they're hiring transgender people or doing anything else that Trump is trying to prohibit, that they're

Their money can go away in the blink of an eye. So they need to comply with every directive and need to be on notice that Trump is the one calling the shots. Marisa Lagas, what was going on locally as you were trying to figure out how local officials might be responding or how this was trickling down to the state and local level?

Well, I mean, a lot of chaos, I think, which I agree is sort of the point here. I think if you look at this, you know, combined with the birthright citizenship order, which I think a lot of legal scholars think is just blatantly unconstitutional. I think there's enough time here to sort of push the boundaries and see what happens when they get taken to court. And so, you know, I think the.

There's no like one answer to this, Alexis. I know that the state's Medicaid portal, for example, the attorney general told me was briefly offline. They believe it came back online as OMB and the administration got this pushback. There was just a lot of panic in other programs. I know we also heard that some other, you know, Department of Social Services places, you know, where things like child care funding flows through were also disrupted. And

I mean, clearly there's been so much back and forth and it's been such a short period, right? Less than 48 hours that I think it's mostly been this panic, not like an on the ground. Oh, we have to like completely, you know, eliminate these services overnight. But there's a lot of anxiety. And I think when you combine this, too, with the other email that got sent out yesterday to basically all federal employees offering them the opportunity to resign, there's just a lot of, you know, concern there.

that regardless of whether an individual program, say, falls under the umbrella of whatever, you know, the Marxist, Wokist, I mean, these are actual words that were in the memo. I'm not just like saying these, right? Ideology. You know that, I mean, we've seen this also with some of, you know, the moves around other funding like,

concerns that if you're doing a study that specifically is looking at the effects of maternal health on, you know, a certain racial group, like, does that count? Right. So, again, I agree. I think the confusion is the point. I think we've seen that play out at the local and state level. And certainly, I think within the federal government as well, because you have a lot of employees who aren't really sure what they're supposed to be doing. You also talked with California Attorney General Rob Bonto. What did he say about this?

He was pretty angry. I think that there was there's a lot of frustration. You know, he called it blatantly unconstitutional. The group of almost two dozen attorneys general from across the nation who sued believe that this is a violation of the separation of powers. They say that, you know, when Congress appropriates money under the laws you all just discussed, that there is no authorization for the president to kind of claw that back.

And, you know, I think that this is the beginning of what we're going to be seeing is a lot of legal action from states like California against this, you know,

administration and its different agencies. And he really does think that this was sort of overly broad intentionally, both, he said, you know, to potentially see where things go in court, what limits they can test there. And also he believes to just create a chilling effect throughout the country among the people who are implementing these programs, because, you know, I think there is a lot of fear for folks' jobs and sort of any sort of retribution over

You know, violating whatever these vague terms are. We're saying, too, and we're going to get more into the prospective legal battle here, but we're saying, too, that there is and has been an injunction on this order. And so there's sort of a pause. We're going to have a little moment to talk about that more after the break. We're talking about the Trump administration's attempt to freeze federal grant and loan funding's

as part of this larger executive order. Sam Begenstoss, professor of law at the University of Michigan, joins us. Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer with Slate Magazine. And of course, we've got Marisa Lagos, politics correspondent at KQED. We'll be back with more right after the break. Hi, I'm Bianca Taylor. I'm the host of KQED's daily news podcast, The Latest.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about President Donald Trump's order from Monday calling for freeze on federal funding to a wide variety of programs in the federal government. We're joined by Marisa Lagos, KQED politics correspondent, Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate, and Sam Bagenstas, professor of law at the University of

Michigan, as well as former general counsel with the White House Office of Management and Budget. We'd actually really love to hear from listeners on this show if you were affected by the chaos that followed this order and the follow up.

actions. If you want to give us a call, the number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email your questions about what's going on to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, Instagram, etc., or KQED Forum.

Sam, I wanted to ask you about the legal battle. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about how this current injunction is going to work and where you see this headed. I mean, I think most of what I have seen says this ends up before the Supreme Court sooner rather than later.

Yeah, so there is an injunction in place. It's a temporary injunction stopping this pause of spending until Monday so that the judge in the District of Columbia can consider the request for a more extensive or a longer term injunction. And that's just an immediate kind of order.

