“The Constitution’s text is clear that Congress must authorize appropriations and the president must “take Care” that those laws are “faithfully executed.” There is no basis in constitutional text or history for the president to claim open-ended power to impound funds in the manner of the OMB memo. In 1975, the Supreme Court rejected former President Richard Nixon’s claim to be able to spend less than Congress had appropriated. That ruling would have had to come out the other way if the president had a constitutional power to impound. (Perhaps aware of this reality, OMB issued a later memo claiming the freeze was not, in fact, an “impoundment.” But this is just a semantic sleight of hand: For entities that need federal funds this or next week in particular, there is no meaningful difference.)”
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“If anything, the Supreme Court has tightened the constitutional leash on such unilateral claims of executive authority untethered from a statutory anchor. With Justice Neil Gorsuch leading the charge, it has stressed instead the need for clear authority from Congress for the exercise of any delegated power, including the power to write regulations. The OMB memo makes a mockery of those decisions by allowing the president to do with money what now isn’t allowed with regulations.
It is true that there is a scattering of past instances of impoundment. But these isolated cases largely concern foreign affairs and national security matters. In 1803, for example, Thomas Jefferson declined to spend funds for 15 gunboats for fear that they would upend secret talks with a foreign sovereign, Napoleonic France. Whatever unilateral presidential authority exists over foreign affairs cannot constitutionally be spread with reckless abandon to cover any or all domestic spending.
Past presidents have also confronted conflicts between a legislative command and Congress’ failure to appropriate funds to execute that command. There, presidents are forced to make a choice between dueling statutory orders. Courts rarely address these conflicts. But it is striking to note that in a 2012 case involving competing mandates, the Supreme Court rejected the executive’s claim to be able to withhold promised funds.”
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“The impoundment power Trump’s White House asserts would drive a stake through Congress’ constitutional authority.
Exactly like the line-item veto invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1998, the claimed impoundment power is de facto power to selectively edit duly enacted laws. This claimed nonenforcement should elicit whiplash among conservatives. After all, it was red states such as Texas, aided by Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller, that once excoriated the Biden administration for negating federal laws on immigration via nonenforcement. (The Biden administration, however, could point to statutory conflicts that don’t exist in this case.)”
“Trump allies are purging the Justice Department and FBI of perceived enemies. Elon Musk, empowered by Trump, has deployed a band of loyalists to take over the federal spending apparatus managed by the U.S. Treasury. Trump’s temporary pick to lead federal prosecutions in Washington says anyone who resists Musk’s efforts could be breaking “numerous laws.”
The White House is attempting to freeze virtually all federal grants, which nonprofits say is already wreaking havoc on programs for vulnerable Americans. With almost no notice, the administration has dismantled the agency responsible for international aid and offered millions of federal employees a buyout with questionable legal authority. Trump fired many of the internal watchdogs — inspectors general — who would review these decisions.”
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“Many of Washington’s legal veterans say they’re most alarmed and perplexed by Musk and his amorphous role in efforts to make massive, abrupt and ill-explained changes to the operations of the federal government. He routinely uses his social media platform, X, to characterize some government-funded programs as “criminal” and relished, for example, putting USAID — the agency responsible for administering international aid programs — through a “wood chipper.” Those claims of illegality have been coupled with a chorus of Trump’s MAGA allies characterizing the agency as a hotbed of progressive causes, suggesting the agency drew Trump allies’ ire for political reasons.
Musk has sent a team of allies to take control of computer systems at Treasury and in the Office of Personnel Management, which are responsible for delivering appropriated funds and overseeing the entire federal workforce. It’s unclear what responsibilities they have. Amid reports some of those incursions have been met with pushback, Washington, D.C.’s interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin — a conservative culture warrior who was a prominent conspiracy theorist about the Jan.6 attack — offered to use his office to protect Musk’s efforts.”
“the Department of Justice moved to fire several senior FBI executives — including the head of the Washington field office. Additionally, DOJ is demanding a list of FBI personnel who investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”
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“I asked two scholars of FBI history if there was any precedent for this. Both said no. Agents can be fired for corruption or incompetence after a review, but a mass firing for participating in an investigation is unheard of, they said.”
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“The firing of top officials could make the FBI less effective in critical areas such as counterterrorism. And mass firings of FBI staff involved in the January 6 investigation would serve as a warning to bureau employees about what happens if they investigate Trump’s political allies, corroding the independence the agency depends on to enforce federal law.”
Kash Patel isn’t qualified to be Director of the FBI, but he is a Trump loyalist. Trump already fired one Director for the purpose of protecting himself and his allies from a legitimate investigation. Will Patel be focused on good police work, or abusing the powers of the FBI to serve Trump?
