AMY GOODMAN: Will low-income families be able to keep the heat on? Will seniors have access to another meal on wheels? Will Medicaid continue? Will low-income children get breakfasts or lunches at school? Will children be able to go to Head Start?

These questions are still on the table, even after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily halted a radical plan that President Trump announced Tuesday to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, even though the money has already been appropriated by Congress. A U.S. district judge said Tuesday she would decide by next week whether to make the injunction permanent. The ruling came after several nonprofits and attorneys general from 22 states filed lawsuits arguing the order would have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of recipients who rely on federal grants and loans for their operations.

At the White House, Trump’s new press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended his unprecedented actions.

PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: It means no more funding for illegal DEI programs. It means no more funding for the green new scam that has cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. It means no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness across our federal bureaucracy and agencies.

AMY GOODMAN: As Trump’s federal spending freeze briefly took effect Tuesday, Medicaid reimbursement portals went down in all 50 states, cutting off compensation to hospitals and clinics that provide healthcare to children, low-income families and people with disabilities.

Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray called Trump’s executive order a “brazen and illegal move.” Maine independent Senator Angus King said, quote, “If this stands, then Congress may as well adjourn.” Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders declared of Trump, “He is not a king.” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s actions would likely impact universities, nonprofits, food assistance programs, hospitals, rural health centers, groups that assist disabled veterans and much more.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: This decision is lawless. It’s destructive. It’s dangerous. It’s cruel. It’s illegal, and it’s unconstitutional. Donald Trump has done a lot of bad things in the last week, but nothing’s worse than this.

AMY GOODMAN: House Democrats are having an emergency meeting today.

Meanwhile, during an interview with Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked if the federal funding freeze would impact free school lunches. Miller responded with this point instead.

STEPHEN MILLER: And I want to really drill down on this, Jake, because it’s so important. There’s 2 million employees in the federal government. Overwhelmingly, the career federal service in this country is far left, left wing.

JAKE TAPPER: I don’t know — I don’t —

STEPHEN MILLER: The American people —

JAKE TAPPER: I don’t know that to be a fact.

STEPHEN MILLER: Well, I’ll give you a great example. We looked at USAID as an example.

JAKE TAPPER: That’s — 

STEPHEN MILLER: Ninety-eight percent — 98% of the workforce either donated to Kamala Harris and another left-wing candidate.

AMY GOODMAN: That, in fact, is not true.

Sam Bagenstos is a law professor at the University of Michigan. He served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget under the Biden administration from 2021 to 2022 and as general counsel to the Health and Human Services Department until last December. He joins us now from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Well, why don’t you start off, Professor Bagenstos, just responding to what has happened in the last 24 hours?

SAM BAGENSTOS: Well, look, it’s just been complete chaos. On Monday night, the Office of Management and Budget issued this memo that purported to freeze a very, very, very broad swath of the federal financial assistance that state governments, private nonprofits and individuals depend on across America. And you’ve talked about, you know, some of these programs: low-income heat assistance in the middle of winter, child care development block grants, Head Start, Medicaid. Right? And we saw that across the country yesterday, Medicaid portals were shutting down because of this memo.

Now, the administration has been backpedaling and trying to set itself up to be in a position where they look better about this, so they’ve said over the last 24 hours, “Oh, no, no, no. We didn’t mean this. We didn’t mean that.” But we still have an incredible amount of uncertainty about whether people can get the benefits that they rely on and whether nonprofits that serve the community are going to be able to actually pay their bills, because they’re not going to get the money that they’ve been counting on.

And this is money that Congress appropriated. Congress passed a law. The president signed it. And now Donald Trump says, “Look, I don’t necessarily agree with the law, so I don’t want to follow it.” That is just completely illegal and with really devastating potential consequences for people.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But isn’t this also Trump basically trying to test what the courts, the federal courts, will allow him to do as he tries to grab more and more executive power?

SAM BAGENSTOS: Oh, I think absolutely right. I mean, this is an example — President Trump, his new nominee for the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, who is the brains behind this kind of thing, even if he’s not in office yet, what they want to do is challenge all of the limitations that have been placed on the president’s power since the Nixon administration, since after Watergate. And in particular, they want to challenge the constitutionality of this law, the Impoundment Control Act, which is a law that just sets forth a basic constitutional principle, which is Congress, which represents the people, passes laws that decide how to spend the money. And, you know, if the president disagrees, the president can veto the law. But once a law is enacted, the president has to follow it. President Nixon tried to violate that principle, and so Congress, after Watergate, passed this law to say, “No, no, no, no, no. It’s the People’s House, it is Congress, that has the power of the purse.”

And for years now, Trump and Russ Vought have been trying to challenge the Impoundment Control Act. They want to get a constitutional challenge to this law into the Supreme Court. They think — with a very conservative court that has delivered Donald Trump some signature wins and that likes executive power when Republicans are president, they think they have a good chance of winning. I think they may be a bit overconfident, but, you know, I certainly understand the record that Donald Trump has had and Republican presidents have had with this court.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you specify a little bit more what the Impoundment Control Act — what are its provisions? Isn’t there like a 45-day period during which Congress can act?

