Can They Do This?
So: yesterday by means of a memo, the Trump administration stopped huge swaths of the government from spending money. Not Social Security or Medicare--those checks would still go out. But small businesses will not get their loans. No money will be sent to charity organizations that had won federal grants to provide services from suicide hotlines to disability accommodations to arts education. Laboratories studying cancer cures can't conduct their studies. All foreign aid is shut down, much of it lifesaving. Can the Trump administration do that? Well, in a word, no. Not legally, anyway, and not Constitutionally. The president is not a dictator. A president can't decide they don't like the laws Congress passed or the money Congress decided to allocate and just refuse to let the government spend the money. That's called "impounding" the funds. Our system of government is defined in the Constitution by a balance of powers between Congress, the president, and the c...