Morning Report — Firestorm swirls over Trump funding freeze

In today’s issue:  

• Trump’s funding freeze blocked amid protests
• Kash Patel’s loyalty to Trump raises worry
• 2024: How Harris sought Joe Rogan interview
• Trump vs. foreign aid

The White House triggered a national eruption of panic over the future of federal loans and grants Tuesday, followed by a federal judge’s injunction ordering a halt until Feb. 3 to provide more time to sort out the resulting mess.

The lessons for the new administration were many. Answers and clarity were absent for hours as the administration defended its implementation of President Trump’s campaign for efficiency and savings.

And the episode underscores what’s ahead for a president and House Republicans who spent the past few days mulling options to slash a potential $1 trillion or more in spending on thousands of federal programs they oppose — but which are each guaranteed to affect vocal constituencies and beneficiaries nationwide.

The president is willing to test the outer bounds of presidential authority over the federal budget. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, but Trump has signaled he could try to circumvent lawmakers, potentially terminating entire categories of spending lawmakers appropriated but which he opposes. 

Republican and Democratic governors, whose budgets are built around federal funding for thousands of programs, will also demand a say. The funding freeze uproar served to unite Democrats in Congress as the White House scrambled behind the scenes to get GOP lawmakers to holster public criticisms. 

▪ The Hill: The White House rallies behind the sweeping pause on grants and loans.

▪ The Hill: Trump’s spending freeze roils Capitol Hill.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended the president’s efforts to halt disbursements on grants and loans until each is reviewed. The White House, using a two-page Office of Management and Budget memo late Monday, took aim at diversity, equity and inclusion programs and initiatives to battle climate change, among many others.

“It is a temporary pause. For some programs, it could be an hours-long pause,” Johnson told The Hill’s Emily Brooks during an interview Tuesday.

“This is, I believe, an application of common sense,” he added during Republicans’ multiday Florida retreat to strategize about budgeting. “I think these will be quick reviews. I don’t think this is a big, major interruption of programming or anything.”

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Trump ally, on Tuesday issued a joint statement with top state officials asking the administration “to develop a responsible runway to untangle us from any unnecessary and egregious policies without jeopardizing the financial stability of the state.”

The White House order left many agencies and departments unprepared. 

▪ The Hill: States lost access Tuesday to the Medicaid payment portal.

▪ The Associated Press: What Trump’s funding freeze could mean for universities, nonprofits and more.

News accounts of the upheaval and lingering questions swamped state officials and members of Congress, who described calls from anxious parents worried about federal education grants, individuals and state governments nervous about continued federal support for Medicaid, and international organizations lobbying for continued U.S. support to combat malnutrition and diseases such as AIDS. 

▪ The Hill: Johnson floats possibility of working with Democrats on the debt ceiling.

▪ The Hill: The president’s demands for the legislative agenda squeeze the House GOP. 

SMART TAKE with NewsNation’s BLAKE BURMAN:

As Republicans begin to build a tax package that will renew the 2017 Trump tax cuts and likely add more cuts, here’s something I’ve noticed: The president keeps referencing the days before federal income tax.  

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens," President Trump told congressional Republicans on Monday. 

While Trump could be laying the groundwork for his upcoming tax package and arguing that tariffs could make up for revenue cuts, consider what House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told The Hill's Emily Brooks at that same Republican gathering. “The No. 1 threat to our nation right now is our debt," he said. 

Tax cuts, tariff hikes and debt worries. These are just part of the conversations we will hear play out, publicly and privately, among Republicans in the coming months.

Burman hosts “The Hill” weeknights, 6p/5c on NewsNation. 

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:

▪ The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday offered roughly 2 million federal workers the option to resign but be paid through the end of September in a dramatic but legally questionable effort to reduce the size of the federal civilian workforce. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) warned his constituents that Trump “doesn’t have any authority to do this.”

▪ Want to monitor Trump’s continuing pileup of executive actions? Trackers can be found at The White House, American Presidency Project, CNN, Federal Register and Akin Gump.

▪ A Vatican document released Tuesday offers artificial intelligence guidelines from warfare to healthcare.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Hill | Greg Nash

CABINET CONFIRMATIONS: Senate Republicans are under growing pressure from prominent former Republican officials to reject Trump's pick to head the FBI, Kash Patel. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports that while most of the focus has been on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s director of national intelligence designee, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Patel has drawn the strongest opposition from former Republican national security and law enforcement leaders such as former national security adviser John Bolton and former Attorney General William Barr. The criticism sets the stage for a battle in the Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning.   

Patel’s deep loyalty to the president will also be a flashpoint; the two men share a conviction that the FBI has been weaponized against conservatives. They argue it is politicized and the only way to fix it is to install an outsider willing to execute the Trump agenda — a sharp divergence from the bureau’s historical norms and the decades-long practice of directors’ limiting contact with presidents.

CNN: Intel officials spent years battling Patel. Now he’s poised to take over a key agency.

Meanwhile, Caroline Kennedy, former President John F. Kennedy’s daughter, told senators in a letter that her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services, is a “predator” who has lied and cheated his way through life. With Kennedy Jr. set to appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this week, Caroline Kennedy said she felt “an obligation to speak out.”

She said that her cousin “lacks any relevant government, financial, management or medical experience” to qualify him to lead the nation’s health agencies — and added that his “personal qualities” pose “even greater concern.”

Additionally, she criticized him for making money from his “crusade against vaccinations” and warned that “he will keep his financial stake in a lawsuit against an HPV vaccine.”

“In other words, he is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” she wrote.

▪ The Hill: The Senate on Tuesday confirmed former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) to be the next Transportation secretary, putting him in place to lead a sprawling agency that oversees air travel, highways, pipelines and railroads.

▪ The Hill: Senate Democrats are trying to avoid a repeat of the Laken Riley Act as Republicans try to give them headaches on a package to sanction the International Criminal Court and take advantage of a conference that is divided on the politically-charged issue. 

WHERE AND WHEN

• The House convenes for a pro forma session Friday at 10 a.m. 
  
• The Senate meets at noon.
  
• The president will sign the Laken Riley Act at the White House.
  
• The Federal Reserve concludes a two-day meeting with a written statement at 2 p.m. and a press conference by Chair Jerome Powell at 2:30 p.m.

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press | Susan Walsh