Latest news with #TPMCafe
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Has Ordered Safeguards Stripped From Procurement As Pentagon Prepares To Spend $1 Trillion
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM's home for opinion and news analysis. The Trump White House this month announced two new executive orders radically changing procurement procedures, especially defense procurement procedures, in ways that will unleash waste, fraud and abuse. These orders — which largely flew under the radar — will effectively wipe out spending safeguards with potential effects that are hard to overstate considering that President Trump announced he will expand the defense budget to a breathtaking $1 trillion, and that the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is no counterweight to politically driven spending. To summarize, the new executive orders purport not merely to change or improve regulations, but to simply eliminate most of the existing procurement rules developed through years of oversight processes and outside scrutiny. They effectively undo procurement safeguards put in place after tremendous waste was exposed during the Cold War. In their place, the executive orders would elevate certain procedures that allow the government to spend unlimited sums without competition — the so-called 'other transactions' process that need not be competed and that circumvents safeguards put in place to protect tax dollars. The Executive Orders say there should be a 'first preference' for other transactions processes, which is like having a 'first preference' for bringing a pistol with no safety to compete in a boxing match. These revisions will also likely interfere with the system relied upon by competitors challenging improper awards, the 'bid protest' system, which has long been a critical check on decisions made based on suspicious preferences rather than best value to the taxpayer. The orders proclaim that their goal is to 'centralize decision-making,' which apparently means to move decisions on choosing weapon systems away from specialized, analytical government technical personnel steeped in the objective review of weapons choices so as to allow the decisions to be made by politically appointed officials attuned to politically favored contractors. The number one safeguard being sacrificed is competition. Nothing suppresses waste, fraud and abuse as much as making defense contractors compete with one another, so that the award only goes to the bidder who provides reasonable pricing and 'best value,' which encompasses the virtues sought in any procurement system. To take a recent example, one occasion when the government felt it had to veer from competition was during the intensification of the Iraq War; the war started and ramped up so suddenly, the Bush administration deemed there to be insufficient time to properly compete contract requirements. I served as a commissioner on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which reported on the landmark instances of waste. A single such example was the tens of billions of dollars that were spent on a questionable logistics contract, which was awarded competitively once — just once — for ten years before any war, and then had no competition — none — after the wars had begun. Here we go again. When the administration eliminates the Federal Acquisition Regulation at full length, it will be wiping out Titles 5 and 6 on competition. To be sure, the Trump administration cannot, without Congress, repeal the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, but the act allows exceptions — like the one used in the Iraq logistics contract of 'urgency' — and the executive orders express another 'first preference' for exceptions open to abuse, like items mischaracterized as 'commercial.' The number two safeguard being sacrificed is fair and equal evaluation based on stated solicitation factors. That is the process by which companies submit bids responsive to Pentagon proposals to buy weapons systems. Technical government personnel delve into the details of each proposal and evaluate just how good it is and how likely it is to be successful in its promises. The procurement regulations serve as the bible for that process. But, the executive orders say they will wipe out the entirety of those regulations, other than those statutorily required or otherwise spoken of vaguely as perhaps to be saved. What will fill the vacuum? Again, 'centralizing' the decision means it will be made by a few politically chosen individuals. The significant reform efforts of the past to keep influence-peddling and favoritism at bay will simply disappear overnight. Particular types of accounting abuses may also flourish with the end of the regulations. Take one example. Existing regulations prevent a contractor on a cost reimbursable contract from charging the government for 'interest' on borrowed money. In other words, contractors use their own capital to do their work, and they get the costs and profit of the contract as their return. But they do have to bring their own capital to the table. Now, if the regulation on this principle is wiped out, major defense contractors could reserve their own capital to use on other kinds of work, and could make the government foot the bill for interest expenses on the cost-type contracts. This will mean a new and unheard-of charge which will saddle taxpayers with tens of billions of dollars in extra costs per year — maybe more — without the government getting anything new or additional. It's just a transfer of big bucks to giant contractors and financial institutions. Who will benefit from the new system? One group will be those friends and favorites of the administration. Imagine Elon Musk getting no-bid contracts with no competition and no evaluation. Or, Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire sponsor of Vice President J.D. Vance. Or any contractors of the many who invested their political donations in this White House. A second group is made up of the classic big defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin, which had the sense to invest $1 million in the