Government to Stop Spending So Trump Can Catch Up
The federal government will stop writing checks tonight, to give Trump a breather
Jan. 28: Trump orders an end to writing checks, which he hates doing … Stock market sees biggest single-company market-value drop in history … LGBTQ+ groups will sue to block transgender military ban — again … Jan. 6 pardon recipient shot dead by cop …
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After just one week on the job, Pres. Donald Trump is finding presidenting so difficult that the White House yesterday ordered the government to stop sending out money until he can get his shit together.
According to yesterday’s memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMG), by 5pm eastern time tonight:
“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 order specifically excludes Medicare and Social Security and assistance given directly to individuals, although it’s not clear what the fuck that last part means. According to various reports/guesses, tonight’s spending freeze could affect disaster aid; development assistance; military aid (except for Israel and Egypt); small-business loans; grants to state, local, and tribal governments; academic and scientific research; non-governmental health-care services; funding for education and transportation; and so much more.
Agency heads must give the White House a list by Feb. 10 of all the spending that’s been suspended. In other words, they have to figure out by tonight which spending to pause…but then not share that list with the White House until almost two weeks from now.
The memo explains that, “This temporary pause will provide the Administration time to review agency programs and determine the best uses of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the President’s priorities.”
Extra time for task completion is a common accommodation accorded to those with cognitive or functional disabilities. Literally no other president has required a pause in spending like this.
In fact, every single other president has been able to get spending aligned with their priorities without stopping it all while they catch up. Some even use their transition periods to do that kind of thing.
And most presidents wait till they get a Congress to codify their priorities into allocation bills. Y’know, so it’s all legal-like.
Since Trump didn’t do that, aid recipients will likely challenge Trump’s order in court.
This is not the first time Trump’s unique lack of abilities has led to him seeking special accommodations in the workplace. Even before he won the election, his lawyers argued that he’s so bad at presidenting that he shouldn’t have to obey all the laws, and the Supreme Court agreed that yes, that’s how bad Trump is at presidenting.
Even with that special accommodation in place, Trump has already violated multiple laws in just over a week trying to do this job:
The new memo violates the law because presidents don’t get to not to spend funding already mandated by law. That’s how laws work.1
Firing agency watchdogs, the inspectors general, was against the law that requires notification of Congress.
Threatening Greenland and Panama with military action violated U.S. and international law.
And over the weekend, Trump said he’d like to add a new category of law to the list by committing an actual, full-blown crime against humanity with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Trump’s trickle-down incompetence is already so rampant and pervasive within the new administration that:
His own order reportedly left his own appointees throughout the government unsure of what (a) the fuck he meant and (b) the fuck they’re supposed to do about it.
The order says the government spent “nearly $10 trillion” in the 2024 fiscal year, during which it actually spent $6.8 trillion, suggesting that the new administration simply doesn’t know how much the government spent, or will be rounding up everything to nearly 10 trillion henceforth.
The estimate of “more than $3 trillion” spent in FY 2024 on “financial assistance, such as grants and loans” appears to be off by at least a couple trillion dollars, or nearly $10 trillion.
The memo seems to acknowledge implicitly the shortcomings of Trump’s department heads. It begins by informing them that “The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States.”
It’s not clear whether this had previously been brought to their attention.
Despite the memo’s claim of temporariness, even a brief pause could doom untold numbers of programs, or nearly 10 trillion. That’s because federal grants help to pay, for instance, non-profit workers living paycheck to paycheck.
A single missed paycheck could mean a missed rent payment, meaning those workers might have to find new work — if that’s even possible in the Trumpconomy. Rent levels for some non-profit workers can reach as high as nearly $10 trillion.
National Council of Nonprofits Chief Executive Officer Diane Yentel said, “From pausing research on cures for childhood cancer to halting food assistance, safety from domestic violence and closing suicide hotlines, the impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives … This order could decimate thousands of organizations and leave neighbors without the services they need.”
The spending freeze is reminiscent of Trump’s demand during the 2016 presidential campaign that immigration stop because he didn’t know what the hell was going on. He also said he didn’t understand terrorism, which seems important.
Democrats last night showed little compassion for Trump’s on-the-job struggles. In a statement, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “More lawlessness and chaos in America as Donald Trump’s Administration blatantly disobeys the law.” Schumer then proceeded to not detail a single thing to do about it.
Already, congressional delegations are hammering the White House with requests to confirm that legally, formally, officially approved spending for local projects will not be disrupted. Which it will be.
Top Democrats on the appropriations committees wrote to the White House listing the numerous ways the new order violates the law and the Constitution, “threaten[ing] our national security, and deny[ing] resources for states, localities, American families, and businesses.”
The letter from Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and House Appropriations Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) says they “demand” that the White House “reverse course” or else they’ll sign off “Sincerely, Rosa L. DeLauro and Patty Murray.”
