The White House has ordered the review of 2,600 programs across the federal government, including dozens at USDA, to assess them for their compliance with President Donald Trump's intention to rid the government of "green new deal" spending, special assistance for minorities and other programs that may contravene his wishes.
The review was supposed to be accompanied by a pause in funding, but a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the suspension of payments minutes before it was to go into effect.
The directive has been clouded by confusion that only continued Wednesday, when the Office of Management and Budget issued a two-sentence memo rescinding the original memo from Monday that contained the directive. The latest memo was quickly read by the news media and others to suggest that the directive had been withdrawn, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it had not.
"This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze," she said in a post on X. "It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court's injunction. The President's EO's on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented."
The original directive and funding freeze had sparked immediate questions and concerns about its impact on a wide range of programs. OMB released a Q&A Tuesday in an attempt to clarify the funding pause, saying that individual recipients of assistance would not be affected, including farmers and recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
Separately, there also was considerable confusion going into Tuesday among farm groups about the impact on U.S. food aid of a State Department decision to suspend foreign aid for 90 days. However, Reuters reported Tuesday night that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver from the aid suspension for humanitarian assistance.
Trump’s first proposed budget in 2017 proposed to kill both the Food for Peace and McGovern-Dole food aid programs and would have shifted the money to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s International Disaster Assistance account. Congress rejected the proposals.
Farm groups and recipients of federal grants and loans, meanwhile, were trying to determine the impact of the sweeping directive to freeze disbursements of federal financial assistance.
The original directive issued by OMB Monday said, "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."
OMB’s follow-up to that directive said specifically that agencies must work with OMB "to determine quickly whether any program is inconsistent with the president’s executive orders." In addition, it said, "Any payment required by law to be paid will be paid without interruption or delay."
The funding pause “does not apply across-the-board,” OMB said. “It is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the president’s executive orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest."
The "green new deal” is not in fact legislation, but as Trump has described the concept, it appears to refer broadly to environmental initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act.
A spreadsheet provided to agencies included a vast array of programs that must be examined, including those at USDA. A small sampling included the Conservation Reserve Program, dairy and livestock indemnity programs, specialty crop grants, the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage (ARC-PLC) programs, farm storage facility loans, the Emergency Livestock Relief program, SNAP, the Women, Infants and Children program, and capacity-building grants for universities.
The spreadsheet included such questions as "Does this program include activities that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources (including through funding under the Inflation Reducing Act of 2022; and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act)?"
Another question was, "Does this program provide funding that is implicated by the directive to end discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and 'diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility' (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities, under whatever name they appear, or other directives in the same EO, including those related to 'environmental justice' programs or 'equity-related' grants?"
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And then there was a catch-all question: “If not covered in the preceding columns, does this program support any activities that must not be supported based on executive orders issued on or after January 20, 2025 (including executive orders released following the dissemination of this spreadsheet)?”
Zach Ducheneaux
Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of the Farm Service Agency during the Biden administration, told Agri-Pulse on Tuesday that “at the very least,” OMB’s actions have “got to be worrying the hell out of a lot of people across the country.”
Crop insurance and the noninsured disaster assistance program, as well as disaster programs such as the emergency conservation program and emergency forest restoration program, are on the spreadsheet. “I'm presuming that because it's listed on this page, it is what the administration is intending to pause all action on,” he said.
“All of those programs ultimately have an individual person as a beneficiary,” Ducheneaux said, but added that “further clarification” is needed.
“All of the work that we did under the previous administration was done lawfully … in compliance with executive orders issued by that administration, or as authorized and appropriated by Congress,” he said. Referring to the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Program, he said, “Stakeholder groups engaged in these agreements with the understanding that the United States government was going to live up to its word. They're out there incurring those costs and providing services in hopes of getting reimbursed pursuant to the signature of the United States government on those agreements.”
“If the executive orders of the current administration are expected to have the weight and import of actual law, so should those where there's an actual agreement signed under them," he said. “The United States government, above all else, should be true to its word.”
Grantees under the $3.1 billion partnerships program, funded through the Commodity Credit Corporation, told Agri-Pulse they’re confident the matter will be ironed out.
Pat Gruber, CEO of renewable fuels company Gevo, downplayed the impact of OMB’s funding pause. He said it makes sense for the new administration to want to take a look at the money going out the door, and this appears to have minimal impact.
Gevo’s Farm-to-Flight project was slated to receive $30 million in federal funding through the Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program. Gruber said the project is ahead of schedule and is not overly dependent on government funding at this point.
Gruber said the company worked to stay “current” in terms of matched spending and that it's not waiting for a “significant” amount in reimbursement from USDA.
“If I was a company who had a different kind of contract or I was dependent upon the government for money in some way, I’d worry maybe a little bit if I was doing something too far out,” Gruber said. “We’re pretty close to the agenda.”
Gruber said the PCSC initiative is “brilliant” because it helps generate the data showing benefits of climate-smart agriculture.
Funding pauses are not unique to this administration, though the far-reaching nature of this one may be unprecedented. In January 2021, USDA suspended payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program that were authorized at the end of the first Trump administration. The decision was in line with the incoming administration’s government-wide regulatory review.
Then-Senate Ag Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow said she agreed with “the idea of pausing and reviewing where we are now.”
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the much broader pause by the Trump administration “lawless, dangerous, destructive, cruel . . . It's illegal, it's unconstitutional.”
Republican senators, however, defended the action. Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Hoeven, R-N.D., emphasized that the pause is temporary and does not affect mandatory spending. In addition, he said the ultimate resolution of funding issues will come later when Congress addresses annual appropriations.
“They are actually doing evaluations of how can we spend the money effectively and wisely and where can we look for potential money to claw back,” Hoeven said.
This story has been updated with OMB withdrawing the original memo.
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