Latest news with #Riedl
Business Wire
15 hours ago
- Health
- Business Wire
KalVista Pharmaceuticals Presents New Data at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Congress 2025 on the Efficacy of Sebetralstat for the On-demand Treatment of HAE Attacks Among Patients Receiving Long-Term Prophylaxis
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & SALISBURY, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- KalVista Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: KALV) today announced the presentation of new data at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) Congress 2025 in Glasgow, United Kingdom that underscores the critical role of effective on-demand (OD) treatment for HAE attacks among patients receiving long-term prophylaxis (LTP). Sebetralstat for Treatment of HAE Attacks in Patients Receiving Berotralstat, Lanadelumab, or C1 Inhibitor for Long-term Prophylaxis: Interim Analysis from KONFIDENT-S waspresented by Marc A. Riedl, MD, Professor of Medicine and Clinical Director of the US Hereditary Angioedema Association Center at the University of California, San Diego. The KONFIDENT-S interim analysis, involving 35 participants receiving berotralstat, lanadelumab, or C1 inhibitor (C1-INH), treated 382 attacks with sebetralstat Median time to treatment was 6 minutes overall, ranging from 1 minute (C1-INH) to 20 minutes (berotralstat) One-third of attacks were still mild at time of sebetralstat use Median time to beginning of symptom relief was 1.3 hours "Even with advancements in HAE long-term prophylactic treatments, attacks still occur, highlighting the critical need for easily administered, fast-acting, effective on-demand options," said Dr. Riedl. "These data from KONFIDENT-S show the promise of sebetralstat as an effective oral on-demand option that can complement all major long-term prophylaxis treatments, including those acting through plasma kallikrein inhibition, like lanadelumab and berotralstat.' Adherence to Long-Term Prophylaxis for Hereditary Angioedema and the Impact on On-demand Treatment Claims in the US was presented by Daniel Soteres, MD, MPH, Asthma and Allergy Associates and Research Center, Colorado. Less than half (44%) of HAE patients using LTP were adherent based on refill data over 12 months No reduction in OD claims was observed in non-adherent patients (18 pre- and post-LTP; p =0.769) Over 12 months, greater than 20% discontinued their LTP, while 17% switched LTP "The real-world data suggest that despite the effectiveness of long-term prophylactic therapies in clinical trials, maintaining adherence may be a significant hurdle for many HAE patients," said Dr. Soteres. "Refill gaps correlated with a greater number of on-demand treatment claims, indicating that patients may be experiencing more frequent attacks than expected. This underscores the importance of actively discussing LTP adherence with patients and having a reliable, efficacious on-demand treatment to manage breakthrough attacks.' 'These data reinforce what we hear from patients and clinicians on an ongoing basis; long-term prophylaxis plays an essential role in HAE management, but it's not the full story,' said Paul Audhya, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer of KalVista. 'Attacks still occur, and adherence remains a real-world challenge. Sebetralstat is designed to meet this need: a rapid, reliable oral treatment that empowers patients to act the moment symptoms begin, regardless of their background therapy.' Links to all presentations can be found on the KalVista website under Publications. About Sebetralstat Sebetralstat is an investigational, novel oral plasma kallikrein inhibitor for the treatment of hereditary angioedema (HAE). We have filed multiple regulatory applications seeking approval of sebetralstat as the first oral, on-demand treatment for HAE in individuals aged 12 and older, with ongoing studies exploring its use in children aged 2 to 11. If approved, sebetralstat has the potential to become the foundational therapy for HAE management worldwide. About Hereditary Angioedema Hereditary angioedema (HAE) is a rare genetic disease resulting in deficiency or dysfunction in the C1 esterase inhibitor (C1INH) protein and subsequent uncontrolled activation of the kallikrein-kinin system. People living with HAE experience painful and debilitating attacks of tissue swelling in various locations of the body that can be life-threatening depending on the area affected. All currently approved on-demand treatment options require either intravenous or subcutaneous administration. About KalVista Pharmaceuticals, Inc. KalVista Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is a global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing and delivering life-changing oral therapies for individuals affected by rare diseases with significant unmet needs. Our lead investigational product is sebetralstat, a novel, oral, on-demand treatment for hereditary angioedema (HAE). Sebetralstat is under regulatory review by the U.S. FDA. In addition, we have completed Marketing Authorization Applications for sebetralstat to the European Medicines Agency and multiple other global regulatory authorities. For more information about KalVista, please visit or follow us on social media at @KalVista and LinkedIn. