Socialist Alternative

Trump Rescinds Funding Freeze But Threatens Further Attacks On Crucial Programs

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Samantha Cooper is a public sector worker for a federally-funded program.

Not 10 days after Trump took office, his administration put out a chaotic memo pausing all federal grant funding (which amounts to trillions of dollars), whether already allocated or not, effective immediately. The memo said the administration would be reviewing all federal grants until further notice to ensure the US government isn’t funding “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.” Congress technically controls government funds, but Trump is pushing the limits of Executive action as far as possible, in part to see how far he can go.

Just before it was due to go into effect, a federal judge blocked the order temporarily, and a day later Trump rescinded it. Although Trump has given written guarantees to the most crucial federally-funded programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), WIC (special supplemental nutrition for Women, Infants, and Children), and Medicare, the confusion caused by the whole affair has already done severe damage.

Trump’s nightmare administration absolutely does plan to make serious cuts to federal grants, which fund major parts of education, research, housing, and infrastructure nationally, in addition to nutrition and healthcare programs. The White House has communicated that the rescinding of the memo did not rescind the overall plan. 

These attacks pose serious dangers for LGBTQ people, especially transgender people, as the Trump administration attempts to erase them from public life and ensure they cannot access gender-affirming care through any federally-funded programs. Rather than rejecting Trump’s bigoted message that “transgenderism” is a problem, many Democratic Party politicians fell into Trump’s trap by throwing trans people under the bus in an effort to show this or that program had nothing to do with equity. 

Trump can still vastly undermine government assistance programs even without officially defunding them. Participation in programs like SNAP and WIC is by no means automatic, even under the best funding conditions. Immense outreach efforts are needed to reach eligible lower income households in order to get them signed up. There are many barriers to participation in social safety net programs, and funding is usually dependent on caseload numbers. 

When every major news outlet reports an end to federally-funded programs and Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) is showing up at schools and WIC clinics, it sends the message that social programs are simply not an option, let alone safe to utilize, especially for immigrant families. If participation plummets, it gives Republicans and Democrats alike the excuse to defund these programs, and suddenly millions of low-income families are unable to access food and healthcare. 

But that’s not all. With so much uncertainty, state agencies become completely ineffective, spinning their wheels to keep up with the erratic developments at the federal level. The week of Trump’s first funding freeze memo, WIC providers spent days fielding questions from participants and finding ways to communicate to all participants that they can still use their benefits. Thousands of public sector workers are unsure whether they’ll have jobs in the immediate term. Ironic that an administration so concerned with government efficiency has caused an absolute stand-still in federal and state government offices in its first two weeks. 

The “checks and balances” of the US government may block some of these attacks, but Trump has other ways to undermine the already deeply weakened social safety net. And in the longer term, the legal buffers of this system can bend to political pressure under Trump and his administration’s determination and consolidated political power. Trump himself appointed hundreds of loyal federal judges in his first term, and has a majority on the Supreme Court. But more importantly, institutions of the state under capitalism ultimately serve the capitalist system and its billionaires, not poor and working people. All of the gains for poor and working people we have today, like social safety net programs, were won out of social movements, but all of it can be stripped away under capitalism.

Relying on the courts will not be enough to counter the gutting of federal funding—a serious political force is needed to stop it. Working people, union members, and community organizations need to get organized and coordinate a fightback. We need to build a political force—a new, working-class party—independent of the Democratic Party, rooted in the labor movement, that has democratic structures and can organize protests, occupations, walkouts, and strikes. A political movement with anti-racist, feminist, queer-inclusive working-class leadership can fight for protection of federal funding and even make gains beyond that. Public sector unions need to lead the way in this fight, and not give an inch to right-wing attacks. 

Trump can be fought. He is not immune to the political force of a mass movement against the dangerous agenda of his billionaire entourage. While a layer of bureaucratic misleaders in major public institutions scramble to curry favor with the new far-right administration, we need a new political force on the side of the working class. That force should go beyond fighting to tax the rich to fund all the social programs we need as working people, to also fight for an entirely new system where those gains can’t be taken away.

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