Where things currently stand in Trump’s confusing flurry of federal funding memos

The federal funding freeze has melted — or has it? The Trump administration circulated a new memo Wednesday morning that rescinds a previous memo released on Monday that put a sweeping funding freeze on federal grants and foreign aid.

However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tweeted later in the day that the Wednesday morning memo rescinds only the Monday memo, not the actual spending freezes in previously signed executive orders.

According to the Washington Post, this means that federal funding pauses related to foreign aid and Biden-era clean energy funds remain in effect.

The rescission of the Monday memo appears to be a way of working around the Tuesday afternoon ruling by a federal judge on a lawsuit brought by multiple nonprofits against the Trump administration.

The ruling placed a temporary hold on the actions laid out in the Monday memo, which intended to freeze foreign aid and the dispersement of unspecified federal grants at 5 p.m. ET Tuesday. The ruling came just minutes before that time.

As a result of the flurry of memos — which in some cases contradict each other — the second week of Trump’s presidency has been mired by widespread confusion and panic among multiple industries and stakeholders.

However, both President Trump and Leavitt deflected blame. At a contentious press conference Tuesday afternoon, Leavitt said there’s no uncertainty “in this building” and that the uncertainty is only among members of “the media.” On Wednesday afternoon, Trump accused the press of purposefully creating the confusion. Leavitt’s Wednesday afternoon tweet acknowledges there is confusion.

But in the eyes of many stakeholders, the Wednesday morning memo that rescinded the Monday memo but not the Jan. 20 executive orders that pause funding that isn’t specified in the Monday or Wednesday memos has done little to clear things up.

And this chain of memos is only one piece of the memo puzzle. Tuesday morning the administration circulated a memo that directed federal agencies to review selected programs and submit their findings to the Office of Management and Budget by Feb. 7, and this memo still stands.

The programs targeted by the memo include 100 administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including rental assistance, Section 8 housing vouchers, the public housing capital and operating funds, Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), the Choice Neighborhoods program and Project Base Rental Assistance.

HUD’s HOME and CDBG initiatives would comprise the majority of programs affected, as 469 programs rely on HOME funding and 265 programs rely on CDBG funding. It also targeted programs on mortgage insurance and manufactured housing.

Given the scope of the HUD programs listed, it effectively called for a review of HUD in its entirety. Notably missing is the Department of Treasury’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, which real estate developers use to help fund projects in exchange for renting a percentage of units at affordable rates.

But later on Tuesday, the Trump administration released a followup memo saying the previous memo merely establishes a process for agencies to “quickly determine whether any program is inconsistent with” Trump’s previous executive orders, and that a pause could be as short as a day. The memo explicitly stated that rental assistance would not be paused.

However, language later in the memo seemed to suggest that the original memo was intended as a funding pause deemed necessary “to act as faithful stewards of taxpayer money.

While news media works to sort this out, many in the housing industry are trying to do the same, with some stating that they oppose a freeze on funding.

“Even a short pause in funding could cause significant harm to low-income families and their communities,” said Low Income Housing Coalition Interim President and CEO Renee Willis in a statement. “The longer the freeze continues, the greater the risk that low-income households receiving federal rental assistance could face eviction, and in the worst cases, homelessness, homeless shelters may be forced to close their doors, and nonprofit organizations may have to lay off staff.”

Down Payment Resource (DPR), which connects eligible homebuyers and hard-to-find down payment programs, estimates that if the Tuesday morning memo were to be enforced, roughly one-third of the nation’s 2,466 U.S. homebuyer assistance programs would be frozen.

“The full impact this will have on the availability of federally-funded homebuyer assistance programs is unclear, and some administrators who accept federal funding have paused associated assistance programs and educational workshops,” a spokesperson from DPR shared in an email.

HUD’s HOME and CDBG initiatives would comprise the majority of programs affected, as 469 programs rely on HOME funding and 265 programs rely on CDBG funding. Major programs with HUD also include the public housing operating and capital funds, Section 8 housing vouchers, the Choice Neighborhoods program and Project Based Rental Assistance.

In response to the Monday memo that was rescinded today, Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) President and CEO Bob Broeksmit released a statement Tuesday saying the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) “must clarify” that the memo does not suspend payments for single-family and multifamily loan insurance or guarantee programs at those agencies.

“Americans are going to the closing table tomorrow and deserve to know that their loan will close on their home purchase,” the statement reads. “Without this clear assurance that the federal government will insure new loans or pay claims under these programs, there will be severe harm to borrowers and disruption to the mortgage market.”

Previous moves by Trump that affect housing include a federal hiring freeze and regulatory freeze.