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Donald Trump has scrapped his order to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars in federal domestic funding, in a major climbdown following a widespread backlash.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a two-line memo to executive branch departments and agencies on Wednesday saying the original plan had been dropped.
The U-turn came a day after the original order sparked a day of political chaos and confusion among politicians from both parties, who were grappling with how their states critical federal services including support for the poor and elderly would be affected.
A federal judge blocked the freeze on Tuesday just minutes before it was set to take effect.
After the revocation, the White House said it rescinded the memo “to end any confusion on federal policy created by the court ruling and the dishonest media coverage”.
Trump said he wanted to “correct any confusion that the media has purposely and somehow, for whatever reason, created”, adding Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would not be affected by his freeze.
“We are merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse,” he said.
The president’s comments came a day after the White House issued clarifications about which programmes would be affected by its sweeping payment freeze.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday insisted Trump’s order to review federal funding to align it with his Maga agenda would “remain in full force and . . . will be rigorously implemented by all agencies and departments”.
Wednesday’s reversal was a blow to Trump less than two weeks into a second term. His team wanted to be free of the kind of policy reversals that characterised the early months of his first presidency.
Republican officials, including Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, had joined Democratic lawmakers and state officials in opposing the freeze.
But the U-turn will be awkward for House Republicans who defended Trump’s funding freeze during their retreat in Florida.
The president has issued scores of executive orders since re-entering office as he tries to execute a plan to deregulate the US economy and slash the size of the federal government. The orders have included blocks on federal support for foreign aid and domestic clean energy.
Democrats said the revocation of its original memo just a day after it was issued marked an early policy failure by the new administration.
Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the US Senate, said “Americans fought back and Donald Trump backed off” and the president had “failed in this tactic”.
Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, wrote on social media platform Bluesky that “round one goes to team America. We remain in the ring until far-right extremism has been completely and totally knocked out.”