Inauguration slush fund. Such contractors have had to stay on their toes in competitions to make sure their bids provide best value at a reasonable price. And, once a company received a cost contract, the accounting regulations provided a framework for Pentagon contracting personnel to at least try to keep it honest and to avoid the $400 hammer of years past. Remember, this administration started by firing all the inspectors general in the government. The end of the procurement regulations will complete the carnage and eliminate any actual oversight to protect the taxpayers. A third group of likely beneficiaries is made up of the contractors who get close politically to House and Senate Republican members, particularly those on the relevant Armed Services and Appropriations committees. The $1 trillion figure for Trump's defense budget represents an executive total, but the actual amounts for each spending item get determined by the Republican members who have methodically situated themselves at the levers of power, paying off their parties through campaign fundraising. These members have very much not been fighting with President Trump, and have thereby husbanded their political capital to influence where and to which companies the defense spending goes. This is not to say the White House has no influence itself, but everything we have seen suggests a happy collaboration: There will now be more than enough to go around at the defense feast, to which the public will not be invited. Getting those pesky regulations out of the way will make everything so much easier. A certain amount of priority-setting is natural at the start of every administration. But no other administration has started by bulldozing away the rules like this one. The Trump administration appears to be cloaking its maneuvers by starting with things tentatively tried by the Clinton administration's 'Reinventing Government' initiative, but this time on steroids. It is a recipe for corruption and disaster.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Republicans' Sneaky Math Gimmicks Foreshadow Plans To Run Roughshod Over The Senate
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM's home for opinion and news analysis. Senate Republicans have passed a budget resolution that sets in motion their plan for gigantic tax cuts, skewed heavily toward billionaires, and that heralds their intent to pass it by breaking the budget rules. In order to cloak the massive increase in the deficit that would come along with skewed tax cuts, the resolution cheated. The first tranche would extend the temporary 2017 tax cuts, the proudest accomplishment of President Trump's first term, which are set to expire this year, and another tranche would lay the groundwork to grant his wish to make his tax cuts permanent, that is, to make trillions more in skewed tax cuts after 2034. As this plan advances, Senate Republicans are not passively looking the other way and doing nothing as they are with Trump's tariffs. Rather, the Republican Senate is trampling its most basic budget strictures to swell the public debt for many years to come. After the budget resolution passed 51-48 this week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who voted for it, wrote on X that 'there are serious shortcomings within this resolution that gave me considerable pause.' She said these 'include the adoption of a current policy baseline . . . [and] the setting of a path that will result in more than $50 trillion in federal debt within a decade . . . .' That $50 trillion figure put a number on the cost of making the Trump tax cuts permanent. This is only the beginning of the rule-breaking. As this package continues through the rest of the budget process, it may presage Senate Republican willingness to break Senate rules about requirements for 60 votes to pass other legislation too. If Senate Republicans can pass the permanent tax cuts with a slim 50 votes in support, they may assert the power to move other radical MAGA measures on that same bare majority. Here's how they've gone about this so far: In order to get the tax cuts through the Senate in a way that circumvents a Democratic filibuster — so, in a way that requires only a bare, 50-vote majority, not the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster — Republicans are using a process known as 'budget reconciliation.' The Senate Republicans apparently could not face scoring all these trillions in tax cuts as increases in the deficit. So, rather than being transparent, they pulled off the first stage of a two-stage maneuver to first bend and then break the rules. The Senate Budget Committee manufactured a gimmick that apparently eased the consciences of more fiscal-minded senators who might have balked at an initial honest accounting of a deficit of $4 trillion. A budget measures deficits from a 'baseline.' The chair of the committee, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), asserted the power to engage in a 'current policy baseline' for the budget resolution. This mild-sounding trick meant taking the 'current policy' — Trump's temporary 2017 cuts — as the 'baseline.' That sleight of hand would mean that extending the cuts would not be deemed to be cuts which add to the deficit, but just more of the current (albeit temporary) policy, meaning, following the make-believe math, it would not add to the deficit. Initially, it was expected that this trick would come to an early ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough. That could have turned ugly, because if she ruled against it, Senate Republicans would have to vote to overrule her and some would balk at that raw breach of the rules. Instead, the Senate Budget Committee plugged the phony 'current policy' baseline into the budget resolution, and bypassed the parliamentarian, asserting that Graham had, for now, the power to make the determination himself and did not need a ruling from the parliamentarian. So much for that rule, and so much for the integrity of the Congress as an institution. The skewed Budget Resolution then passed the Senate on April 5. The House passed it on April 10. Now, the Senate will