No More Government Assistance

Plus: RFK Jr.'s plan to squash Big Pharma, J.D. Vance vs. the bishops, and more...

FREEZE: With the exceptions of Social Security and Medicare benefits, the federal government has paused issuing grants, loans, and all other forms of financial assistance.

That means funding for schools. That means funding for disaster relief. That means grants to state and local governments. That means homebuying assistance.

Nobody knows what exactly will happen or for how long this will go on. They also don't know whether it's legal: This was done by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under the direction of President Donald Trump, not Congress, which generally gets say over how such funds are directed.

"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," wrote the acting director of the OMB in a memo announcing the freeze, which will go into effect at 5 p.m. tonight.

"In Fiscal Year 2024, of the nearly $10 trillion that the Federal Government spent, more than $3 trillion was Federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans," reads the memo. "Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities. Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending 'wokeness' and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve."

It's a little Trumpian toward the end there, and will surely introduce maximum chaos, but also worth cheering: This is the aggressive reexamination of federal spending that libertarians have long sought.

Big Pharma is out. Nationalized Pharma is in: Donald Trump's pick for head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will face senators tomorrow for the first of two confirmation hearings which will determine whether he receives the appointment.

But last week he may have hurt his chances when he indicated to senators he'd "consider authorizing the government to seize the patents of high-priced medicines from manufacturers and share them with other drug makers as a way to force down costs," three sources told Politico.

As you might expect from the economic illiteracy of it all, this is a very progressive policy proposal too extreme for even former President Joe Biden; Republicans, some of whom already maintain healthy levels of RFK Jr.–related skepticism (for his past as a Democrat and for his pro-choice abortion beliefs), might be further put off by this, especially as handing the HHS reins to Kennedy would mean giving him control of some 28 percent of total federal outlays.

The purging at the Justice Department: "The acting attorney general on Monday fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the two criminal investigations into Donald J. Trump for the special counsel Jack Smith, saying they could not be trusted to 'faithfully implement' the president's agenda, a Justice Department spokesman said," reports The New York Times. It's hard to lose too much sleep over the firing of government employees, but it is worrisome that a president who has vowed vengeance immediately proceeds to do this type of thing.

Vance continues to fight the bishops: In yesterday's Roundup, I covered Vice President J.D. Vance's accusation that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is motivated by their financial interests to oppose Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

"Faithful to the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church has a long history of serving refugees," responded the bishops. "In 1980, the bishops of the United States began partnering with the federal government to carry out this service when Congress created the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). Every person resettled through USRAP is vetted and approved for the program by the federal government while outside of the United States. In our agreements with the government, the USCCB receives funds to do this work; however, these funds are not sufficient to cover the entire cost of these programs. Nonetheless, this remains a work of mercy and ministry of the Church."

"Catholic advocacy for immigrants is a long-standing commitment, particularly in the United States, where a significant percentage of immigrants dating back to the Irish famine have been Catholics," adds Ed Kilgore at New York magazine. "It's one issue (unlike many others) on which traditionalists and modernizers in the Church are in agreement, which has led to a lot of friction recently with right-wing political movements in Europe and the U.S."

Good thread here, for those who partake in Catholic insider baseball, about what Vance's antagonism says about the catechization of converts in the modern church—and the embrace of populism by vast swaths of that segment.

---

Scenes from New York: Inside June's mayoral primary, in which five Democrats are running mostly to the left of Eric Adams.

---

QUICK HITS

• Another shameless plug to please subscribe to Just Asking Questions. We're desperately trying to get to 5,000 subscribers for our new YouTube feed (and we're so close). This recent interview on the Libertarian Party's role in freeing Ross Ulbricht is worth your time.
• Pregnant H-1B visa holders are in a terrible bind, wondering whether their children will be granted U.S. citizenship. Bloomberg has more.
• In an executive order yesterday, Trump reinstated members of the military who had been dismissed due to their refusal to comply with former President Joe Biden's COVID vaccine mandate.
• "Those of us who want to reverse falling fertility while preserving the values of a liberal society have a tricky task ahead," writes Stephanie Murray at The Dispatch. "We've got to hold two truths at once: that no one ought to be coerced into parenthood, and that we will all suffer if no one raises kids."
• Interesting:

This might be true, and predictable.

The CIA recorded that the Soviet Union was

"essentially forced into the position of having to rely on clever theoretical approaches to computer calculations because of their lack of the most advanced computer systems." https://t.co/bkDXL1ujTw pic.twitter.com/cR1BygMPEL

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) January 27, 2025

• There's a scandal brewing about how former (feels so good to write) President Biden was so checked out/mentally incompetent by the end that he/his staff commuted the sentence of someone on the American Civil Liberties Union's list of "nonviolent drug offenders" who was, in fact, a very violent drug offender—a drug lord with gang connections. Still, there's a libertarian case to be made that the felon in fact served his time—he had been imprisoned for 20 years for murder conspiracy—and that there was no need for him to serve an additional 15 years for crack cocaine, the sentence Biden commuted. I don't feel especially strongly about the commutation one way or another, but it is an interesting bit of evidence in favor of the idea that the former administration got very lazy and careless at the end, because the optics of this commutation are mighty bad.

The president was non-functional and didn't know what he was signing, and I'm trying to figure out what is a larger scandal than this vacant presidency by committee that went on for years https://t.co/56xShbLiLp

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) January 27, 2025

• A really interesting case:

Roger gave up his citizenship because he was a victim of lawfare, sentenced to prison for speaking his political beliefs. He knew that his Bitcoin advocacy would put him in the crosshairs again. He ensured his exit was clean and exiled himself for his own safety, and the survival… https://t.co/LXl0swFKIV

— Jesse Powell (@jespow) January 26, 2025