WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 21: U.S. President Donald Trump appears at a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump announced an investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and took questions on a range of topics including his presidential pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, the war in Ukraine, cryptocurrencies and other topics. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

‘This idiot would’ve been impeached’: Trump faces Americans’ rage after horrifically pausing all federal grants and loans.

President Donald Trump has declared money for none.

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The White House budget office recently announced that it would be putting a pause on all federal grants and loans to the panic of federal finance recipients across the nation.

Trump administration officials called the pause a necessary step to overhaul federal spending in service of the president’s executive order to trash DEI initiatives across all government agencies and roll back transgender rights. The administration wants to ensure that federal agencies are in total compliance with these orders, otherwise their funding will be paused indefinitely. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put any speculation behind the cause of the financial freeze to bed, telling the press that the Trump administration wants to sure that government agencies receive “no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness.”

While individuals who receive government benefits such as Medicare and food stamps will so far remain unaffected, the Trump administration’s move is set to freeze of trillions of dollars worth of aid money that federal agencies employ in order to function properly. Education programs, healthcare research, all of this and more will likely be affected by the financial pause.

In response, the internet argues that if an elected official had pulled a stunt like this anywhere else in the world, they would have been impeached.

In 2016, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan installed a toilet plated in 18 karat gold in the bathroom of the Guggenheim. He titled the piece “America.” I think Cattelan would have agreed with this user’s analysis America is just a third world country with a Gucci belt.

In December of 2024, former president of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in an attempt to hold onto power in the face of multiple government scandals. The declaration lasted less than a day. South Korean citizens protested en masse, causing Yeol’s attempt at self-coup to be over before it began. Yeol was swiftly impeached, and has since been charged with insurrection, a crime that carries a life sentence as punishment.

Donald Trump resorted to similar tactics in order to hold onto power in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Trump’s failure to cede power to the Biden administration led to one of the most infamous insurrection attempts in American history: the January 6th Capitol Attack. Rather than face charges for his involvement in stoking insurrection, Donald Trump instead fired his prosecutors and pardoned the mob he incited to violence. While politicians, law enforcement personnel and even some of the pardoned have condemned Trump’s act, the president remains the president.

The Trump administration’s flurry of policy changes is leaving many people exhausted. Since his first day in office, Trump has signed a slew of executive orders, including some in service of his infamous “mass deportation” plan. Trump has expanded the powers of ICE, ordered troops to the southern border, suspended refugee admissions, and has even attempted to end birthright citizenship – a move that is currently being challenged in court.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the Trump administration’s recent decision to pause federal funding “reckless, dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional,” saying that the policy only jeopardizes government programs. A group of nonprofit organizations took it a step further, and have decided to sue the Trump administration over the financial freeze, calling the decision “devoid of any legal basis or the barest rationale.”

If Trump wants to put a freeze on federal funding, it’s only fair that students freeze their student loan payments in return. Trump didn’t put a pause on student loan money, but he shouldn’t be surprised if students do.


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Sarah Fimm
Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like... REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They're like that... but with anime. It's starting to get sad.