I a memo sent to US authorities, White House acting budget director Matthew Vaeth says that the order issued on Monday is being rescinded, reports The Washington Post on Wednesday afternoon, local time.
However, shortly after that, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the spending freeze remains in place – and that it was only the memo from the budget office that was rescinded.
"This is NOT a rescinding of the freeze on federal funds," writes Leavitt on X.
She adds that the freeze still applies "in full."
Caused a major debate
The pause in disbursements was supposed to take effect on Tuesday afternoon, local time, but was stopped by a judge just minutes before and was pushed back to February 3.
White House's announcement that it would introduce a pause to allow the new Trump administration to begin an "ideological review" of expenditures caused a major debate on Tuesday.
Motivation: Waste
The initiative was motivated by a statement from Matthew Vaeth, citing the use of public funds to promote, among other things, "Marxist equality policy" and trans ideology as a waste of taxpayers' money.
The spending pause was feared to affect tens of billions of dollars and would affect, among other things, research in healthcare and education programs.
However, it was unclear exactly which actors would be affected, which caused great uncertainty at various departments, agencies, organizations, and companies that depend on government grants and loans.