So we will see more in the next few days in that case. There was another case, that was a case that was filed by some nonprofit entities as well as a group of small businesses. There's another case that was filed by some state attorneys general in the district of Rhode Island, in the federal district court in Rhode Island, which is also proceeding, but there's an order in the DC district court right now.

As to the litigation on this, you know, I think it's clear that this administration would like to have a constitutional test of the Impoundment Control Act sooner rather than later. They would like to get this to the Supreme Court. They've taken a lot of actions in their first week plus in office to stop or pause spending money that Congress had appropriated, you know,

Russ Vogt, the nominee for the Office of Management and Budget Head, has made very clear, both in the previous administration when he served in the previous Trump administration, when he served in that role and in the period since then, that he thinks that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional. It's an undue restriction on presidential power. And I think they want to get that in front of the Supreme Court. I think they are

very confident that this is a conservative Supreme Court. It's a court that is very favorable to executive power and presidential power when Republicans are in office. And it's a court that has delivered Donald Trump personally some very significant wins.

I think they may be a bit overconfident about this particular case, but I certainly understand where they're coming from, that this is a forum that has tended to be favorable to Donald Trump. And so they're trying to get this issue in front of the Supreme Court as soon as they can. Yeah. I mean, would you say that we're in a constitutional crisis right now as a result of these actions?

I mean, I think we are in a constitutional crisis in the sense that in a whole variety of ways, and this decision by the Trump OMB is just one of them, in a whole variety of ways, Trump has made clear in this second term in office that he doesn't feel like he is bound by statutes passed by Congress. He really feels like he is the person who gets to decide what

the law is. And I think that is a fundamental challenge to basic principles of our constitutional order. We will see how it all shakes out. It is going to be up to folks in Congress, and that probably means the minority party in Congress, because the majority party in Congress is very much beholden to Trump.

It's going to be up to folks in Congress to assert their prerogatives here in a very vociferous way. We started to see some of that yesterday in the response to this order pausing all federal grant funding. But I think we're going to have to see more of that because one of the things that – When you say vociferous, do you mean like tweet harder or are you thinking like there are specific steps they could be taking in the legislature?

No, I, yeah, I don't think just tweet harder. I think, you know, one of, one of the ways in which, you know, mainstream politicians may go a bit wrong is by thinking, you know, if they have a particularly sharply framed tweet, they've done what they need to do. You know, even the minority party on Capitol Hill has significant tools, uh, to use as leverage, um, you know, particularly on the Senate side, uh,

It takes overcoming a filibuster to pass legislation. It takes unanimous consent to move most things along in the Senate. And, you know, there are many things that the minority can do in both the House and the Senate to refer issues to the Government Accountability Office, which can both issue reports but also has the power to

file lawsuits against the executive branch to challenge violations of the Impoundment Control Act. So, you know, there are a whole bunch of procedural tools, not just, you know, speaking more loudly that can be used here and to exert some leverage. And I think when courts ultimately decide these cases-

One of the things we've seen throughout history in separation of powers cases is they look to see how hard Congress has fought for its prerogatives or the minority in Congress has fought for its prerogatives. And so I think it's really incumbent on Congress in general and on Democrats in Congress in particular to be more aggressive if they believe this is a serious problem, which I think they should. Yeah.

Marisa, with your political analyst hat on, how do you see Democrats responding to this particular executive order, especially against the backdrop of so many orders? Do you feel like they're kind of keeping some of their powder dry? Do you feel like they're going all in on this? What's your perspective?

Well, I mean, I think the Trump administration had a very specific strategy to kind of flood the zone, as they've talked about in the past. And this was, you know, the fact that they've rolled out so much at such breakneck speed was intended to kind of knock Democrats on their back feet. And I think in some ways it's worked. I mean, I think this is a Democratic Party that is kind of struggling to figure out

how to be, you know, the resistance 2.0, so to speak. Given that this was a different election, it was not as close as it was in 2016. And people knew a lot more about Trump and how he would govern. And so I think that, you know, there is...

some sort of political confusion as to the best way to respond. I think clearly in the states you see, you know, the attorneys general and others really stepping forward. But, you know, I think to the point, I think

I think it's important to note how tight this Congress is and how little, how few Republicans the Trump administration would need to lose on any of these questions to kind of shift the balance. And so I do think there's going to be opportunities there. You know, let's not forget we're on what, day nine here? Like it just all started. But I do think that that's going to be something I'll be watching is like,

Is there a push by folks like our senators and congresspeople from a state like California to reach across the aisle to maybe more moderate folks, to folks in purple districts? We've already seen on some of these issues, you know, pushback on like, say, on.

Trump's threats to tie sort of policy changes or their conditions to wildfire aid. Last week, you had young Kim, Orange County congresswoman, Republican, pretty staunch conservative speaking out against that, because obviously that's not good for her in her purple district. And let's not forget, Congress comes up every two years for elections. So I think there's some opportunities there. But I do think it's a challenge given just how many things the administration is doing all at once.

Marc, I wanted to ask you about there is still a confirmation proceeding, I believe, for Trump's head of the Office of Management and Budget. Do you see any movement around that given all of these moves, given what you can read in, say, Project 2025 about the role that the Heritage Foundation was planning for Office of Management and Budget? Like, do you see anything politically there?

So right now, I think that other higher profile appointees are kind of sucking all the oxygen out of the room. You know, RFK Jr. has been nominated for secretary of HHS. He has a hearing as we speak, and it's drawing a huge amount of attention, I think.

Senators on both sides are also concerned about some of these other sort of fringe nominees like Tulsi Gabbard and haven't paid a ton of attention to Russ Vogt. But that's really unfortunate because, as you said, Russ Vogt is an extreme conservative activist who has proposed some quite radical and alarming ideas that would really transcend the unitary executive and just consolidate almost all

all federal power in the White House, overriding Congress and to some degree the judiciary over and over again. You know, he was one of the chief advocates for this idea of impoundment, using sweeping new presidential authority to just repress

refuse the disbursement of money duly appropriated by Congress. He's also a conspiracy theorist. He said in a questionnaire submitted to the Senate that he continues to believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. That was his word, rigged. He's unrepentant about

that. Putting this man in charge of OMB seems like not just the fox guarding the hen house, but something worse. He's going to have so much power to put these theories into action as Trump promised throughout the campaign. I would hope that if there were enough Republican senators to block Matt Gaetz, that there might be enough to block vote. But again, most people don't

really know what OMB is. This isn't getting a lot of headlines or attention. So I'm really kind of thinking that he will wind up slipping through without losing four Republican votes.

This is actually quoting from what Vogt wrote for Project 2025. The director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the president's mind, saying that the Office of Management and Budget should be involved in all aspects of the White House policy process and becoming, this is from AP, powerful enough to override implementing agencies' bureaucracies.

I mean, is this how you saw the job, Sam? I mean, as someone who was in that bureaucracy that you were, was that what you were doing? Well, I think OMB has always been the,

The central nervous system of the executive branch, you know, it's an office that a lot of people don't spend a lot of time thinking about outside of the government. But it has been ever since Nixon created it in its current form, an incredibly powerful office to help to transmit the president's policy preferences across.

across the giant executive branch. Now, I think there are different ways of approaching that task. Certainly when we were there in the Biden administration, our goal was very much to try to carry out the president's agenda, but also to draw on

the expertise and experience of the highly qualified, uh, you know, career staff, both at OMB and throughout the executive branch to understand kind of what the policies were that were embedded in statutes that Congress had passed that these agencies were stewards of. Um,

But one reason why people really should be focusing on this Russ vote nomination is because of just how powerful OMB is. And I think the world has gotten a little bit of an insight into that in the last 24, 48 hours, as we've seen how one little poorly written, very broad two-page memo can send all of the government and people around the country who depend on government funds into absolute chaos and uncertainty. Yeah.

Let's bring in a caller here. Let's bring in Alexa in El Cerrito. Welcome.