then have a period of time to work on reconciliation. Eventually, the Senate may come back to that potentially ugly moment of overruling the parliamentarian. The budget resolution is a short concurrent resolution, not a tax law. It sets the stage and commands that the rest of the process go forward. Then the Senate (and the House) must pass the tax cuts in the form of a law (the 'budget reconciliation law'). That law will come to the Senate floor for a vote. Nothing is certain in advance in the world of Republican congressional budgeting, but one may consider that the Senate parliamentarian may make a ruling about that law. Namely, the parliamentarian will rule whether the permanent Trump tax cuts in it, notwithstanding the claim of 'current policy baselines,' violate a very important budget procedure rule known as the Byrd Rule. (I wrote of the role of the Senate parliamentarian in the Budget Act, notably in the 'Byrd Rule,' in Congressional Practice and Procedure 893 (1989).) That rule dates back to the 1980s. It is meant to preclude using the slim 50 vote path of reconciliation to enact tax cuts outside the ten year period set by the Budget Act as the window for reconciliation action. That precludes tax cuts now for after 2034. If MacDonough were to advise the Chair that the rule is being violated, Majority Leader Thune would then turn to his 53 Republican senators and ask them to vote to overrule her. Will they? Will they overrule her? It is more likely he can assemble the 50 votes he needs at that late point, than if the issue had been put before the Senate in the last few weeks, much earlier in their consideration of the budget resolution. Now, by the point MacDonough weighs in, the 53 Republican senators will have spent months bargaining among themselves over the shape of the tax cuts — and the spending cuts in the same bill. Each and every Republican senator will have been offered an opportunity to weigh in, and to seek to get things the way they want. They will understand how important it is for most of them to use that powerful tool for cheating, namely the current policy baseline. And, of course, they will have come to understand how important it is to Trump to make his tax cuts permanent. Once Trump has succeeded in taking the Republican Senate down the path of overruling the parliamentarian as to the permanent tax cut, he may continue on that path. A slim, 50-vote majority of Republican senators could be used, for instance, to break Democratic filibusters if they were willing to overrule the parliamentarian and allow majority cloture on a particular bill. That is how the Senate chose to break filibusters on judicial nominations. So, after a vote to have 50 votes pass permanent Trump tax cuts, they might go on to give Trump other bills. Who can say at this point which those would be? Permanently eliminating the Department of Education? Attacking birthright citizenship? Both of these are steps that would be much stronger by legislation than by mere executive order, but would face Democratic filibuster. Even without looking that far down the path, the Republican Senate has already gone very far by breaking the bars to let loose the danger of the 'current policy baseline.' It is an understatement to say that we will be paying for it for a very long time.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Rule Of Law Or Rule By Law? SCOTUS Gets Its Chance To Halt Trump's Rampage—Or Greenlight It
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM's home for opinion and news analysis. Four critical cases have reached the Supreme Court via its shadow docket in recent weeks. They touch on everything from birthright citizenship and unconstitutional deportations to funding cuts to programs the administration has labeled as 'DEI' and the firing of federal employees without cause. In each of these cases, the lower courts issued temporary restraining orders (TROs), meaning the government cannot enact its policies until the litigation is resolved; the status quo must remain in place while the courts consider their underlying legal and constitutional arguments. Though the merits of these cases are not yet at issue, in each, if the Roberts Court does not uphold the status quo — maintain birthright citizenship, require due process for deportation proceedings, and prevent unlawful, arbitrary terminations and funding cuts — it could create chaos for the lower courts and for countless Americans fighting to protect their own safety and well-being. In a dark portent of things to come, on April 4 the Court ruled on the first of these, overturning the TRO requiring the government to continue fulfilling DEI-related grants during the active litigation. It was a 5-4 decision, with Roberts joining the liberals. Trump and Musk are already moving faster than the courts can respond to demolish the parts of American society they deem anathema to their agenda. They're declaring immigrants — even those here legally — persona non grata, abducting them on the streets and even transferring them out of the country before their lawyers or the courts can act. A federal judge in Washington declared an effort to prevent the transfer of the U.S. Institute of Peace to the General Services Administration moot because it occurred before the plaintiffs could file a motion to prevent it. If the Roberts Court reverses these TROs and directives, it will give the administration far more room to inflict its desired damage on civil society and government. The outcome of these cases will reveal whether we live in a nation where the Court abides by the rule of law, or whether they will defer to Trump's unconstitutional efforts to rule by law. That is, the Roberts Court could allow Trump to weaponize the law in service of his power grabs, or the Court could uphold the Constitution and rule of law. The first of these four cases deals with birthright citizenship. The government claims it is merely asking the Court to limit multiple nationwide injunctions blocking the Trump administration's executive order that attempts to end birthright citizenship. However, the absence of a nationwide injunction halting this