DID LORI LIGHTFOOT DO DONALD TRUMP A FAVOR?

Earlier today, Our President issued a ukase pausing some Federal spending pending review.

The decision was announced in a two-page memo from the Office of Management and Budget titled "Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs." According to the memo, it affects at least $3 trillion in federal outlays.

The freeze refers to several Trump executive orders as the authority -- Protecting the American People Against Invasion (Jan. 20, 2025), Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Jan. 20, 2025), Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements (Jan. 20, 2025), Unleashing American Energy (Jan. 20, 2025), Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Jan. 20, 2025), Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Jan. 20, 2025), and Enforcing the Hyde Amendment (Jan. 24, 2025).

I'm hearing echoes of Richard Nixon's impoundments and wondering whether we're seeing a squirrel to comply with the debt ceiling until income tax withholding payments roll in again with Friday's paydays.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Marcia Howard, executive director of Federal Funds Information for States, a nonprofit that analyzes the effect of federal actions on states. “It is unprecedented.”

Although the federal government has rescinded unspent funds in the past, it hasn’t normally halted grants on the front-end, she said. The grant pause is perhaps most similar to a federal government shutdown, when a congressional impasse on spending legislation delays federal payments for some state and local services.

“What we generally have observed with states under those circumstances is that a couple of weeks isn’t hugely disruptive,” Howard said.

Twitchy's Brett T. calls attention to a number of supposedly non-profit and non-governmental organizations whose rent-seeking is involved.  Red State's Streiff notes that the clock on impoundments has more time on it than the Doomsday Clock.  "The 90-day hold is well within the letter of the Impoundment Control Act and is sure to inconvenience some grantees. What it does is prevent the federal government from directly funding activities, like abortion and alien smuggling, that are against the stated policy of the administration."

Washington being Washington, though, a judge has already ruled for the rent-seekers.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a push from President Donald Trump to pause federal funding while his administration conducts an across-the-board ideological review to uproot progressive initiatives.

The Trump administration plan plunged the U.S. government into panic and confusion and set the stage for a constitutional clash over control of taxpayer money.

The order from U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan came minutes before the funding freeze was scheduled to go into effect. It lasts until Monday afternoon and applies only to existing programs.

Administration officials said the decision to halt loans and grants — a financial lifeline for local governments, schools and nonprofit organizations around the country — was necessary to ensure that spending complies with Trump’s recent blitz of executive orders. The Republican president wants to increase fossil fuel production, remove protections for transgender people and end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

But a vaguely worded memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget, combined with incomplete answers from the White House throughout the day, left lawmakers, public officials and average Americans struggling to figure out what programs would be affected by the pause. Even temporary interruptions in funding could cause layoffs or delays in public services.

I wonder if reporter Chris Megerian could have filed a story with the same factual information and fewer Democrat talking points.  Oh, wait, that's the Associated Press.

Perhaps, though, the review will turn up some misappropriations of tax money.  Recall, dear reader, that in December, former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot led an investigation of misappropriations of tax money by Dolton mayor Tiffany "Brat" Henyard.  It's not enough to close the federal deficit, but Dolton is not the only Democrat-run money suck in the country.

Tiffany Henyard's administration was engaged in a "systematic effort" to cover up the Illinois town's financial situation as Henyard and other officials failed to track the spending of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to an investigation by former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Lightfoot, who now works as a consultant with Charles River Associates, was tasked with investigating Henyard's administration last year, and she presented her findings at a meeting Monday night.  Henyard has served as the city's self-styled "super-mayor" since 2021.

"Beginning at least as early as late 2021, there was a concerted, systematic effort on behalf of Mayor Henyard and others in her administration to hide the true financial condition of the Village of Dolton from the trustees and from members of the public," Lightfoot said.

Lightfoot said the Village of Dolton received some $3 million in payments from the American Rescue Plan, hundreds of thousands of which went missing without receipts. Henyard failed to appoint an official to track how the funds were spent, as required by the Treasury Department, according to Lightfoot's report.

The city's credit card spending also spiked to $779,638 in 2023, also with little to no tracking.

As the Blogfather quips, it's good to be the nomenklatura.

"Many of the credit card expenditures have no accompanying receipt, and the statements alone provide limited information about the purchases," the report says, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

City credit cards were also used to pay for large trips to Las Vegas in both 2022 and 2023, and the report claims, "There is no evidence that any business development opportunities came to the village as a result of either of these two trips."

Lightfoot's report comes just days after Henyard was found in contempt of court for stonewalling liquor licenses.

The mayor also serves as Dolton's liquor commissioner.

Look, if a municipality wants to elect public officials who feather their nests, fine, but let them do it with their constituents' money, not with mine.  I have my own local officials that might require taking care of, and there's no reason to have to launder it through Washington.