It’s like the TACO freeze.

On June 30, President Donald Trump’s administration placed an abrupt hold on $6.8 billion in federal education grants, including $33 million that was supposed to come to Idaho. It took two steps but only 25 days for the U.S. Education Department to relent and free up the entire funding.

It is all reminiscent of what American consumers (and investors) have been riding for months. The on-again, off-again trade war that Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong virally labeled “TACO tariffs,” as in “Trump Always Chickens Out.” But any wisecracks downplay the turmoil from the freeze, and the overall tumult in federal education policy.

The freeze hit Idaho education hard, for several reasons.

First off, several of the grant programs serve some of Idaho’s at-risk students, such as migrant students and English language learners.

Second, the indefinite freeze came at an inopportune time: in the summer, at the start of schools’ budget year, when administrators need to make hires and plan for the fall. It would not have taken long for the freeze to force some tough decisions about using reserves to keep staffers on the job, or backfill training programs.

Third, states and local schools had every good reason to believe the feds were good for the money. Congress had authorized the spending. The freeze came after the fact. The episode sends a message — intended or not — that no deal is a done deal.

Reading between the lines a bit, GOP state superintendent Debbie Critchfield made her impatience with the administration known last week, as the freeze was lifted.

“This will no doubt be welcome news that comes as a relief to our school leaders,” she said in a statement. “We appreciate their patience and professionalism over the last few weeks while their school budgets were in limbo.”

Not a scathing comment. But the budget freeze was one time when Republicans held their ground against a Republican White House that has pretty much cowed members of its party. The pushback at least acknowledged the obvious. The freeze caused real disruption and in a real hurry.

And it is part of a larger pattern of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t federal funding.

Just ask the University of Idaho, which in 2022 landed a school-record $59 million federal grant to research climate-friendly farming practices. The U of I hired 27 people to work on the project — including some students, the Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported. Then the Trump administration yanked the funding, calling the program a “Biden era climate slush fund.” The U of I has reapplied for the grant.

Or ask the State Board of Education. In May, the board pulled the plug on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar reboot of Idaho’s outdated but critically important K-12 database. The state had expected to use federal COVID relief funds to pay for the Idaho System for Educational Excellence reboot.

And then there’s next year’s federal budget, which could carry a significant hit for education.

The U.S. Education Department’s current budget is $79.1 billion. Trump, who wants to mothball the Education Department entirely, is seeking to cut the department’s budget to $66.7 billion.

This budget wouldn’t cut Title I programs for low-income schools (including $62.4 million a year in Idaho). The budget also wouldn’t touch special education spending ($76.2 million a year in Idaho).

Instead, this budget zeroes out an array of smaller programs — such as, for example, the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers, an after-school and summer program. This was one of several education grants the administration froze, however briefly, on June 30. Idaho now has $6.5 million in unfrozen grants and $2.8 million in reserves, enough to keep this program afloat for now.

There’s no guarantee that even a Republican-led Congress will move on the Trump budget, because Congress isn’t too good at passing budgets.

The 2025-26 federal budget year starts on Oct. 1. Neither the House nor the Senate has taken up the budget, and won’t do so before September, said Austin Reid, a federal affairs adviser for the National Conference of State Legislatures. So Congress might just punt, passing a “continuing resolution” for 2025-26 that leaves spending intact.

There could be another wild card, said Reid, who tracks the federal budget process for NCSL, an information clearinghouse for state lawmakers across the country. There are rumblings about a possible spending rescission that could affect education. “That will remain to be seen,” Reid told an Idaho House-Senate committee Wednesday.

There is recent precedent. Only two weeks ago, Congress passed a Trump-supported $9 billion rescissions bill targeting the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and public broadcasting.

The TACO freeze is history, but not an isolated occurrence. The only given these days is uncertainty.

Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday.