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 courts. Congress' job is to pass laws and decide how much money to spend on them. The president as executive's job is to enforce the laws.

Back in the 1970s, President Nixon tried to impound funds on a much smaller scale, refusing to let the money be released that would enable several federal laws he didn't like to function. So Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to reinforce the Constitutional scheme. It is the law of the land! The Act saws that if the president wants not to spend money Congress has allocated for some purpose, the president must make a special request to Congress identifying the specific funds the president doesn't want to spend on a specific purpose and explaining why. (And those can't be funds required to be spent by a statute.) Congress then has 45 days to decide whether to agree to rescinding those funds or not.

Did President Trump go to Congress to make such a request? No! Did he (well, his Project 2025 minions, really) list the specific programs they want to halt, laying out a detailed explanation of why they believed this was necessary, and why spending the money was not required by statute? No! Instead, the impoundment memo basically says, "We're shutting everything down until every single government entity lists every single thing it spends money on, and proves it has nothing to do with "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies." What that means, who knows. Any grant that mentions people other that cis straight white men is banned? No "green new deal" law ever passed, so. . . anything that mentions the climate? It's ridiculous.

The Trump administration is acting as if it can ignore the separation of powers and the duties of Congress in the Constitution. It is acting as if Trump is a king, and Congress just a council of advisors he can ignore at will. It is acting as if the administration is free to ignore any federal laws it dislikes, including the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

Personally, I really don't think even this Supreme Court that Trump packed with his sycophants will go for that. Unless they really are ready to declare Trump emperor. But Trump's Project 2025 gang did it anyway, daring people to stop them.

My suspicion is this: this memo has laid out a spending freeze that cannot fly. But the real goal is to make a note of every government agency employee who calls this out as illicit, or says trying to ensure people are all treated fairly isn't "Marxist," or cries out about the importance of some charity that, in its fight against youth suicide, tells trans youth they are loved and should live. Then the administration will purge all those agency heads, and seek to have all the rank-and-file people who squawked declared at-will employees and fired without cause.

Meanwhile, there's chaos, anxiety, and upset, which enthralls the bully sector of MAGA that loves to kick people in the teeth and see them cry, hoping those tears can fill the endless black hole of their insecurities.

But at least we can answer the question posed: can they do this? They are certainly acting as if they can, but no--not if the Constitution is still the law of the land.