JSTOR (digital academic library) has joined the resistance! Good article in yesterday's newsletter.

[tanyev]

I've been getting their newsletters for awhile for their very interesting articles on all kinds of historical topics. If they delve into politics, it's usually about something historical. This article is about our current crisis, but includes a lot of historical context.

There's a lot you can access for free on their site, but you do have to pay if you want access to everything. Also, a lot of their stuff is accessible through school or public libraries.

The Power of the Purse

On January 27, 2025, a week into the second Trump administration, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo announcing that all federal financial assistance was being paused to assess programs’ “consisten[cy] with the President’s policies and requirements.”

Two days later, a second memo rescinded the first. Two major suits had already been brought by parties affected by the cutoff, and one temporary injunction issued. The rescission announcement brought a brief sense of relief, but a tweet by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt hours later removed any doubts about its intention:

This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.
It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.
Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction.
The President’s EO’s [sic] on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.

—@PressSec, January 29, 2025, 1:40pm

As the week progressed, more information emerged, not only about funds being frozen, but about how the mechanisms and agencies that administrate these funds were being taken over by the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, comprised of Elon Musk and a cadre of young men with previous experience in his companies. Private servers were patched into payment systems (there’s a lawsuit for that), legacy code bases accessed and changed, and the personal data of millions of Americans made accessible to Musk employees with no governmental experience.

We, as a country, have not been here before, but in 1974 we briefly visited the neighborhood.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-power-of-the-purse/?utm_term=Read%20More&utm_campaign=jstordaily_02132025&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email