Trump’s DIY Government Shutdown

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate

News, Daily News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget sent a memo directing federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to … disbursement of all Federal financial assistance,” which threw everything from Meals on Wheels to the rebuilding of a Rhode Island bridge into a state of confusion. What seems clear is that Congress has already stipulated how this money should be spent—and the president doesn’t have the power to change that. For more on the legal mess that’ll follow this news, head over to the Amicus feed. Dahlia Lithwick just dropped an emergency episode. Guest: Karen Tumulty, political columnist for The Washington Post. Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:33.2	Karen, can you just tell me, how is the federal government working right now?
0:45.9	Well, right now, the executive branch, I think, is running on overdrive.
0:53.1	Karen Tummeltie is a columnist for The Washington Post.
0:57.0	I called her up to make sense of a two-page memo that dropped Monday night and shook D.C.
1:02.0	But honestly, it wasn't just this memo.
1:06.0	The memo was the cherry on top of week one of Trump 2.0, a week that involved sudden firings,
1:14.7	day one pardons, all of it resulting in bureaucratic shock.
1:20.8	Trump is not doing anything that he didn't say or signal that he planned to do during the campaign.
1:32.6	But it is just a fire hose.
1:37.1	Yeah.
1:37.9	I mean, it's causing a ton of confusion among federal workers.
1:42.9	Like my, one of more interesting places interesting places I think to hang out right now
1:46.3	is the federal government channel on Reddit because it's got like nearly 200,000 members.
1:54.6	They're all swapping stories about how they're dealing with the change in administration.
1:58.5	They're sharing weird emails they've gotten from the Office of
2:02.7	Personnel Management, which is like the federal government's HR department. And there's definitely
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