Some political observers argue that Donald Trump and his team are simply impervious to pressure. No matter how great the outrage, the argument goes, the president and his Republican operation will ignore criticisms, rewrite history, deliver marching orders, and refuse to back down.

This observation is mistaken. Indeed, several examples have emerged since the president’s second inaugural.

Take, for example, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget ordered a freeze on federal grants, loans and related assistance — money that Congress has already appropriated — effectively trying to shift the power of the purse to the Trump administration. The OMB memo sparked widespread confusion, chaos and controversy.

And it’s against this backdrop that the White House rescinded the memo on Wednesday.

After a day of widespread confusion, Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary, made matters a bit worse, writing via social media, “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.” Rather, she added, the latest move is a rescission of the OMB memo that authorized the funding freeze. She said the move was meant to “end any confusion created by” a federal court’s decision to temporarily pause the freeze from taking effect until Monday while litigation on the matter moves forward.

In the same missive, the president’s chief spokesperson appeared to suggest Trump’s executive orders on federal funding “will be rigorously implemented,” though it wasn’t altogether clear which orders she was referring to.

While the White House sorts out its plans, Democrats wasted little time in celebrating.

For example, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, “This is an important victory for the American people whose voices were heard after massive pressure from every corner of this country — real people made a difference by speaking out. Still, the Trump administration — through a combination of sheer incompetence, cruel intentions, and a willful disregard of the law — caused real harm and chaos for millions over the span of the last 48 hours which is still ongoing.”

It comes on the heels of the Trump administration reversing course, at least temporarily, on federal funds for PEPFAR, a key worldwide HIV treatment program, which came on the heels of the Trump administration also reversing course on a hiring freeze for health care workers at the VA.

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None of this will help the president and his political operation fend off accusations of rampant incompetence. In fact, The Bulwark’s Sam Stein, an MSNBC contributor, spoke to a source affected by the freeze who was relieved by the new decision, but who nevertheless compared White House officials to the “Keystone Cops.”

The criticisms are more than fair. White House officials have been planning for this moment for months. They had every opportunity to carefully and deliberately flesh out a policy, prepare for its unveiling, and implement it effectively. Instead, Team Trump issued a terribly written OMB memo, generated chaos and confusion, spent a day pretending it was sound, only to scrap its memo under pressure that officials should’ve seen coming.

As the dust settles on the unexpected rescission, it remains an open question as to whether the president and his aides will launch a related effort in the near future. Indeed, there’s some precedent for this: Trump’s original travel ban, issued exactly eight years to the day before the OMB freeze memo, was a disaster for the Republican White House, but it was repeatedly tweaked and ultimately implemented.

The president, in other words, might very well try again.

With this in mind, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a celebratory statement — “Americans fought back, and Donald Trump backed off,” the New York Democrat wrote — warning of a second round to the broader fight.

“Though the Trump administration failed in this tactic, it’s no secret that they will try to find another, and when they do, it will again be Senate Democrats there to call it out, fight back, and defend American families,” Schumer concluded.