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UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. There’s no more federal funding freeze. The Office of Management and Budget has released yet another memo, this time rescinding their earlier instructions. In other words, things go back to the way they were, effective immediately. 

No local, state or national programs will lose federal funding, at least for the next few days. On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan blocked the federal funding freeze that was about to go into effect as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order. 

This is a temporary stay, which lasts only through the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 3. A court hearing has been scheduled for that morning to discuss both the order and lawsuits filed against the plan. 

In the meantime, everyone from nonprofit directors to school superintendents can take a deep breath, as they work to understand what impact this plan would have on them. There was a lot of scrambling on Tuesday, both trying to understand what groups were affected by the order and if so, what would be their next step? The Herald heard from several groups in our coverage area, asking if we had a copy of the order. 

The panic all stemmed from a series of memos that went out Monday and Tuesday from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). On Monday night, OMB acting director Matthew Vaeth sent out a memo stating that “to the extent permissible under applicable law, 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.”

This change, Vaeth wrote, would take effect as of 5 p.m. eastern time on Tuesday. The freeze was needed, Vaeth argued, in order to make sure that federal spending complied with recent executive orders. 

More detail on the federal funding freeze

That memo suddenly put multiple groups in our region on the clock, trying to identify both the impact and what they would do next. Also, since the Monday memo didn’t define what “activities that may be implicated by the executive orders” meant, residents started asking what’s going to happen to programs like Social Security, Medicare and Head Start.

The confusion spread up through Congress as well, with House and Senate members making claims about some programs already shutting down. The Herald received several screenshots of social media posts from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who said that “my staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states.”

However, when The Herald staff attempted to access the Virginia Medicaid portal, it pulled up with no problem. A number of other politicians, like Virginia senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, simply called for the order to be rescinded, with Kaine pointing out that if changes needed to be made in budgets, Republicans controlled all the branches of government, so he didn’t understand what the holdup was. 

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued a statement Tuesday afternoon, meanwhile, saying that none of the programs providing individual assistance would be affected. 

“I’ve spoken to senior officials at the White House and confirmed the temporary pause by OMB does not impact individual assistance and will not interrupt disaster recovery efforts, school and childcare funding, healthcare for seniors or low-income families, funding for our roads, meals and lunches, or any of the other misinformation that has spread,” Youngkin said in a statement. “The partisan stunt to disseminate knowingly misleading information is dangerous fearmongering and completely wrong. President Trump is doing what an executive should do at the beginning of a term, which is find out where the money is and where it’s going, not unlike what we did at the beginning of our term here in Virginia when we identified $1.4 billion in appropriated but unspent taxpayer money.” 

A call for change and clarification 

Later on Tuesday afternoon, Vaeth and the OMB staff then clarified what was actually included in the federal funding freeze. 

“In implementing President Trump’s Executive Orders, OMB issued guidance requesting that agencies temporarily pause, to the extent permitted by law, grant, loan or federal financial assistance programs that are implicated by the President’s Executive Orders,” the Tuesday OMB memo states. “Any program not implicated by the President’s Executive Orders is not subject to the pause.” 

But again, it’s that last line which still confused people, as very few could actually say what is and isn’t “implicated by the President’s Executive Orders.” And so, later in the day, we had a third OMB memo go out, this time spelling out that some programs are exempt. 

“Any program that provides direct benefits to individuals is not subject to the pause,” the last OMB memo states. “In addition to Social Security and Medicare, already explicitly excluded in the guidance, mandatory programs like Medicaid and SNAP will continue without pause.” 

How would a federal funding freeze work? 

The biggest question, beyond what’s getting cut, is how this “pause” would work. Again, that final OMB memo outlined some details. 

“The guidance establishes a process for agencies to work with OMB to determine quickly whether any program is inconsistent with the President’s Executive Orders,” the memo states. 

Specifically, they would be looking at if a program or agency violates the rules spelled out in any of seven executive orders. The orders include: 

• Protecting the American People Against Invasion
• Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid
• Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements
• Unleashing American Energy
• Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
• Enforcing the Hyde Amendment 
• Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

As for how long that would take? It depends. 

“A pause could be as short as day,” the document states. “In fact, OMB has worked with agencies and has already approved many programs to continue even before the pause has gone into effect.” 

The memo went on to say if an agency is concerned their program may be tied to one of the executive orders, they can contact OMB to begin to unwind these policies without a pause in the payments.

Court conditions and pending lawsuits

That’s assuming the freeze and review is allowed to take place at all. We referred to multiple lawsuits at the beginning of the story. The first is what will be discussed on Monday, with several national nonprofits challenging the plan. Behind that may be a second lawsuit, as attorney generals from Arizona, Colorado, California, New York,  Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia have all announced plans to file a joint lawsuit and challenge the legality of such a review.