Thank you. Good morning. I manage a $40 million grant from the Department of Energy awarded under the bipartisan infrastructure law at a climate tech startup. Since the inauguration, our funding has been paused, which has caused a lot of confusion among our partners. We have environmental justice components of the grant that are effective. We're worried they could roll some parts back. And as an early stage startup, we're

this time that things are spent going back and forth in the courts, that's causing a lot of uncertainty for us. And it's just so ironic that our program is creating high quality jobs, supporting domestic manufacturing, and yet it's being completely paused. So just wanted to share the uncertainty created in our world. And it's so hard just following the news to just see if our contract will be fulfilled. And did you, how did you even get that news?

Well, we haven't heard directly from our grant manager partners at the Department of Energy because they're on a communication pause. So it's really just we're following the news and hearing from there and hopefully we'll hear soon. But we haven't received any direct communication, even for invoices that were approved. They're now paused and we're not sure if we'll ever get them.

So all you know is like the money may not come in, but there's no explanation about what you'd even need to do to come into whatever version of compliance they're asking for. Yes, exactly. It's a lot of confusion. And for our partners too that haven't even received funding because we just started this program. So our entire company is just on uncertain grounds. Oh, man. Well, Alexa, sorry to hear that. I mean...

Marc Joseph Stern, I assume as you've been writing about these topics and thinking about them, you've been seeing these kinds of stories. And it's happening really broadly across the federal government. You know, there had already been talks of pausing review processes and grant making at, say, NIH. Now we're hearing about, you know, Department of Energy from Alexa.

And also, there's still a broad freeze on almost all humanitarian and foreign aid that was imposed very early on. The State Department has slightly walked it back because there were HIV medications literally sitting in clinics in Africa that doctors could not give out to patients under this freeze. But there's still a broad-based halt on the expenditure of

an immense amount of foreign aid that Congress has to repeat this theme already appropriated and that the president is legally required to expend. But I think that the uncertainty and paralysis that the caller just described is really a feature and not a bug of what the Trump administration is doing. Uh,

They are sowing uncertainty and chaos, sending the message to recipients of grants, to people who run these programs and nonprofits that rely on federal dollars. Again, they will be fully reliant on Trump's approval in order to keep the money flowing. And that, yes, if there's any component of their work that Trump doesn't like, like environmental justice, as the

caller noted, um, that that money could just disappear. I also think this is of a piece with Trump's effort, uh, to demoralize the federal workforce, federal contractors and recipients of federal funds. You know, the email sent out yesterday, uh, essentially encouraging all federal employees to resign, um, is, is a surefire indication, uh, that the goal here is to, uh, tell federal workers you are, uh,

perfectly dispensable and we don't value your service. I think that trickles all the way down to people who rely on even relatively small grants. They're being told that the federal government's not a reliable partner in this, not a reliable partner in research,

not a reliable partner in the distribution of aid domestically or internationally. And, you know, given that Trump has surrounded himself by billionaires who constantly tout the private sector is so superior to the government, it seems like Trump is trying to sort of manifest this vision of the government that he has shared so many times as this lumbering and

largely paralyzed bureaucracy that isn't worth supporting. And I think that sets the stage for him to enact some even deeper cuts to the federal government and to grants through Congress in the coming months. We're talking about Trump's order from Monday calling for a freeze on federal funds while programs are being vetted on whether they comply with the administration's policy goals. We're joined by Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer with Slate Magazine, Marisa Lagos, politics correspondent with KQED, and of course, co-host of

of KQED's political breakdown. We also have Sam Bagenstos, who is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and former general counsel with the White House Office of Management and Budget. We're also taking your calls and comments, questions you have about what's happening with the federal funding freeze and the sort of legal action thereof. Also really curious to hear from people who've been directly affected

by this change in policy. You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email your comments or your questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, or KQED Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about President Trump's order for Monday calling for freeze on federal funding to a wide variety of programs. Currently, there's an injunction in court. There's a lot of other legal wrangling that's happening as well. We're joined by Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate Magazine, Sam Bagenstas, professor of law at the University of Michigan, and KQED's Marisa Lagos.

I want to bring this one to you, Sam. A listener, Patrick, writes in to say, as a citizen of California, I see this as a massive chaos generator. But on a smaller scale, Biden chose to forgive student loan debt, look the other way while millions poured over the southern border and ignore other laws that could be reasonably be expected to be enforced.