SAM BAGENSTOS: Yeah. I mean, so, what the law says — again, what it’s trying to do is just enforce this basic constitutional principle that Congress is the one that decides how to spend our money. When Congress passes a law and the president signs it, a new president doesn’t get to come in and say, “I disagree with the policy, so I’m not going to follow it.”

So, what the law does is a couple of things. One is, it says there are only certain circumstances when a president can delay spending funds. And those circumstances very clearly and intentionally don’t include disagreement with the policy reflected in a law passed by Congress, which is exactly what Trump and his OMB were trying to do with this memo. It said, however, if you think, President, that there is some improper decision made by Congress about how to spend money, we have a process for you, which is: write out very clearly what are the specific expenditures that you think are improper, that, you know, shouldn’t be followed as a matter of policy; explain why; send that to Congress; and you can have 45 days — while Congress is considering that, you can have 45 days of pausing the spending.

Now, Trump didn’t want to do that, because that gives too much power to Congress. You know, what he wants to do is unilaterally decide, just on his own, “I disagree with the law. I don’t want to follow it.” But the process created in the Impoundment Control Act respects the ability of the president to come in and say, “Look, I want to make my case that we should be spending our money differently.” But it also ultimately respects the power of Congress, elected by people around the country, to decide how to spend our money and to pass our laws. And if that law is challenged successfully, then one more of the restraints on executive power, that we have tried to build up to challenge this imperial presidency, will fall away.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you more about Russ Vought. They’ve put off the vote, but it looks like he will be approved as head of the OMB. And talk about the Project 2025, his role in that, and this latest article that talks about the metadata in the memo that was released by OMB showing that federal employees were written by people with ties to Project 2025.

SAM BAGENSTOS: Yeah, I mean, I think this is really fascinating, because, of course, we heard throughout the campaign — right? — the Trump campaign distancing itself from Project 2025. “Oh, that wasn’t us. That was a bunch of people operating on their own.” Well, we know that Russ Vought, who has been nominated to have a central position in the White House as head of the Office of Management and Budget, was absolutely at the center of drafting and producing Project 2025. We have seen — over the past week-plus that Trump has been in office for his second term, we have seen one after another after another of the Project 2025 proposals going into effect in his executive orders and executive actions from his administration.

And the metadata point that you raise is just fascinating. When you look at the documents that have been produced, the executive orders and other executive statements, that are supposedly documents produced by the Trump administration, and you see — you know, you go in and you see who actually wrote them, often it’s people on the outside, very prominent conservatives on the outside, who were closely associated with and drafted portions of Project 2025. This is really Project 2025 trying to colonize the federal government, the federal executive branch. It’s exactly the thing Trump denied all across the campaign, but it’s exactly what’s happening.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about this offer of the mass resignation of 2 million workers? I mean, it was astounding to hear Miller, now the deputy chief of staff, you know, known for his fierce anti-immigrant stance, when asked about what would happen — it was on this other point of kids not getting food, and older people not — he switched gears and said, “Do you know how many of these workers supported Harris?” and talked specifically about USAID. Whether what he said was true or not, that they, 98%, gave money to Harris or other, quote, “left-wing candidates,” the significance of what this means, urging the workforce to resign?

SAM BAGENSTOS: Yeah, I mean, look, in our government, to make it work, we rely on a professional, career civil service. You know, that was a decision that we, as a democracy, made over a hundred years ago to reform what was really a very corrupt system that was not governing effectively. And ever since the late 19th century, you know, we can have criticisms about various aspects of civil service rules, but we have defended a career, nonpartisan, expert civil service that has been necessary to carry out the tasks of governance in an increasingly complex society.

You know, I have been both a career government official and a political appointee in two different administrations, and I can tell you the career civil servants — I don’t know how they vote. You know, some of them vote Democrat. Some of them vote Republican. Some of them don’t vote at all. But what they do is they provide real expertise in how to actually do the people’s business. And you have seen over and over again the Trump administration, both the first time and now, trying to hollow out and really scare away the people who have worked incredibly hard, you know, to deliver healthcare to folks, to make sure that people have child care, to make sure that people get housing opportunities. You know, these are people who are working really hard for ordinary folks in America, and they really shouldn’t be treated this way.

And I have to say, you know, the way that supposed buyout offer was drafted and sent around, I mean, it really — it’s very sloppy. I don’t think there was legal authority for it. I mean, there’s certainly very substantial questions about that. And I think any government employee would be very, very, very much well advised to look really carefully at what they’re agreeing to before they agree to something like that.

AMY GOODMAN: Sam Bagenstos, you are a law professor at University of Michigan. Before that, you served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget and then general counsel to Health and Human Services. Do you want to share a final comment on the new person nominated to be head of that, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., before we play what his cousin has to say?

SAM BAGENSTOS: Look, I just think it’s really dangerous to put someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of our health department. He has been an anti-vaxxer. He denies that, but, you know, there’s a very clear record that he has stirred up fear and opposition to vaccination on the basis of falsehoods. And this is incredibly harmful to the public health. Look, you know, there are things that he talks about that I think a lot of us would agree with, about trying to improve our food system, about aiming at prevention rather than treatment. You know, I think all that’s great, but none of that outweighs the degree of disinformation and fear that he has cast out into the world, that has really harmed the public health.

AMY GOODMAN: Sam Bagenstos, I want to thank you for being with us, law professor at the University of Michigan.