A stunning, smart move by Trump's White House

Trump reverses a bad decision: a marked difference from 2017

The White House announced that OMB Director Matthew Vaeth’s memorandum freezing all grants, loans and disbursements subject to review, is rescinded. This is a smart move, given that a federal judge had already issued a stay on implementation, and it had drawn a few dozen lawsuits from state and non-government officials.

Image: Donald Trump, Creative Commons License

Judge Loren Alikhan’s stay is now moot, given that the memorandum is withdrawn. Any further action on the underlying executive orders is also gone in a puff of legal smoke. At least for now.

If left in place, the memorandum would likely have resulted in a drawn-out fight in the courts, and could have undone many of the EO’s Trump signed on his first day in office. This, to me, is stunning, for a few reasons.

First, it wasn’t done by a random Trump tweet. The president let his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, handle the explaining. She was the one who tweeted “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

Letting the staff do staff work, even when it appears to be a walk-back, is smart, and a sign of discipline. Compare this to 2017, when Sean Spicer, wearing a suit he found at the local thrift shop (he hadn’t even unpacked), had to defend Trump’s “crowd size” issues on inauguration day. Or on the many times when Trump said or did something and left his staff flat-footed, including whoever was unlucky enough to be chief of staff (Priebus, Kelly, Mulvaney, Meadows) that day.

From election day forward, Susie Wiles has run a tight, disciplined shop. If you need proof of that, this is it. What could have been touted as a major defeat for President Trump is simply what it seems: OMB bit off more than it could chew, and had to back off, while the president’s EO’s will filter down to the agencies like they normally do, subject to administrative law and process.

That being said, there’s all the time in the world for Trump to say something bone-headed. But the initial reaction is one I can live with, and if you watched the Biden White House function, it’s a whole lot better than that crew managed, most of the time.

Of course, there’s still the bombshell of the “Fork in the Road” memo coming from OPM, lovingly prepared with Elon Musk’s hand stuffed far up the puppet end of that agency. That too might end up wound back, if it (as expected) draws a legal tsunami of challenges. But that’s a crisis for another day—or hour.

In this particular instance, the Trump White House functioned like a real executive office, not the center ring of a circus. Though the OMB memo was vague, sweeping, and bombastic, it was not something from the mind of John Eastman, or the MyPillow guy. And, when it became a liability for the administration, they killed it.

And they didn’t just kill it, this particular president did something he never does. He let his staff function. Hell is freezing. At least for this few minutes of sanity.

Maybe 2025 is different than 2017 in more than just digits.