It seems that these days the executive branch can act swiftly, but the legal pushback takes a long time in the courts. This is not a good system. Both parties seem to engage in it, but Trump on a massive scale. Do you see this as a both sides issue, as Patrick's comment would indicate?

I really don't. I mean, I think we can have a conversation about whether the executive branch has accumulated too much power over the last several decades. And I think that's a really important conversation to have. But what

Trump is doing here and what Trump has been doing in the week plus he's been back in office goes way beyond You know anything that we have seen in terms of the irrigation of executive power the the refusal to accept any limitations on his power You know, I will say that when when you had a

President Biden makes some of the decisions that we're talking about here. They were accompanied by very clear and well thought out legal arguments. Some of them were litigated in court. Some of them he was successful. Some of them he was not.

But, you know, there was an effort very much to say, look, what we're doing here is we're carrying out the laws that Congress has adopted. Here we have something that is very, very different than that. Here we have a president coming in and saying, look, I understand that Congress passed a law that appropriated all of these billions, even trillions of dollars. And I'm going to put that law on pause.

until I decide whether it's consistent with my policy views, right? So this is a new president coming in and purporting to say a law won't be carried out until I decide whether I have agreed with that. That is fundamentally incompatible with the role of the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is something that is a million miles away

from anything you've seen in the Biden administration or otherwise. So I think there is a very big difference here. Again, I think we can have all sorts of arguments about what the proper balance of power is between the executive and legislative branches. But what we have here is a massive arrogation of power.

And Alexis, you know, I think it's really interesting because there's always debates over whether a president is overstepping their executive power. I can think back to Obama, George W. Bush. But a lot of what we're seeing on the right now is setting up, I think, a really interesting question in the courts from a legal perspective, because you have, you know, these

attempts that were laid out, as we've said, and I think it's really important to underscore very clearly in Project 2025. I mean, Russell Vought wrote the chapter on this. He literally is implementing, even before his confirmation or OMB is, what they asked for. On the other hand, you have these fights that are going to set up in court around things like sanctuary cities. I think of the Lincoln-Riley Act, this new crackdown on migrants who are just accused of crimes. The

That's going to let states sue the federal government if they don't feel like they're doing enough on immigration. I think those are going to be fascinating to watch because a lot of what the blue states are relying on in these lawsuits, say around sanctuary cities in the past, are principles that were established because of states rights issues around abortion and other things that

conservative states didn't want the feds telling them what to do. And so, you know, again, I do think that the Trump administration wants some of this to go to court, but it's going to be interesting to see what arguments are made and if they're actually consistent with some of the conservative principles that a lot of his supporters in Congress have really championed over the years. Let's bring in another caller here. Let's bring in Paul in Stanford. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Go ahead. You're on. Yeah.

Okay, my concern is that my daughter was scheduled to give a talk to NIMH, National Institutes of Mental Health, on February 4th about her academic research. She's an English associate professor at a college, and she was studying the intersection between psychiatry and literature.

She teaches English between the wars, World War I, World War II, and...

She's done research on her second book for several years now, multiple years. And this was all scheduled to be February 4th. It was a Zoom call into NIH for the NIH staff who were sitting in a conference room to listen to her presentation, give her feedback, to inform her second book and NIH grant, which she plans to submit to NIMH. And she got the message on Monday, your talk has been canceled.

Yeah. And we, I mean, those of us who know a lot of people in the sciences saw widespread anecdotes, at least of this sort of thing happening, you know, career building, massive career changing kind of loss of opportunities in some cases. You know, Mark Joseph Stern, have you, have you been following this too? I mean, kind of separate, but related in its overall intent, it seems that.

Yes, absolutely. And I think it's not just people who are already involved in this work, but people who are looking ahead to their careers. And, you know, we need the best and brightest to go into this kind of work that's for the government or funded, at least in part by the government, to address and research a huge number of issues, including diseases, mental health problems, cancer, viruses, outbreaks. You know, we're in the middle of a

bird flu pandemic among livestock right now. It's not the time for the government to start arbitrarily slashing funding and research. And so we've seen researchers trying to ring the alarm about this. But the Trump administration has essentially imposed a gag order on these institutions, including NIH,

preventing them from talking to the public or to the press about what's going on. And I think that everyone across the political spectrum should be really worried about that because we live in a world with many rising dangers and many of those can be addressed and dealt with through rigorous scientific and medical research.