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as: "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "goal," "seek," "believe," "project," "estimate," "expect," "strategy," "future," "likely," "may," "should," "will" and similar references to future periods. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Examples of forward-looking statements include, among others, timing or outcomes of communications with the FDA, our expectations about safety and efficacy of our product candidates and timing of clinical trials and its results, our ability to commence clinical studies or complete ongoing clinical studies, including our KONFIDENT-S and KONFIDENT-KID trials, and to obtain regulatory approvals for sebetralstat and other candidates in development, the success of any efforts to commercialize sebetralstat, the ability of sebetralstat and other candidates in development to treat HAE or other diseases, and the future progress and potential success of our oral Factor XIIa program. Further information on potential risk factors that could affect our business and financial results are detailed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended April 30, 2024, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and our other reports that we may make from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.
Epoch Times
22-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
‘Senior Bonus' in Trump Agenda Bill Would Temporarily Provide Relief to Americans Over 65
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, narrowly approved by the House of Representatives on May 22, includes a tax break for Americans older than 65 in the form of a temporary deduction of $4,000. In lieu of President Donald Trump's campaign pledge to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, this deduction, called the 'senior bonus,' would offer a smaller tax cut, targeted to benefit lower-income seniors. The House bill allows seniors, whether they take the standard deduction or itemize their returns, to deduct an additional $4,000 from their taxable income. It phases out for single filers earning more than $75,000, or $150,000 for taxpayers filing jointly. The deduction would last from 2025 through 2028. For those who qualify, it would amount to dollar savings of $480 for those in the 12 percent tax bracket, and $880 for those in the 22 percent tax bracket. The deduction reduces taxable income and is distinct from a tax credit, which would be a dollar-for-dollar reduction in taxes. Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute focusing on budget, tax, and economic policy, told The Epoch Times that 'Republicans converted the pledge of no taxes on Social Security benefits into the $4,000 additional senior deduction for two reasons.' 'First, because congressional rules forbid altering Social Security or its taxes in a reconciliation bill,' Riedl said. 'Second, ending Social Security income taxes would overwhelmingly benefit wealthier seniors, because their benefits currently face higher taxes, and this deduction is instead targeted to lower-earning seniors.' Related Stories 5/22/2025 5/22/2025 According to what is called the 1974 According to a May 16 White House The bill now proceeds to the Senate, which will have the opportunity to approve or alter it. Trump has urged the Senate to pass the bill, which has also received support from senior citizens' advocates. 'It's not perfect, but given the political realities of no bipartisan support, we urge Republicans to unite and pass 'The One, Big Beautiful Bill,'' Saul Anuzis, president of the American Association of Senior Citizens, said in a The American Association of Retired Persons also endorsed the senior bonus, with its chief advocacy and engagement officer Nancy LeaMond And calling the provision 'a win for seniors across the country,' Jim Martin, chairman of the 60 Plus Association, The senior bonus provides significantly less tax relief than eliminating Social Security taxes altogether; however, it benefits the Social Security trust, which analysts, including those at the Peter G. Peterson 'Ultimately, the $4,000 deduction is significantly cheaper than the original Social Security tax proposal—$20 billion annually versus $120 billion,' Riedl said. 'It also does not divert money out of the Social Security trust fund like the original proposal would have.' The reduction in revenue from the senior bonus would come out of general revenue from federal income tax, rather than from the Social Security fund, as would have been the case if the Social Security tax were eliminated. Up to 85 percent of Social Security benefits are
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The DOGE Hoax
