The withdrawal of the federal freeze was a stunning about-face for President Donald Trump’s White House, which has so far pushed the envelope to reshape the federal government, sowing chaos and confusion in firing career civil servants, pausing foreign aid programs and offering federal workers a buyout.

It was an odyssey that started after Trump’s inauguration last Monday. Shortly after he was sworn in, the president signed a slate of executive actions targeting “wokeness”

A memo that paused federal grants and loans briefly put tens of millions of dollars in local funding for housing, public works and more in jeopardy.