blatantly unconstitutional order form being enforced would mean every noncitizen family welcoming a newborn would have to challenge it themselves and potentially face detention or deportation. What's worse, right-wing groups filing amicus briefs are already asking the Court to ignore the plain text of the 14th Amendment, declare that it has been misinterpreted for 150 years, and rule that birthright citizenship is not enshrined in the Constitution. The second case is being brought by unions attempting to reinstate illegally fired government employees. Here, the Trump administration claims federal employee unions aren't permitted to sue on their members' behalf, and that courts lack jurisdiction to deal with the matter. The government asserts that individual employees must challenge their illegal filings with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) — at the very same time Trump is attempting to dismantle and weaponize this board against workers. This would leave illegally fired employees in a permanent legal limbo. It would also set a precedent for Trump, Musk and their Project 2025 enablers to speed-run the destruction of federal agencies before the courts could even begin to stop the illegal bleeding, causing irreparable damage to programs Americans rely on — like Social Security, food safety inspectors, park rangers, weather scientists, and consumer watchdogs. The third case — the one the court issued an order in on Friday — deals with the funding of our public education system. The Court's right-wing justices, in undoing a TRO, could choose to make it infinitely harder for grant recipients — in this case, teacher training and retention funds — to obtain the money they rely upon, promised by the United States government. This may wellcould create a ripple effect, foisting budget shortfalls on state education systems. It could also set a precedent to make it more difficult for family farmers and small businesses across the country who rely on grants to get the money promised for work they have already done. The last case relates to the anachronistic Alien Enemies Act designed for times of war. Here, the Roberts Court could remove constraints on the Department of Homeland Security's obligation to follow the law. This would allow the agency to unconstitutionally detain and remove people merely accused of being war-time invaders (in this case gang members, not military personnel) — without any of the constitutional protections promised by the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments. If that happens, it won't be long before an innocent American citizen is mistakenly accused and swiftly deported to a notorious El Salvador prison. The administration has ample authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to remove people it deems dangerous. But doing so requires judicial findings and due process — constitutional protections that are proving inconvenient for Trump. We will soon see whether the Roberts Court intends to follow the Constitution or effectively place the powers Trump is asserting above the rule of law. Although the cases' merits are not yet at issue, overturning the TROs in any of these instances would create extra runway for Trump and Musk to weaponize the law against their opponents in the interim. If these rulings fall the wrong way, it will be a dangerous harbinger of what's to come.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Demolishing The Dept. Of Education Dumps Fuel On A Public Ed Crisis Already Underway
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM's home for opinion and news analysis. As far as most American families were concerned, schools' post-pandemic reopening brought an end to an era of uncertainty in public education. In reality, the end of that era was never all that clearly defined. Now, as the Trump administration sweeps into office with reams of radical proposals, a new era of uncertainty for teachers and families has clearly arrived. On Tuesday night, news broke that the U.S. Department of Education would purge nearly half its staff. Earlier, it was widely reported that the administration planned to ultimately go even further, and would imminently publish an executive order to wind down the U.S. Department of Education to the greatest extent possible — while calling on Congress to eliminate it entirely. The order hasn't yet materialized, but, in addition to 1,300 jobs, the administration has already slashed $900 in education research funding, over $600 million in professional development for teachers, and $350 million in grants sustaining centers for studying and sharing best practices in schools. Its next steps aren't clear, but they range from making significant cuts to core federal K–12 funding for high-poverty schools, English learners, and students with disabilities — to zeroing these funds out entirely. These antics couldn't come at a worse time. Schools were entering an era of significant financial pressures before Trump, DOGE, and new Education Secretary Linda McMahon began hurling wrenches into the federal government's gears. Factors ranging from the expiration of the Biden Era's pandemic recovery funds, public dollars increasingly flowing to conservative school voucher programs, falling birth rates, and heightened immigration enforcement mean that public schools' finances are already hurting. Against that backdrop, the administration's threat to evaporate federal education programs has become just the latest, broadest front in a comprehensive attempt to defund public schools. This school year, $190 billion in federal pandemic recovery funds wound down — meaning that many school districts are going to have to make cuts to return to their pre-pandemic budgets. This one-time splash of federal K–12 cash was more than 10 times the size of the federal government's annual budget for supporting schools in low-income communities. That public investment allowed many districts to maintain, expand, and/or enhance their offerings during an uncertain moment in U.S. schools and society. These funds sustained tutoring programs, afterschool programming, new technology, social-emotional learning