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Trump Team Finds Loophole to Effectively Maintain Spending Freezes [1]
['Charlie Savage']
Date: 2025-02-19
The Trump administration is systematically exploiting loopholes to effectively keep much of the president’s blanket spending freezes in place, accounts by officials and court filings show, despite restraining orders from judges who have told agencies to disregard the directives.
The administration’s strategy is to have political appointees embedded in various agencies invoke other legal authorities to pause spending, while posturing as if those officials had undertaken the efforts independent of President Trump’s original directives.
In short, critics say, administration officials are paying lip service to complying with the letter of the court orders while violating their spirit. The tactic shows how aggressively and nimbly the Trump administration is working to keep funds jammed up, and the complexity judges face if they want to compel the administration to unblock the money.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.
The clearest explanation of this tactic emerged from the administration itself, in a declaration filed late Tuesday by Pete Marocco, the Trump appointee who has been leading the president’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. The disclosure came in a lawsuit over Mr. Trump’s executive order imposing a freeze on nearly all foreign aid spending.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/us/politics/trump-foreign-aid-freeze.html
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