When it comes to the Jan 6 rioters there’s an emphasis on what they did to police offers. That matters, but the most important part about the incident wasn’t the attack on the police, but the attack on United States democracy. The rioters attacked the legislature of the United States in their seat of power, and some did so with the intent of, at least temporarily, ending U.S. democracy by keeping a president who lost an election in power.
“A Republican judge has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong.”
““No. 1, he had the legal authority to do it,” Graham pointed out. “But I fear that you will get more violence. Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer, violently, I think, was a mistake because it seems to suggest that’s an OK thing to do.” Graham made similar comments to CNN’s Dana Bash, saying the pardons “sent the wrong signal.”
Members of Trump’s loyal base flipped out over Graham’s mild chiding of the returned POTUS. They slammed the senator as a “snake” and a “RINO,” or Republican In Name Only.”
“”If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” J.D. Vance, now the vice president, said last week. But that “obvious” caveat was notably missing from the indiscriminate pardons Trump actually issued, which he claimed were necessary to remedy “a grave national injustice” and start “a process of national reconciliation.”
Such a reconciliation is impossible when the president is willing to excuse political violence as long as it is perpetrated by his supporters.”
“Just over a week ago, soon-to-be-Vice President JD Vance opined that nonviolent trespassers prosecuted for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, should be pardoned — but that day’s violent rioters “obviously” should not be.
Trump had other ideas when he issued his sweeping clemency for those he called the “J6 hostages.” He did separate out 14 members of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy, commuting their sentences instead of giving full pardons. But “all other individuals convicted” of offenses related to the Capitol chaos that day received full unconditional pardons — including those who assaulted police officers, and including the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio.
Trump, it has always been clear, was “delighted” by the storming of the Capitol on January 6; he doesn’t care that his supporters assaulted police, terrorized members of Congress, and threatened to hang his own vice president. What mattered to him was that they were his supporters. So he handed them a get-out-of-jail-free card, even to those who violently tried to overthrow democracy.”
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Trump’s Day 1 executive orders were most numerous and detailed on the topic of immigration. The president revived previous hard-line administration policies, such as a refugee admissions freeze, deportation orders, and border wall construction. He also rolled back some Biden policies intended to let more migrants come in legally if they followed an orderly process, ending Biden’s “parole” program and shutting down an app created for migrants to schedule appointments to make asylum requests.
But on some fronts, Trump’s orders already went much further than he did in his first term and showed a newly emboldened willingness to defy legal caution. For instance:
He ordered that the US military would now be responsible for the “mission” of closing the border.
He used a public health emergency rationale to shut down the asylum system even though there’s no public health crisis at the moment.
He ordered that federal prosecutors recommend the death penalty for any unauthorized immigrant convicted of a capital crime.
He fired several top officials in the US immigration court system, including the system’s acting head.
And he declared that despite what the Constitution says, birthright citizenship would no longer apply to children born in the US to unauthorized immigrants or visa-holders (unless one parent was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident).”
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“Though Trump fired some federal employees Monday, the first day did not seem to bring a mass firing of federal bureaucrats, but the groundwork was laid for something like that to happen in the future.
First off, Trump restored what was previously known as his “Schedule F” executive order, issued in late 2020 shortly before he left office (it was never really implemented and Biden soon revoked it). The idea behind Schedule F — now rebranded as “Schedule Policy/Career” — is to reclassify various important civil servant jobs as exempt from civil service hiring rules and protections, making it easier for those workers to be fired.
Secondly, Trump took aim at part of the federal workforce known as the Senior Executive Service (SES). These are, basically, the top jobs at agencies in the civil service, which liaise with the political appointees to run things. Trump’s order demanded plans from his agencies for making SES more “accountable” (easier to fire). His order also said hiring for SES jobs would now be done by panels composed mostly of political appointees, rather than civil servants as is currently the case.
Third, the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo letting agencies hire unlimited “Schedule C” appointees — another class of political appointees that don’t go through the civil service hiring process. And fourth, another order instructed Trump appointees to come up with plans for reforming the civil service hiring process itself.
Altogether, this shows an intense focus from Trump’s people on wresting agency authority away from civil servants and toward greater numbers of political appointees — and though mass firings haven’t happened yet, it may be only a matter of time.”
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“A Trump order Monday made the unexpected announcement that, in fact, an existing part of the executive branch — the US Digital Service, set up during the Obama administration to modernize government IT — would become the US DOGE Service.
Now, this executive order laid out a surprisingly limited mission of “modernizing federal technology and software,” rather than DOGE’s previously announced remit of overhauling government spending, regulations, and personnel. Liberals on social media crowed at this apparent demotion for Musk.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Reports on Musk’s planning, and public statements from people in contact with his team, suggest they are planning to go very big indeed, in ways that haven’t yet been revealed. With a new report that Musk is likely to get a West Wing office, it’s hard to believe he’s scaled back his grand ambitions.”