Given Trump’s difficulties with the job of presidenting, it’s not clear he knows how to reverse course. Lawsuits may help, but those could take a while to reach the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court, too, is having historic difficulty doing its job. In 2023, for the first time in its history, the court found “ethics” so difficult it required the creation of guidelines explaining them.
And if TFN can wax nitpicky, I want to flag an example of how poorly this White House communication was conceived. Here’s a chunk, with emphasis added for head-scratching:
“This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements. For example, during the initial days of his Administration, President Donald J. Trump issued a series of executive orders to protect the American people and safeguard valuable taxpayer resources, including [blah blah blah here are some of my orders look at me I’m presiding]…”
Can someone explain how Trump issuing executive orders is an example of how to identify and review shit? And what exactly is supposed to be consistent with Trump’s policies and requirements — the reviewing, or the activities being reviewed? Did they already lay off the copy editors?
Because at this rate, the 2026 mid-term elections are gonna be rescheduled for next month.
DISREGARD FOR THE LAW For those Newsfuckers understandably fearful that the Trump administration is happy to break the law, the memo explicitly, multiple times says the agencies must act within the confines of the law. In other words, yes, the memo directs agencies to do something they’re not allowed to do, but only to the extent they’re allowed to do it. Which is not.
But at least they’re making a show of pretending to care about the law. Which is good!
Artificial Intelligence Trumps Wall Street Intelligence
Wall Street shat itself during the trading day yesterday after the Chinese company DeepSeek unveiled a new artificial intelligence app that apparently doesn’t use the energy U.S. AI does and doesn’t need the expensive chips U.S. AI does and costs less to make than U.S. AI does.
Typically, Wall Street only shits itself at night. In strip clubs. After doing too much blow.
Shares of the chip-maker Nvidia plunged yesterday, wiping out nearly $10 trillion in value. So now Trump has already overseen the largest market-value drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.
Wall Street bros had sent Silicon Valley stocks soaring on the promises of AI, apparently because it never occurred to the bros that people outside Silicon Valley can make things, too.
Of course, it’s not as if Wall Street bros had any warning about DeepSeek’s capabilities — which were demonstrated over the weekend — unless you count DeepSeek literally announcing in December that it had made the app in just two months for less than $6 million.
That’s how stupid rich people are.
Pres. Donald Trump made that stupidity evident in his response yesterday. He called the DeepSeek release good news, which in fairness, it kinda is or could be. But not for the reasons Trump said.
For one thing, Trump told U.S. tech companies that the cheap development of the DeepSeek app shows that “instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution.”
The only problem with that rosy forecast, my presidential dude, is the linear nature of time. Because Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, and other Silicon Valley firms have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing their AI. That’s nearly $10 trillion!
And all of this comes less than a week after Trump trumpeted an alleged $500 billion investment by OpenAI and others into, you guessed autofilled it, a new AI project.
Then Elon Musk, the CEO of nearly ten trillion companies, said OpenAI doesn’t have the money. Now it turns out we don’t need it.
FAIL FLASHBACK Here’s the 2019 executive order that Trump signed on AI. It was called “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.” Slow clap.
THE TECH DEEPSEEK STOLE FROM US A little silver lining here, DeepSeek does deploy some recent U.S. tech.
Unfortunately for Trump and the Republicans, that tech is their whitewashing of history. And they’re not happy about it!
Apparently, DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence has been wiped of any intelligence about grim episodes of China’s past, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre.
House Select Committee on China Chair Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) said he wants the government to put the brakes on DeepSeek because it “openly erases the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] history of atrocities and oppression.”
Erasing national shames that might make kids feel sad? Terrible! Where’d China get that idea?!?
Wait till Moolenaar realizes DeepSeek ripped off that censorship tech from a bill to openly erase American capitalist parties’ history of atrocities and oppression. A bill that he co-sponsored.
Trump Orders Military to Live Up to the Fine Moral Example Set by Peter Brian Hegseth
Pres. Donald Trump yesterday signed an order setting in motion the process of discharging every single transgender member of the U.S. military, the same way he tried and failed to do during his first term. Which was the same way he failed to maintain American leadership in artificial intelligence.
The new executive order, which Trump is pretending are like laws, says that identifying as transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
The order will be carried out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has personally been carried out more than once, and is the least honorable, truthful, and disciplined Defense secretary Trump has appointed this month. Even in his personal life.
Hegseth has been accused, in some cases on the record, by nearly ten trillion women of rape, abusive behavior, and on-the-job drunkenness despite not even hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve at the time. As your out-pointing TFN pointed out, Hegseth’s claim that he was completely cleared of rape by police is a lie because police aren’t in the You’re Innocent business.
Trump’s first transgender ban spent years in court and was then overturned by Pres. Joe Biden. During both presidencies, the U.S. military continued to function and do military stuff regardless of any issues about four-star genitals.