But the Trump administration seems to be taking the position that research is wasteful spending, that it's all just sort of bloat that needs to be squeezed out of the federal budget, even though Congress has already appropriated the money. And so it's going to nix that funding by hook or by crook, sometimes unconstitutionally or in violation of federal statute. If you're a young person just entering your career, you're looking at what's happening and thinking,

thinking, I don't want to have to deal with that. You know, even if Trump is gone in four years, he's setting a precedent that a future president could absolutely seize upon to really destroy funding for science and for medicine. We haven't even talked about funding for the arts, which I think is very much on the chopping block.

right now. So this is part of what I was describing earlier of demoralizing an entire field of people, especially young people. And it's going to ensure that a lot of our best and brightest do not go into the kind of government work that can solve some of the biggest problems that we face.

Marisa, as we sort of move around these executive orders and presidential statements about how funding might be tied to certain types of policy agreement or disagreement, what have you heard about funding for the fires? I mean, I've just seen headlines of the president saying, well, maybe FEMA shouldn't exist, you know, and things of that nature. Maybe there should be conditions on fire aid.

Yeah. So President Trump has floated a lot of things in the past couple of weeks as he has repeatedly attacked Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders here and really conflated different issues. So, I mean, top level, Alexis, we just don't know because some of what he said has been contradictory. As I mentioned before, we've seen some pushback from Republicans.

But certainly, you know, when I talked to the attorney general this week, he was very concerned that FEMA aid and other disaster help is a part of this freeze. So that's one thing to be concerned about. You know, before he left office, former President Biden had promised 180 days of full federal government time.

support. So usually they pick up 75 percent of response and recovery. Biden pledged 100 percent. It's really unclear how this latest OMB memo is going to impact that. And then I think more broadly, we were just seeing Trump try to tie this conversation over the L.A. fires, which really was an urban conflagration. Right. This was not a traditional wildfire like we saw, say, in Paradise in 2018. You know, a town set in the middle of a foothills or mountainous region.

Trump keeps talking about how Delta, you know, the San Joaquin Sacramento Delta water needs to flow south. That water doesn't go to L.A. He's really inserting himself into a fight. Literally, the federal part is literally called the Central Valley Project. Yeah. So he's inserting himself into a fight that's long happened between Democrats and Republicans here over whether the state's environmental policies around the Delta are actually harming farmers because they're restricting water delivery to the Central Valley. Yeah.

You know, I can't go through all of the misstatements that the president has made over the last few weeks on this, but I will say just this week he claimed that the U.S. military showed up and turned the spigots back on, which the water department for the state sort of dryly responded to in a post on X saying, no, they just turned back on some, you know, things that were offline for maintenance for three days. Yeah, some pumps that had been down. So,

You know, I really don't know. It's so hard to know with Trump. I think this gets back to how Democrats are in some ways struggling to figure out how to respond because there's what he says and then there's what he does and there's a space in between. And so I think we're really going to have to see, you know, does...

First of all, how does this OMB memo play out? Are they going to be releasing funds writ large from the federal government in the coming weeks? And then I do think in the spring, as we get closer to that 180 days and to conversations on other issues like the budget and the debt limit, we'll have to see if Republicans, particularly in the House, are willing to tie some of these unrelated conditions to aid. I think there's concern even on the right that this sets up a really bad precedent to kind of tie

any policies to disaster aid? Because, you know, what happens under a Democratic administration? Are they going to force some, you know, Florida change their gun laws in order to get hurricane response? I mean, it's pretty wild if you sort of follow it down the potential rabbit hole. One listener writes, I'm concerned about the funding freeze, but even more concerned about how they will change funding programs to meet executive orders.

Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Transportation quietly reissued a revised Notice of Funding Opportunity for the RAISE grant. The revision excises any mention of DEI, disadvantaged, climate change, reducing vehicle miles traveled, equity, or electric vehicles.

