The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has blasted the Donald Trump administration’s order to freeze all federal loans and grants, describing it as a “dangerous move towards authoritarianism” in America.
The order, which is scheduled to begin at 5pm ET on Tuesday, was ordered in a memo from the US president’s acting head of the Office of Management and Budget on Monday evening. The directive instructs all federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligations or disbursement of all federal financial assistance”.
The memo did not state which groups or programs would be affected but said that the freeze would not apply to social security or Medicare.
On Tuesday, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader from New York said that the pause would probably affect universities, the non-profit sector, food assistance programs, hospitals, community health centers, organizations that assist disabled veterans and more.
On Tuesday, Sanders joined many Senate Democrats in denouncing the order, and said in a statement that the freeze would have a “devastating impact on the health and wellbeing of millions of children, seniors on fixed incomes, and the most vulnerable people in our country”.
“It is a dangerous move towards authoritarianism and it is blatantly unconstitutional,” Sanders said. “Our founding fathers explicitly gave Congress the power of the purse. Under our system of checks and balances, no president has the right to choose which laws to follow and which laws to ignore.”
Further, the senator said that the order “raises more questions than it answers” including whether community health centers will receive the federal grants they need to continue to provide primary healthcare to millions of Americans.
“This unconstitutional memo must be rescinded,” Sanders said. “The American people – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – must come together to defeat this move towards authoritarianism.”
He concluded: “If President Trump wants to change our nation’s laws he has the right to ask Congress to change them. He does not have the right to violate the United States constitution. He is not a king.”
The Connecticut attorney general, William Tong, a Democrat, said on Tuesday morning that attorneys general across the country were preparing imminent legal action to challenge the order.
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said that her office “will be taking imminent legal action against this administration’s unconstitutional pause on federal funding”.