From the Boiling Frogs on The Dispatch We've reached the stage of national decadence at which the more thoughtful and substantive a policy critique is, the better the chance it'll be ignored or dismissed out of hand by policymakers. By that standard, this sharp screed by Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Dispatch contributor Jessica (formerly Brian) Riedl about Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, a.k.a. DOGE, must be one of the least essential analyses of our time. Riedl has studied the anatomy of the federal budget in gory detail and is pleading with well-meaning Americans to understand three things. One: Most federal spending is locked up in things that their representatives won't touch—Medicare, Social Security, defense, veterans' affairs, interest. Two: We have buried ourselves so deep in annual deficits that stabilizing the budget will take literally 30 years. Three: Donald Trump's plans for steep tax cuts paired with modest spending cuts will make the problem vastly worse. Until we begin to reckon with those three facts, any effort to cut the budget is so fundamentally unserious as to amount to a hoax. Given the immensity of the task, focusing on comparative trivialities like 'waste,' bureaucracy, and foreign aid ends up obfuscating the problem more than remediating it. Elon Musk is a newbie to government, but I'll pay him the compliment of assuming that he's studied the federal ledger in enough detail already to have grasped the truth of Riedl's points. If so, he must know that DOGE's work is futile—as a fiscal project, except on a very modest scale. Trying to put a meaningful dent in overspending by gutting outfits like USAID is like trying to pay off one's student loans by scaling back on lattes at Starbucks. The math won't math. But DOGE isn't a fiscal project. It's an ideological project. And from that standpoint, it's been pretty successful. Let's talk about Politico Pro. Politico is a well-known, influential news site that covers politics. I cite it in this column all the time. As a blue-chip member of the 'mainstream media,' it routinely displays a not-so-veiled disdain for the Trumpist project and an indispensable supply of information on what's happening behind closed doors in Washington. With MAGA now in control of the government, populist Republicans despise it for both reasons. Politico Pro, meanwhile, is an arm of Politico designed for professionals whose jobs require access to in-depth, real-time intelligence on policy developments. A lower-tier subscription will get you reporting 'across 22 coverage areas and an advanced technology platform that includes legislative and regulatory tracking tools, government directories, transcripts, outreach trackers and more.' The next tier up will get you 'a library of analyses and infographics outlining key policy and legislative issues as they develop.' Politico is a general-interest publication that's free to read. Politico Pro is a tool for motivated wonks that costs thousands of dollars per year for a subscription, the public policy equivalent of Bloomberg Terminal. Members of Congress, federal agency employees various and sundry, lobbyists, and corporations all might plausibly find use in it. On Wednesday, MAGA influencers on Elon Musk's social media platform began implying that Politico had received $8 million—$8 million!—in USAID funds over the last 12 months. Musk himself picked up the allegation and touted it as evidence of why DOGE's work is necessary. Within hours, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt informed the press that such lavish government 'subsidies' to Politico would not continue. The normally sluggish federal bureaucracy can really move when it wants to. Superficially, the news was a mini-scandal about fiscal irresponsibility. Eight million dollars is a lot of money for one agency to pay for reporting on policy. You can agree with Riedl that the feds should get their priorities straight on spending while also thinking USAID shouldn't be burning through seven figures in taxpayer cash to read Politico. But wastefulness wasn't why populists objected to the expenditure. 'This is the biggest scandal in news media history,' MAGA propagandist Benny Johnson huffed, noting that Politico just so happened to miss payroll right after DOGE functionally shut down USAID. Correlation implies causation: USAID must have been funneling our hard-earned tax dollars to Politico to keep it afloat, presumably in exchange for flattering coverage of left-wing causes like foreign aid. Then, when DOGE turned off the tap, Politico was suddenly left high and dry. It wasn't a fiscal scandal, it was a conspiracy. No wonder the so-called MSM is reliably biased toward the left: The left has been secretly bankrolling it—with your money. Word that covert collusion among the right's enemies had been exposed soon reached Congress, with Rep. Lauren Boebert mentioning it at a committee hearing. On Thursday morning, the president got wind of it and began president-ing all over the place. 'LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN [sic] AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS,' he wrote. 'THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL.' Soon other eyebrow-raising federal expenditures began circulating online. Tens of millions of dollars paid by the government to the New York Times? Taxpayer money landing in the lap of Bulwark co-founder and Never Trumper extraordinaire Bill Kristol? Another USAID grant made to an outfit headed by … Jeffrey Epstein? Here, just a few weeks into Trump's presidency, was vindication for those who insisted contra Riedl that DOGE's work was vital. And it is vital, sincerely—as long as you understand that it isn't a fiscal project. It's an ideological project. USAID didn't fund Politico to the tune of $8 million. Per the Washington Post, it paid for Politico subscriptions, and over the span of two fiscal years, it spent $44,000. That was far less than Donald Trump's party spent on it: 'In total, 38 Republicans in the House spent over $300,000 on Politico subscriptions in the first nine months of 2024, and committees led by Republicans expensed almost $500,000 of Politico subscriptions in the same time period.' As recently as this week, a White House department bought access to Politico Pro for 15 users. Among those many GOP outlays to the publication was a $7,150 expenditure from the office of—ta da—Lauren Boebert. I can understand why she and other Republicans might want to trade money (admittedly, a lot of money!) for the service Politico is providing, a thing we typically describe as a 'transaction.' What I can't understand is why, in Karoline Leavitt's words, she would want to 'subsidize' it. Maybe she'll explain. Also: The New York Times didn't receive tens of millions from the feds (although it did receive some money for subscriptions). Entities with 'New York' in their title did. Bill Kristol didn't get a fat envelope from the Biden administration. A pro-democracy group on whose board Kristol sits got a grant from a fund that got a grant from a foundation that got a grant from USAID. And Jeffrey Epstein … well, actually, Jeffrey Epstein did receive money from USAID. But not that Jeffrey Epstein. A thoughtful Riedl-ian response to all this would be to note, as reporter Lee Fang did, that there really is plenty of waste and dubious ideological nonsense in the federal budget for DOGE to dig into, including at USAID. Just a few months ago, Fang pointed out, the Wall Street Journal flagged $50 billion in apparent fraud in the Medicare Advantage program alone. If you're serious about trimming the fat from the federal budget, logically you should focus on the most obviously blubbery parts. If instead you're focused on penny-ante Politico, what you're actually doing is exploiting a universally appealing aspiration like 'fiscal responsibility' as a pretext to justify carrying out ideological purges of your cultural enemies. Elon and his populist admirers don't care about balancing the budget; it's a mathematical impossibility absent cuts to entitlements, as I've said, and it's out of sync with big-government nationalist priorities. What they care about is demagoging and ultimately defunding any entity that might impede the postliberal cultural agenda. That's the only way to explain the outsized smear campaign over USAID payments specifically that's dominated MAGA social media this week, ringled by Musk. USAID is a scapegoat for America-First-ers who resent foreign aid in principle and are therefore heavily invested in justifying DOGE's otherwise baffling 'fiscal' decision to make the agency a prime target. The result, as detailed by Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, has been an outburst of lies and false allegations towards recipients of agency money that's extreme even by populist standards. The goal isn't to show that USAID has spent cash 'wastefully,' it's to delegitimize all of the modern right's cultural opponents—the press, Hollywood, Never Trump, anyone who might oppose Trump, really—by accusing them of being on the take from a progressive sugar daddy that's using taxpayer money as its sugar jar. At one point, President Elon even resorted to promoting Russian propaganda about the agency supposedly having paid for celebrities to visit Ukraine. This is the same guy whose toadies are right now busily rooting around in numerous federal storehouses of sensitive information, doing God knows what, seemingly without supervision by the president or by Congress. When New Right Jacobin Christopher Rufo tweets a photo of the Department of Education with the caption, 'I'm going in,' it's not the prospect of uncovering wasteful spending in the agency's books that thrills Trumpists. It's the idea that the inner sanctum of a leftist indoctrination machine has been penetrated by a well-known culture warrior. Conspiracies will be unearthed. The machine will be sabotaged, or commandeered. It's 'the Twitter files' all over again, basically, this time with the federal government as the target. And so DOGE as a vehicle for fiscal sanity is, plain and simple, a hoax. If you're taking it at face value because you're a well-meaning conservative who understandably likes the idea of culling unnecessary spending, I am begging you once again not to miss the forest for the trees. Having said all that, though: It is smart politics in a reptilian way. A few days ago, Politico asked former Obama adviser David Axelrod what he thought of congressional Democrats trying to rally support for USAID against Musk's demolition effort. He wasn't a fan. 