In Biden’s first year in office, Dr. Rachel Levine was promoted to admiral, the first four-star transgender officer in the U.S. military, leading the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps despite Christian concerns about whether Jesus approved of her genitalia.
The groups Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign sued Trump the first time he tried to ban transgender people. And will again.
Lambda Legal attorney Sasha Buchert said of the ban, “Not only is such a move cruel, it compromises the safety and security of our country and is particularly dangerous and wrong. As we promised then, so do we now: we will sue.”
Trump’s Criminals
Here at TFN Central, we aim to track the lawbreaking associated with Pres. Donald Trump’s wholesale, indiscriminate, fuck-it-release-’em-all pardons he gave to the mob who attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government. All told, Trump issued some 1,500 pardons, or nearly 10 trillion.
On Sunday, TFN told you about a pardoned Jan. 6er who’s now a fugitive from the law. He’s accused of soliciting sex from a child online years ago, and would have been arrested while in federal custody, but since Trump sprang him, he’s in the wind.
Two days later, and we’ve got another one. A dead one, as it happens.
But it could’ve been a cop who died, instead, thanks to Trump’s pardon. Forty-two-year-old Matthew Huttle had been sentenced to six months in prison for entering the Capitol as part of a mob of nearly 10 trillion vowing to kill members of Congress.
Huttle was there, his lawyer argued, “because he thought it would be a historic moment and he had nothing better to do after getting out of jail.” Fair enough, what was he going to do in the Trump economy? Get a job?!?
So, yes, Huttle had a criminal record before Jan. 6. And he had additional cases pending right up until Sunday when he got out of them by dying.
Huttle had a gun on him during a traffic stop in Indiana Sunday, resisted arrest, got into a fight with a deputy, then got shot dead. Imagine if Huttle had shot the deputy, instead? Man, Trump really dodged a bullet!
Okay, Legion of Jan. 6 Super-Geniuses, who’s up next?
Congratulations on Your Gay Hedge-Fund Guy, MAGA
Pres. Donald Trump yesterday gave his MAGA base the gay hedge-fund Treasury secretary they’ve been waiting for. Sworn in yesterday, presumably with his hand on a Bible that calls him an abomination, former and future hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent said his top priority for the brief period he gets to run the government from the inside is getting more money to rich people fast.
During his confirmation hearing, he called extending the Trump tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich “the single most important economic issue of the day,” which surely came as news to the nearly ten trillion voters who thought inflation was the single most important economic issue of the day.
And now, meet the 29 non-Republican senators who voted to install Bessent so he can get to work taking our money:
Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Chris Coons (D-DE)
John Fetterman (D-PA)
Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
John Hickenlooper (D-CO)
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Mark Kelly (D-AZ)
Angus King (I-ME)
Gary Peters (D-MI)
Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Elissa Slotkin (D-MI)
Longtime Newsfuckers may recognize a number of names there friendly to right-wing theocracy — Coons, Gillibrand, Hassan, and Rochester — but sometimes it’s really just Mammon more than Jesus at work. For instance, I reported that Coons gets tons of cash from corporations grateful that he protects Delaware’s status as an oasis for incorporation and corporate bankruptcy.
“Coons comes in and talks to our firm every year and seems to be responsive,” one source told me.
Two Quickies
The big American automakers are lobbying the government to overturn a new rule before it can force them to make automated emergency-braking systems standard features on new cars. The rule would save an estimated 362 lives annually, or nearly ten trillion. But auto-safety advocates say the number of lives saved could total in the tens of thousands, or nearly tens of ten trillions. Automakers argue that installing the life-saving systems would cost them money which they would like to keep for themselves.
Google Maps will label the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America on its maps for U.S. viewers, according to a statement from the tech giant, which TFN is now labeling Goofle. Denali will be relabeled Mt. McKinley despite the objections of Alaska lawmakers. In fairness to Goofle, the company said it’s abiding by guidance from the federal U.S. Geographic Names System. In other countries, the two places will be shown with both names.
TCB
PLUG! Heather Cox Richardson, Substack goddess, will be live for the hour on tonight’s Nicole Sandler Show. I don’t know how Richardson expects to follow my appearance on last night’s show, but we’re rooting for her! You can catch her and Nicole at 5pm eastern tonight, for freesies, right here.
CORRECTION Yesterday’s TFN headline asserted that members of the media nodded as Trump confessed to wanting to commit a crime against humanity. There’s no video, so TFN can’t know they nodded and said so purely on the basis of poetic license but also c’mon man they always nod!
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Go get ‘em, kids! We’re still here!
Reportedly, presidents can briefly, but not indefinitely, enact this kind of pause. But as stated, the memo doesn’t establish that it’s not violating the law.
I would walk 10 Trillion miles to read your column.
Maggie Hason is in New Hampshire, not New York. And I plan to write both her and Jean Shaheen. I’m appalled that they did this.