Fire, Aim, Ready: Trump's freeze attack floods the zone

Don't say this wasn't expected

Jan 29, 2025

It’s right there on page 5 of the foreword: Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership. You know, the Heritage Foundation transition document that candidate Donald Trump disowned, but has followed page-for-page now that he’s President Donald Trump. The spending freeze isn’t some adventure in government efficiency or spending cuts. It’s so the White House can snuff out anything remotely smelling of DEI or Biden pandering.

The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. (emphasis mine)

If you take the time to download the Mandate document, you’ll find “grant” mentioned 82 separate times. Most of these references deal with various grants that should either be eliminated (see above) or protected (faith-based). There’s a whole section devoted to the Department of Education, Title I ESEA grants, and eliminating the PLUS loan, student loan forgiveness, and GEAR-UP programs.

The word “loan” has 117 instances in the Project 2025 document. On page 331, a bullet point reads “Thoroughly review the many education-related regulations promulgated by the Biden Administration, as well as the school meals program and the Income-Driven student loan program.”

The Biden administration spent its time coming up with all kinds of goofy ways to forgive or pay student loan debt, mostly as pandering for votes (look how well that worked). If not reviewed, these programs will continue unabated as if Biden was still in office. The Trump team is wasting no time in conducting these reviews. If Trump has learned anything in his first term, it’s that the longer programs and decisions stretch out, the higher the probability of leaks, infighting, and sabotage. Going in low and hot is the new way of attack.

“Fire, Aim, Ready” may backfire, and in fact it has, in that a federal judge has already issued an administrative stay halting the spending freeze. Under the authority of the OMB, part of the Executive Office of the President (and likely, the titular home of DOGE), the White House ordered a “temporary pause” for “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 pause was to go into effect at 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, but is now delayed until February 3 by the judge’s order. In any case, the report by each agency due to OMB must be delivered by February 10:

Each agency must pause: (i) issuance of new awards; (ii) disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards; and (iii) other relevant agency actions that may be implicated by the executive orders, to the extent permissible by law, until OMB has reviewed and provided guidance to your agency with respect to the information submitted.

The question is whether the pause is legal. I don’t know. If it isn’t legal, then it will likely take with it many of the executive orders Trump signed so publicly in his first hours in office. Presidential “day one” executive orders tend to set a tone, and take time to find their effect—at least historically. The government is big and when things happen at the top, it takes time for these decisions to filter down to where they are implemented, as policies, regulations and procedures. Some regulations have administrative law procedures attached that include review periods, comments from the public, and hearings. The “phone and pen” aren’t directly connected to how the government runs.

That is, unless you are Donald Trump, who has had four years to find the exact staff to run the White House, with lists of names provided by (checking notes) the Heritage Foundation, the very organization that produced Project 2025.

Armed with Schedule F, and Elon Musk’s version of personnel management, OPM issued a straightforward (legal? I don’t know) ultimatum to all government workers, titled “Fork in the Road.” Show up for work at the office, ending remote work, or take a buyout.

Below is the email that was sent to federal employees on January 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer. If you did not respond to that email and wish to accept the deferred resignation offer, you may do so by following these steps.
1)Send an email to hr@opm.gov from your government account. Only an email from your .gov or .mil account will be accepted.2)Type the word "Resign" into the "Subject" line of the email. Hit "Send".

Axios reported:

The White House expects 5% to 10% of federal employees to accept the offer, which would potentially mean hundreds of thousands of people.
The administration projects the buyouts could ultimately save taxpayers up to $100 billion a year.
The offer applies to all full-time federal employees, except for military personnel, the Postal Service, and those working in immigration enforcement or national security.

It’s not clear how much the buyouts will offer, either eight or nine months of pay and benefits, which will be handled as administrative leave, meaning the government employees will still be on the rolls, but inactive, while they process their exit.

This is not a targeted approach. It’s a self-selected move that could hobble entire agencies, cause needed services and programs to fail to deliver, or violate federal law or treaties. We just don’t know.

It’s chaos, and might get tied up in the courts if labor unions take action. The AFGE has already denounced the move.

We do know that the people who don’t want to serve in any government where Trump is president have their opportunity to leave. We know that some of the biggest DEI proponents—the ones who haven’t been fired or targeted for removal—will choose to go and take the buyout.

What happens if, say, 5-10% of the federal workforce takes the buyout, and then after they stop doing their jobs, a judge overturns the entire plan? Who is going to make the workers return to their jobs? Will the Supreme Court have to appoint a special master or some position to oversee what the president is constitutionally authorized to do? It makes no sense, which means even if Trump’s action is illegal by the letter of the law, it can’t be undone.

This ties into the funding pause. While government employees are figuring out if they want to keep their jobs, others are trying to do their jobs. Do they continue processing grants, or pause? There’s no time for these orders to filter down to the workforce, so confusion is the result.

I think confusion is the point—it’s what Trump is going for. Flood the zone. Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership is 866 pages long. It seems like Trump wants to do it all in his first 100 days. Or it will all blow up in his face.

Our faces.

Following this story: The FBI arrested a 21-year-old woman who is accused of shooting and killing a Border Patrol agent, Chris Maland, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. I thought there was more to this story, given that both Felix Baukholt, who was killed in the gun battle, and Teresa Youngblut, 21, drew weapons and opened fire on Border Patrol agents who stopped their vehicle.

Both Baukholt and Youngblut were reported by local residents, who said they were in town wearing black tactical clothing, protective gear, and open carrying of handguns. The Boston Globe now reports:

Vermont State Police and Homeland Security Investigations personnel tried to initiate a “consensual conversation” with the pair on Jan. 14, but they weren’t cooperative, the document said.
They “declined to have an extended conversation, claiming that they were in the vicinity to look at purchasing property,” the filing said, adding that the two checked out of the hotel after speaking with investigators, who later spotted them walking in tactical dress on Sunday in downtown Newport, Vt.

There’s talk of a journal kept by Youngblut that mentioned LSD and “trips.” Also, apparently Youngblut’s mother (in Washington state) reported to police that she felt her daughter might have been in danger from a controlling individual.

It seems this incident isn’t part of some conspiracy or Euro-terrorist outfit. It might just be a misguided young woman who got involved with a dangerous, strange foreigner whose visa ran out. Both of them broke bad. I’ll continue to follow this as the story develops further.

Fire, Aim, Ready: Trump's freeze attack floods the zone

Don't say this wasn't expected

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