I can't wait to be told this is entirely political and a halt on $3 trillion of grants, many of which go to university research programs and (open source) nonprofits isn't "technical news" and won't prompt "valuable discussion". I'm sure a sudden double digit plummet in the entire spending of the US government won't have any affect on our lives or careers.

And that's not even getting into that this is, by an ocean, the largest case of illegal executive impounding this nation has ever seen, with downright insane, Orwellian language used as justification and very little actual clarification as to what it actually means. For instance, are Pell grants included? They're for individuals but dispersed by universities. Medicare is safeguarded, but Medicaid?

Just fantastic. Slide and slide.

Over twenty million people are expected to have their HIV viral loads return to pretreatment levels again in a few weeks now that the PEPFAR program is suspended.

And will Congresspeople point out that they legislated the funds to go where the laws they passed dictate?

Is it actually clear this is an authority the president has? Basically usurping Congress' control of the purse?

It's clear that this is an authority that the president does not possess. The President does not have unilateral authority to impound funds. Congress has the power of the purse.

It's clear, but political power only exists if it's used. If congress grants this power to the executive, they render themselves all but irrelevant. They'd be a rather expensive and unattractive claque.

Apparently he can for a short period, yes, according to MSM.

Does this mean SBA loan origination in recent hurricane and wildfire areas is suspended?

Not a good time to be a federally funded research and development corporation (NASA JPL, Fermi National Accelerator, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, NCAR, Oak Ridge, SLAC, etc)