programs, and much more. Many districts used these dollars to add staff. The coming fiscal year will likely be particularly painful in their communities. As those federal funds neared their expiration date, conservative state policymakers have been seeking ways to shift public education dollars to private schools. States like Georgia and Wyoming have grown their school voucher programs, allowing families to divert public education funding to private schools of their choice. Texas is pushing in the same direction. Meanwhile, other states are experimenting with novel school choice policies like 'education savings accounts' that allow families to use public education dollars for a range of educational expenses, including technology, instruments, and vacations. Similarly, dozens of states offer 'tax-credit scholarship programs' that allow individuals and organizations to garner tax benefits when they donate to non-profits subsidizing private school tuition. While these programs appear to have mixed — at best — results for improving student achievement, they generally result in decreased funds available for public schools. Analysts at the Education Trust argue that Arizona's expanded school choice program dramatically overshot its budget and reduced funding for public schools. The latter is a relatively common problem with these programs, particularly in rural areas where school budgets often cannot sustain the funding cuts that can come with the voucher-fueled reductions in student enrollment. That's a key element often overlooked in school funding arguments: in general, local education budgets are tied to the number of children attending a particular school and/or district. States usually provide K–12 funding on a per-pupil basis, sending more money to larger schools and districts — particularly those enrolling larger numbers of students with special needs, English learners, low-income students, and other so-called 'weighted' student groups. In other words, local K–12 budgets generally go down when local enrollments shrink. In Michigan, for instance, where state per-pupil funding averages nearly $8,800 and local per-pupil funding averages around $5,300, a school's enrollment drop of 23 children represents a future budget reduction of around a third of a million dollars. This spells trouble for schools, because in many communities, there just aren't as many kids as there used to be. U.S. birth rates have dropped for decades, which is producing drops in the number of school-aged children. Naturally, school enrollment is also dipping. The impacts of this longstanding trend were less visible while the aforementioned American Rescue Plan pandemic recovery dollars were still available to float school budgets. But fewer students means less state education money — which will be particularly challenging for schools in communities with dwindling economic opportunities to attract families to come, stay, and raise children. This population swoon isn't unique to the United States — birth rates have been falling across the world, particularly in developed countries. But the U.S. has been uniquely effective at attracting and integrating immigrants, which has helped to sustain school enrollments and fill in labor market gaps. Federal estimates suggest that these new members of the U.S. community are producing trillions in economic growth and federal revenue. Naturally some of that additional revenue will go to public schools so that school-aged children of immigrants — who number around 18 million in the U.S. — can learn, succeed, and grow into their own places in American society. From Kansas to Iowa to Michigan, immigrants and their families have been stanching, or even reversing, demographic decline in rural communities with small and aging populations. Their arrivals are stabilizing school enrollments — and budgets — in those communities. Their families are joining their communities as taxpaying workers and marketplace consumers. The Trump administration's immigration policy changes target that healthy feedback loop in multiple ways. First, many children will leave the country — and their schools — because members of their family are detained as part of the administration's mass deportations efforts. It's difficult to put a precise number on how many students will be affected, but there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented students in U.S. schools and at least six million children living in households with at least one undocumented family member. If even a fraction of those children leave school, that will produce K–12 budget crises in many communities. Second, one of Trump's first acts as president was to revise federal immigration enforcement guidelines to permit armed agents to conduct raids at churches, hospitals, and schools. And indeed, late last month, federal immigration officials arrested a father as he dropped his children off at school, alleging that he was in the country illegally, had prior criminal convictions, and had been previously deported. Third, conservatives in states like Texas and Tennessee are pushing to unwind more than 40 years of legal precedent by charging undocumented immigrant children tuition for attending public schools. In its 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause applies to everyone in the United States, and does not permit discrimination on the basis of national origin. Finally, changes like these have produced a 'chilling effect,' with children of immigrants' attendance dropping in large numbers. In California, where schools' funding is tied to enrolled students' average daily attendance, state lawmakers are sufficiently worried that they're proposing reforms to ensure that local K–12 budgets don't crater. There's never a good time to trim, let alone slash, education budgets. Public investments in children's development and learning are amongst the most important things a humane society can do. But given the present context — expiring pandemic recovery funds, dropping enrollments, conservative lawmakers' investments in private schools, and more — it's time to call the administration's Department of Education-slashing federal efforts what they are: the capstone of a comprehensive effort to defund public schools. In the coming era of tight public school budgets, even relatively small changes to federal education funding would have produced extra heartburn in school districts across the country. But small reductions feel like a baseline minimum right now, so students, families, and educators should expect to feel much more punishing cuts.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court's Final Test Approaches