'My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID,' he said, 'but my head tells me: 'Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight.' When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.' It's true. Ask Americans if the government spends too much money in general and they overwhelmingly say yes. Identify specific forms of spending, though—the military, Medicare, education, etc—and they reliably say that the feds spend too little. The great exception, per the Associated Press, is foreign aid: In 2023, 69 percent said we're spending too much on that. The populist jihad against USAID's spending, uninformed as it is in so many particulars, nonetheless has the virtue of aligning Trump and Republicans with that 69 percent. By ignoring Axelrod and choosing to fight on this battlefield, liberals have placed themselves on the other side—which, thanks to the Politico hysteria, primes them to have to argue that spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on media 'subscriptions' is a good use of the public's money. That's a pretty neat trick by the right, no? Not only have they set themselves up for an easy political win, they've done it by going to war over a form of spending that in 2019 amounted to less than 1 percent of the federal budget. In fact, exaggerating marginal political disputes and then routing the left over them has become something of a MAGA specialty. While the Battle of Politico was playing out online on Wednesday, Trump was busy signing an executive order banning 'male competitive participation in women's sports' where federal money is involved. He did so surrounded by women and little girls, a photo op worth its weight in gold. In December, the president of the NCAA told Congress that, out of more than 500,000 college student-athletes, fewer than 10 are trans. A Pew Research survey published in 2022 found less than 1 percent of American adults identify as transgender. It's marginal stuff, but no matter: Trump's campaign invested heavily in the issue in its advertising against Kamala Harris and I don't blame them. They knew which side of it most voters were on. There's evidence that it paid off for them on Election Day. One reason why the trans issue and the USAID kerfuffle punch above their weight politically is because, although marginal in a strict sense, they're stand-ins for larger and more salient ideological disputes. It's not trans athletes per se that Americans worry about, it's progressives' determination to browbeat others into submitting to whatever novel and dubious cant has most recently captured the left's imagination, even about something as basic as biology. It's not USAID that Americans despise, it's the sense that their political leaders don't much like them and would rather spend money abroad on causes abroad that they favor politically and that advance the public interest here at home only questionably. But it's also true that one of the president's great talents as a demagogue is his ability to hype trivial matters as major scandals and then claim total vindication from them—whether the facts support that or not. On Wednesday, for example, the Federal Communications Commission finally released the unedited footage of CBS News' interview with Kamala Harris from October. Trump and his media toadies have insisted for months that the conversation was bowdlerized by CBS to make Harris sound far more cogent than she actually was, an in-kind contribution to her campaign that boosted her chances of victory. The unedited clip proves that was a lie: 'It is Trump, not CBS, who is perpetrating 'a giant Fake News Scam,'' Reason's Jacob Sullum explained after reviewing the video. So what, though? It long ago became received wisdom in MAGA America that CBS News cooked the tape, repeated and reinforced ad nauseam by the president and numerous propagandists. The truth of the matter will be kept from them by all of their trusted media outlets and Trump will continue to insist that the unedited clip confirmed his suspicions in every aspect—just as he did this morning, in a Truth Social post. The Politico episode will play out the same way: Populists know the mainstream media is evil, they assume that the left is bankrolling it in corrupt ways, and all of their suspicions were neatly confirmed by the smear campaign on Musk's platform on Wednesday. The truth will never reach them. The president and his media phalanx will make sure of it. In the internet age, a lie doesn't travel halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on. It travels all the way around, 20 times over, and is relaxing with a cocktail before the truth so much as stirs. Very soon, it will be unassailable MAGA lore that USAID was funding the late Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilic reign of terror and that Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol were somehow involved in it. Whatever else this might be, it's not about spending, efficiency, or fiscal responsibility. One could easily argue the opposite: As pricey as a Politico Pro subscription is, it may well be cheaper on balance for a congressional office to purchase one than to hire staffers to independently gather the same policy information that the platform provides. And while transparency in government is always welcome, the DOGE emperor's interest in highlighting ticky-tack expenditures like Politico Pro subscriptions instead of meaningful fraud to programs like Medicare arguably does more to impair the public's understanding of our fiscal crisis than to promote it. 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant,' Louis Brandeis famously said. That's what Riedl is offering. What Elon Musk is offering is more like a laser, designed to scald and destroy. Is it any surprise which of them has a wider following among the postliberal right?
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'What's the point of having Congress?': Even some conservatives now say it's a constitutional crisis
While the vast majority of elected Republicans are in lockstep support of Elon Musk's attack on government agencies, some conservative scholars say the South African billionaire is creating a constitutional crisis as he arrogates the authority of Congress to determine federal spending, one that becomes more concerning as long as it continues unchecked by other branches of government. Musk and his cadre of young adult aides, acting without the approval of Congress, have gained access to the U.S. Treasury's payment system and brought operations at the U.S. Agency for International Development to a screeching halt this week. Musk's stated aim is cutting federal spending, which legal experts say can only be done by Congress using its constitutional power of the purse. 'The Trump administration has essentially declared war on Article I of the Constitution,' Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute and former aid to retired Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said in an interview with Salon. Under Article 1, the House of Representatives is charged with passing legislation to raise federal revenues and Congress is changed with passing laws to manage appropriations. "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law," it states. At the constitutional convention, delegate Elbridge Gerry noted that this power was entrusted with the House because its members were "representatives of the people" and "it was a maxim that the people ought to hold the purse-strings," as noted by an official congressional history of the debate. As Riedl explained, under the Constitution the president has the authority only to 'temporarily delay' payments as long as Congress is notified and as long as the president is not materially changing the statutory meaning of the underlying law. In the case of Musk and the extralegal Department of Government Efficiency, Riedl said, the Trump administration is usurping its constitutional authority.. 'Clearly, they're looking to blow up the underlying structure of the programs and they're looking to stop payments indefinitely,' Riedl said. 'This makes it an impoundment.' 'Impoundment' refers to the power of a president to not spend money allocated by Congress and it is regulated not just by the Constitution but by the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which emphasized that a president would need congressional approval to legally impound funds. The one-time and likely future head of Trump's Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, has been a longtime critic of the existing law restricting the power of impoundment and has repeatedly stated, as has Trump, that the legislation banning is unconstitutional. In Riedl's opinion, the current strategy by Musk and Trump is designed to get the issue before the Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. The issue with the Trump and Vought view of impoundment, per Riedl, is that it would cede even more power from Congress while even further empowering the president — and empowering a president who does not have to face the voters again at that. 'The constitution put Congress in Article 1 because Congress is designed to be the primary branch. It's the closest to the people. Its elections are the most often, and it ensures that no single person will have the power of the purse,' Riedl said. 'If Congress isn't going to have the power of the purse — they've already surrendered the power of tariffs and declaring war — what's the point of having Congress?' Riedl isn't the only conservative raising alarms. Alan Cole, a senior economist at another conservative think tank, the Tax Foundation, expressed concern over Musk's maneuvering in a social media post earlier this week, saying that 'I don't mind cutting USAID significantly' but that 'the process for it is a genuine constitutional crisis." He added that those supportive of cuts should pass a law if they want to do so. Even in the opinion columns of the Wall Street Journal, a typically Trump-friendly environment, critics are pointing out that Trump doesn't have the authority to unilaterally shutter USAID without an act of Congress. 