This change requires applicants to significantly revise applications, but they did not extend the grant deadline, which is this Thursday. They're holding transportation funds hostage for culture wars. Let's bring in Greg in Redwood City. Good morning. I just want to say, you know, I run a small nonprofit called Plant Tomorrow, and we're always, you know, filing for grants for...

Things like with the USDA for carbon sequestration or reforestation and all this stuff, and all that stuff came to a big fat halt, which I wasn't really surprised that things would change, but I thought it would be responsibly done with notices and whatnot. A lot of these things have deadlines, like you have to submit by March 31st or something like that. So, yeah.

Discuss it with that. But, you know, beyond that, it's, you know, working with other farmers who have loans with the USDA that need to be processed or ranchers that operate BLM land that need, you know, correspondence about, you know, extensions of leases and just a whole array of things. You know, it just really upsets me because, you know,

As a voter, I was thinking, why Trump? And everybody was like, economy, W, economy. And I don't remember anybody saying, oh, fire AGs or fire 2 million federal employees so that it makes it harder to get anything done. I think people were really kind of thinking that he was going to have to focus on the economy. And here we are, all of these distractions. And can somebody explain how this is going to improve people's pocketbooks? Yeah, yeah.

You know, we had a guest on last year, maybe the year before, that basically talked about how most of what people think the federal government does is actually more imagined than actual, and most of what the federal government actually does is unknown to people. And it's like that gap, which I feel like is really being exposed in a lot of these orders. I'm going to go straight to Arthur because I just want to get in one more call. Arthur in North Sacramento, welcome.

You know, the public education system in California, the higher, you know, beyond high school is premier. And I'm here to tell you what to do.

Shoot Arthur. Yeah, we're we're losing you. I'm so sorry. It's a you're going going in and out My apologies there You know, I yeah, I wanted to take this, you know a moment here at the end show Sam maybe you can sort of sum up what people should be watching for, you know on the on the big question here about

The Constitution, presidential authority, like what's really going to matter in amongst this kind of noise of a million executive orders, some of which are partially rescinded, some of which are largely kind of notional?

Yeah, I mean, I think you're implicit in what you're saying is there is a strategy here, which is to throw a lot of stuff out, which will keep people off balance. But I think that there is a deeper strategy here, and that is to assert a prognosis.

personal will over the government and over those who rely on the government. So it's not a surprise when you're hearing about things like tying aid for response to disasters, to knuckling under to policy preferences of the president, or even to kissing the ring of the president in various ways. I think one of the through lines we've seen

certainly of the first Trump administration and really, really, really in the second Trump administration, is this almost extortive nature of government, this idea that every corporation has to pony up a million dollar check to the inauguration, that Gavin Newsom has to kiss the ring and say, we're going to change our policies in this state to get

Disaster aid that has nothing to do with that whatsoever and on and on and on. And so I think that's the thing to focus on. You know, are are we going to see the Trump administration succeed in their effort to turn the tools of government that we all rely on?

into a way of both enriching Trump and advancing Trump's and a very extreme right wing's agenda for the country.

Chris on Discord, somewhat on the same topic, writes, I used to work in the General Services Administration and the last two weeks have heard of huge shifts coming from agencies and the Office of Personnel Management that will change the federal workforce to be more ideological, even if the policies aren't enacted.

And that's the point, Alexis. Like, I think that, again, that was spelled out very clearly in 2025. Yeah.

I think the Trump administration is looking for a fight on civil servants, but they'd be just as happy if folks just went away quietly and accepted what to me seems like a pretty specious offer legally about being paid out through September. I think there's valid questions about whether federal workers could actually get what they're being promised. Yeah. Yeah.

We've been joined this morning by Marisa Lagos, politics correspondent with KQED and of course co-host of KQED's Political Breakdown. Thank you so much, Marisa. My pleasure. We've been joined by Sam Bagenstas, who's professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School and former general counsel with the White House Office of Management and Budget. Thank you, Sam. Thank you.

And we've been joined by Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer at Slate Magazine. You can follow him on Blue Sky and other platforms. Thank you so much, Mark. Of course. Thank you. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.