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM's home for opinion and news analysis. Sooner than we may think, the Supreme Court will have to decide whether it will continue to expand presidential powers beyond anything imagined in the Constitution, or if it will uphold the separation of powers it purportedly reveres. One aspect of Donald Trump's push to stock the federal workforce with loyalists is already before the Court; more broadly, his massive, attempted funding freeze deliberately set the stage for a Supreme Court showdown that could make him — and by proxy Elon Musk — a de facto dictator over the entirety of the federal government without the checks and balances clearly embedded in our Constitution. In his first three weeks in office, Trump attempted to unconstitutionally seize the power of the purse away from Congress by ordering a sudden freeze on federal grants, loans, and other congressionally approved funding. This process, called impoundment, violates appropriations law, authorizations law, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) and the Constitution. The nearly $3 trillion in frozen funds powered everything from veterans' benefits and infrastructure projects to local health care programs, charities serving children and the elderly, and life-saving foreign aid. Even Meals on Wheels was impacted. The freeze struck fear into the hearts of millions of Americans who didn't know where they would get their next paycheck or meal. Though the order was rescinded after a district court judge temporarily stayed the action, the chaos it created was the point. A leaked memo reveals that it was, in fact, the Trump administration's goal to illegally impound funds in order to tee up a question for the Supreme Court to resolve. The administration would challenge the ICA in an effort to have the Court grant the president the power to ignore federal spending laws. In the meantime, D.C. District Court Judge Loren AliKhan has issued an injunction mandating federal funds continue flowing. As evidence, she cited a White House's spokesperson's assertion that the memo recission was a ruse — because the administration had rescinded the memo but not rescinded Trump's executive order, the spokesperson claimed, the freeze would remain in effect. Some federal grant funding does appear to remain frozen in violation of the court order. Musk's DOGE personnel, meanwhile, have now infiltrated agencies across the executive branch, including the Departments of Treasury, Commerce and Veterans Affairs, attempting to purge staff and slash spending line items as part of Trump's push to singlehandedly dismantle government. Effectively, whether through design or chaos, Trump will continue illegally stopping the delivery of statutorily appropriated foreign aid and funding for thousands of projects across the country unless and until the Supreme Court stops him. The question is, will it? The Court has long recognized there are certain areas of strong presidential authority, such as handling foreign affairs. Last term, the Court's right-wing majority expanded those executive powers dramatically, granting the president immunity for criminal acts conducted while in office — an immunity found nowhere in the Constitution. On the other hand, the Supreme Court has long acknowledged that it's Congress, not the President, who holds the power to direct federal funding. When a president 'takes measures incompatible' with the will of Congress — in this case, statutorily sanctioned appropriations — 'his power is at its lowest ebb,' Justice Hugo Black wrote in a 1952 majority opinion. Before the ICA was enacted, a unanimous Supreme Court held that the president did not have any discretion in withholding congressionally appropriated and directed funds. In a 1996 decision holding that a president cannot unilaterally cancel an enacted law — which Justice Thomas joined — Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate opinion in which he mocked the concept of a constitutional power of impoundment. Even Chief Justice John Roberts stated explicitly in a 1985 memo that the 'President has no independent constitutional authority to impound funds.' We'll soon see whether any of our current justices still hold to the same opinions about separation of powers and congressional authority now that the opposing argument is being driven by their close friends. If the Court sides with President Trump in this battle, what other hallowed constitutional rights might they cede to his thirst to power? Will they let him violate our First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech by mandating 'patriotic education' in all schools? Will they slash our Fourth Amendment search and seizure protections by permitting immigration officers to raid churches and schools without warrants as part of a mass deportation scheme? Will they erase our Eighth Amendment protections against 'cruel and unusual punishment' in order to exile Americans to foreign prisons? Will they allow President Trump to deploy the military to stamp out non-violent protests across the nation? Relatedly, right now the Trump administration is seeking an emergency appeal to fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel, the office that handles federal whistleblower claims. In short order, the Court will decide whether Congress can implement protections for independent federal agencies. Whether this Supreme Court lets President Trump impound federal funding to meet his whims may be their final test. Will they uphold our Constitution and condemn this egregious power grab? Or will they crown our first American monarch?
