“This is not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump administration. Individual assistance that includes — I’m not naming everything that’s included, but just to give you a few examples: Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, food stamps, welfare benefits, assistance that is going directly to individuals will not be impacted by this pause,” Leavitt said at a briefing Wednesday.
While the Trump administration blamed the media for confusion over what funding the directive will affect, Bonta said he believes the ambiguity in the memo was intentional — both to test the bounds of the law and to confuse and scare federal officials.
“It’s very broad, and it’s very expansive. It’s very ambiguous and imprecise,” he said. “They could have enumerated with great precision everything that it included and everything that it didn’t. Instead, they wanted to play politics, and they used a bunch of buzzwords that mean different things to different people. Like what’s wokeism?”
Bonta said that if the directive is allowed to stand, it could result in states facing immediate cash shortfalls — something that could have particularly “devastating” impacts in California, where the state is working to respond to the recent Los Angeles wildfires. Bonta said he believes the state’s FEMA funding would be at risk.
Other Democratic lawmakers also reacted in anger. California Sen. Alex Padilla called on Republican senators to halt the confirmation process of the man tapped to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, until Trump “reverses this reckless order.”
“Donald Trump is illegally blocking hundreds of billions of dollars for essential federal programs … all in his effort to pay for his tax cuts for large corporations and billionaires, like the ones he surrounded himself with during his inauguration,” Padilla said. “This overreach is unconstitutional and hurts the thousands of Californians who have been devastated by the recent fires. When Congress approves federal funds for programs to help communities, they are not optional; they are legal mandates.”