Trump move to pause federal loans and grants rooted in Project 2025
Trump move to pause federal loans and grants rooted in Project 2025
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Administration’s move linked to conservative manifesto, though halt goes beyond what the project suggested. The Trump administration’s stunning move to pause all federal loans and grants has roots in the conservative manifesto Project 2025, though the government-wide halt goes beyond what the project suggested.
Russ Vought, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has not yet been confirmed, but his influence is clear in the agency already. Vought authored a chapter in Project 2025 about how the president could consolidate power and enforce his agenda to overcome career bureaucrats, including withholding funds to get compliance.
Throughout the project, headlined by the rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, authors suggest pausing, reviewing, curtailing and eliminating grants that are seen as advancing liberal agendas, like environmental stewardship and LGBTQ+ equality.
The project calls for an executive order that includes “an accounting of how federal programs/grants spread DEI/CRT/ gender ideology”. It goes through agency-specific grants that should have language added or inserted to undermine the “woke” agenda. It suggests using federal contracts with private businesses to drive policy agendas and “push back against woke policies in corporate America”.
In a two-page internal memo on Monday, Matthew Vaeth, Trump’s acting head of OMB, instructed all federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all federal financial assistance”, excluding assistance that goes directly to individuals.
