PRESIDENT TRUMP SENT WASHINGTON into a frenzy with his sweeping move to freeze federal assistance programs, which provoked lawsuits, outrage and confusion about the status of government programs.
The abrupt action, issued through a memo from the budget office late Monday night, put a pause on most federal loans and grants, while requiring a review period to ensure the spending aligns with Trump’s executive orders.
The White House insists the freeze is not a “blanket pause” on all federal assistance programs, saying that Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other welfare benefits would not be impacted.
“If you are receiving individual assistance from the federal government, you will continue to receive that,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during her first official press briefing.
However, Democratic lawmakers said their states had been blocked from the Medicaid payment portal. Although, by Tuesday afternoon, some states reported they had regained access to the portal.
“This is a blatant attempt to rip away health insurance from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) posted on X.
The White House claimed the Medicaid portal outage was unrelated to the federal freeze.
"No payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent," Leavitt posted on X. "We expect the portal will be back online shortly."
Federal agencies have have until Feb. 10 to review whether loans and grants should be eliminated due to the executive orders Trump issued on border security, the federal workforce, the military, the “weaponization” of government, and other actions he's signed during his first eight days in office.
States and local governments have been combing through the broadly worded memo to determine what programs will be on the chopping block.
Some of the programs that receive funding through federal assistance programs, including those that provide meals to low-income children and seniors, reported uncertainty about whether they’d been impacted.
The Department of Education issued a statement Tuesday saying the pause would not affect federal student loans or Pell grants.