Image by Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty / FuturismDevelopmentsPresident Donald Trump's White Houseinsists in a new memo that its federal funding freezeshouldn't affect anyone's Medicaid butstate officials seem to be suggesting otherwise.Earlier in the week,the White House Office of Budget and Management (OMB) sent a memo to all federal agencies temporarily pausing all federal loans and grants as part of a pushback against various mostly-imaginary foes like "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering."Soon after that directive came down, lawmakers began raising alarm bells about the order after discovering that state Medicaid officials across the country had been locked out of Payment Management Services, the Department of Health and Human Services portal they use to track and allocate the federal money that keeps their departmentsIndeed, the portal website now warns that due "to Executive Orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments, PMS is taking additional measures to process payments.""Reviews of applicable programs and payments will result in delays and/or rejections of payments," the PMS site warning reads.As news of the strange blackout began to sow chaos online,the Trump administration launched an unconvincing attempt at damage controlthat seemed to contradict the payment portal itself."Mandatory programs like Medicaid and SNAP will continue without pause," explained a second OMB memo that was sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday,perABC News.White House press secretary Karoline Leavittinitially sounded baffled when asked whether Medicaid payments would be affected, telling reporters that "I'll check back on that and get back to you."Later in the day, she told CBS that the PMS issue isn't related to the funding freeze, but didn't elaborate on what might be causing it instead.Later still, she wrote on X that the White House expects that "the portal will be back online shortly."We've reached out to both her office and the OMB to ask for clarity about this whole fiasco.For anyone who remembers the first week of Trump's first presidency, this level of ineptitude and disruption is relatively par for the course.With these orders coming down at lightning and perhaps algorithmic speed, however, it seems Trump 2.0 is doing a speedrun of the havoc it wreaked last time.More on Trump chaos: Trump Administration Throws Cancer Research Into TurmoilShare This Article