The Friday Brief

January 30, 2025

Inside: The OMB Debacle hurts MAGA most, the Potomac Crash, GITMO redux, Kash Patel’s arrogant hearing, the return of Executive Time, stupid Gaza tricks, fast airplanes, scary robots, and White House hustlers.

The Big Picture

The OMB Debacle Hurts MAGA Most

The OMB debacle is a prime example of Trumpian ideology colliding headfirst with political reality, and the results are anything but pretty.

Team Trump flipped the switch this week with revolutionary zeal, channeling the spirit of Project 2025’s authors. Russell Vought, the incoming head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has packed the agency with eager young ideologues—what I call the Hillsdale-to-Heritage pipeline—who see government not as an institution to be reformed but as an edifice to be burned to the ground.

Their plan seemed simple on paper: issue a sweeping order freezing trillions in federal financial assistance across broad sectors to align spending with the administration’s priorities.

The Fallout

On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, at precisely 5 p.m., the OMB issued a memo pausing most federal financial aid, including grants and loans. As a former President might say, this is a BFD. The directive specifically targeted funding for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), "woke gender ideology," and the "Green New Deal." Initially, it looked like another one of their performative trolling efforts—until it spiraled into disaster.

While Medicare and Social Security were exempt, state agencies reported that financial systems and funding portals for Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and emergency aid had gone offline within hours. The resulting panic was immediate.

The irony was almost poetic. Trump voters, many of whom despise “socialism” with the intensity of a thousand suns, were suddenly in full meltdown mode when their