FARGO -- Many local organizations and North Dakota agencies spent much of Tuesday, Jan. 28, trying to understand what impact an executive order issued by President Donald Trump would have on their programs and staff.
The order, issued late Monday, announced a freeze of all federal grants and loans. It was accompanied by a memo from the acting director of the federal Office of Management and Budget.
"The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve," the memo said.
By midday Tuesday, OMB had issued additional guidance clarifying that the freeze on federal grants and loans would be "limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President's Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest."
With it was a 52-page document identifying thousands of specific grant and loan programs worth about $3 trillion that would be subject to the freeze.
Among them were programs that are helping to fund an affordable housing construction project in Fargo, emergency shelters for homeless youth in Fargo and Bismarck, housing for victims of domestic violence across North Dakota, tribal college endowments, the national school lunch program, veterans transportation and treatment programs, and farm programs like Conservation Reserve Program, specialty crop block grants and FSA operating loans.
Just as the executive order was set to take effect late Tuesday, a federal judge ruled to block it until Monday, Feb. 3, saying the court needed more time to review the legality of the funding pause.
The Forum received updates throughout the day from several state and local federal grant recipients whose executive teams and boards were convening to process the implications of the order for their programs and staff. Understanding of the freeze evolved as the hours ticked by and as guidance started trickling out from the agencies who administer the grants.
Some, like the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency and Fargo Housing Authority, received little to no guidance from the office of Housing and Urban Development, but were relying on the OMB's document to understand which programs would be impacted. HUD's HOME Investment Partnerships program was on the list, NDHFA director David Flohr said, so that meant affordable housing construction projects like the Lashkowitz Riverfront in Fargo could be affected.
Chris Brungardt, CEO of the Fargo Housing Authority, said luckily there were state and reserve funds that would be able to finance the project during a temporary freeze, though he acknowledged that the federal funds would be needed within a year.
The length of the freeze and review process was not clear from the OMB guidance. It stated all of the frozen programs had until Feb. 10 to answer a list of 14 questions about their activities, at which point OMB would review the responses and determine if they were aligned with the Trump administration's priorities and could proceed. A timeline for the OMB's review was not provided.
Some federal funding portals -- including those that allow grantees to draw down dollars from Medicaid and for housing assistance -- were inaccessible, including to the state's Health and Human Services Department, for at least part of the day.
YWCA of Cass Clay Executive Director Erin Prochnow said a significant portion of her organization's supportive housing programs are funded by federal grants, particularly transitional housing for survivors of domestic violence and women escaping sexual assault and human trafficking, and that any expenditures for those programs are already monitored closely and heavily scrutinized because of their nature as federal grants.
She said the freeze could impede the progress the YWCA has made on behalf of the 350 women and children its been serving in the community over the last year, and that the undetermined timeline for when the funds might again be accessible was problematic.
"Even a pause creates a level of uncertainty, which has a ripple effect not only across those that are providing service, i.e. our staff, but especially for those we serve," she said. "They don't give you a date or a sense of how long this could last. If this freeze is longstanding, it could have catastrophic results for some of our most vulnerable people."
Both Prochnow and Melanie Heitkamp, executive director of the nonprofit Youthworks, said many of the individuals in the populations they serve come from traumatic backgrounds and situations and look to their organizations for safety and security, and that even the potential that those programs might go away could be destabilizing for those individuals.
"Many of the youth we serve, their circumstances aren't of their own doing -- these are trafficked youth, victims of child sexual abuse, they are coming out of really bad situations -- and these programs represent their hope for their future, and we are already seeing the effect of that being diminished," Heitkamp said.
Almost all of Youthworks' homeless youth programming in Minot, Bismarck and Fargo is funded by federal grants, she said, as are the organization's emergency shelters and street outreach efforts. She added that almost all Youthworks' staff are funded through federal dollars.
Asked if there would be an immediate impact as a result of the freeze, she said Youthworks is fortunate to have significant reserves thanks to support from foundations as well as community and individual donors that would sustain the programs during the review.
Robin Nelson is the CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Red River Valley. She said the program receives federal grants for meal assistance and juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, which appeared to be subject to the freeze.
"We have no other option than just to wait it out. Fortunately, we have the resources to do so, but I'm very concerned about smaller organizations that may not," she said. "What are these groups supposed to do until they know the results of the review? Is there going to be a gap in services?"
The city of Fargo's public information office did not respond to a request for their reaction to the executive order. The city's affordable housing efforts receive significant federal funding from two programs listed in the OMB freeze document.
Fargo Hector Airport Executive Director Shawn Dobberstein said he had been assured that the freeze would not impact grants for new construction at Hector International.
North Dakota Republican U.S. Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer emphasized the temporary nature of the order and that it didn't impact individual benefits like SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and federal student aid.
"(Trump) is doing what the American people elected him to do: reevaluating the wasteful, inflationary spending of the last four years," Cramer said.
North Dakota U.S. Rep. Julie Fedorchak said the country needs to scrutinize its budget to make sure that "what we are doing with the money is appropriate and consistent with advancing the president's agenda," but added that her office is willing to help North Dakota agencies and organizations that might be impacted by the freeze.
"I understand the concern that folks have in North Dakota who are working with programs that are partially or entirely funded by federal grants," she said. "We need to get to the bottom of what the focus of this new policy is. It's important that people understand what is and isn't affected."
Fedorchak and North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong both invoked the country's exploding national debt as a reason the freeze was a necessary step.
Armstrong said his office asked federal OMB for a meeting, which has been scheduled for Wednesday morning, to determine how North Dakota would be impacted by the freeze, which will include state agencies and tribal governments.
"(Trump) campaigned against the permanent bureaucracy and a lot of these programs. There's some that I think they absolutely can and should pause funding on, and there's others that are probably a little more systemic and have issues, which is why we're going to try and get some guidance from them," he said.
Armstrong said he's willing to be "very clear" with the administration if there are grants or loans being frozen that could have a significantly negative impact on North Dakota.
As the time came for the executive order to take effect Tuesday evening, a federal judge ruled in favor of an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., which filed an emergency lawsuit to block it.
The basis for the challenge claimed Trump's order violated the First Amendment and the authority the executive branch has to make rules. The judge's temporary decision represented the second time in less than a week that a court has blocked one of Trump's executive orders, the first coming on Jan. 23, with regard to the president's plan to end birthright citizenship.
A more permanent ruling on the federal grants freeze is expected on Feb. 3.