'Impoundment has become popular in Republican circles because they have not been able to successfully pass their ideas democratically,' Riedl said. 'What they can't do democratically they are now trying to do via illegal executive fiat and do an end run around Congress.' Philip Wallach, a senior fellow focusing on Congress and the separation of powers at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told Salon that he is also concerned about impoundment. "It really doesn't make sense structurally" for the president to have such a radical power, he argued. "As many people have pointed out, how do you negotiate a deal on spending if the president can subsequently renegotiate the terms of the deal, at least in a downward direction?' Wallach asked. 'You just don't get to change the law by one branch's unilateral action.' Wallach also said that the legal footing of DOGE was unclear and that, despite the body being part of the Executive Office of the President, it seemed to be a sort of "floating brand name" for people engaging in "legally questionable" activity. Much of the roughshod and potentially illegal action taken in the name of DOGE, Wallach noted, appears to follow in the mold of a business like SpaceX, where the CEO can essentially act unilaterally. 'What's strange about it is if they want to win on the impoundment stuff you would expect them to be a little more deliberate about it. Right now their approach is more haphazard like spraying buckshot all over the place,' Wallach said. 'It's always seemed to me that Donald Trump cares very little for the constitutional separation of powers and Elon Musk seems to care even less.' Wallach said that it remains to be seen whether Congress will stand up to Trump and reassert its authority over budgetary matters. As it stands, though, Republicans in Congress are running cover for the president and the billionaire who appears to be setting the agenda for him. NOTUS, a nonprofit media outlet, recently reported Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., as saying that Musk is "doing exactly what he should be doing" by "going through every agency and looking at how to make sure the money's spent right.' 'It doesn't look like Congress is doing their job,' Scott said when asked about the issue that this is, constitutionally speaking, a job for elected lawmakers. Another senior Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis, R- N.C., acknowledged that Musk and Trump's actions were unconstitutional but said that 'nobody should bellyache about that.' 'That runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense,' Tillis told NOTUS. But 'it's not uncommon for presidents to flex a little bit on where they can spend and where they can stop spending.'While other Republicans have expressed some concern over Musk's DOGE and Trump's approval of it, it's not clear that any of them are ready to take the sort of action that would be required to put a stop to DOGE's machinations. Richard Painter, an attorney who served as a White House lawyer for former President George W. Bush's administration, told Salon: 'The founders intended for Congress to be the principal branch of government as the representative of the people." What's currently happening with Musk and DOGE is antithetical to that vision, he argued. Painter said that many members of Congress "don't want to say no to it but they wouldn't say yes to it,' in reference to the austere cuts Musk is trying to impose with DOGE. He added that the Republicans supporting Musk in this endeavor are choosing to act in the interest of Trump and their political party, rather than in the interest of Congress as a branch of government. "Members of the president's political party in the House and Senate are going to marginalize themselves if they continue to put up with this. At some point, they're going to have to say 'no' and have an investigation and look into what Musk is doing," Painter said. Painter flagged another looming Constitutional crisis. What happens if the president and the executive branch refuse to obey a court order? Already, the Trump administration's Justice Department has indicated that it doesn't believe it is obligated to follow a court order blocking Trump's federal funding freeze, saying that the order "only challenged the OMB memorandum" and does not bar "the President or his advisors from communicating with federal agencies or the public about the President's priorities regarding federal spending." 'We haven't had a president refuse to obey a Supreme Court order, Painter aid. But if this keeps going on a president is going to say 'What's all this Marbury v. Madison business and judicial review?' At the end of the day, there's only one branch with control of an army and that's the executive branch and the president.'
