“The new administration’s most provocative move came this week, as it announced it would temporarily halt federal payments. The technical-sounding directive had enormous immediate impact potentially pulling trillions of dollars from police departments, domestic violence shelters, nutrition services and disaster relief programs that rely on federal grants.”
“Though the Republican administration denied Medicaid was affected, it acknowledged the online portal allowing states to file for reimbursement from the program was shut down for part of Tuesday in what it insisted was an error.”
“Legal experts noted the president is explicitly forbidden from cutting off spending for programs that Congress has approved. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate money and requires the executive to pay it out. A 50-year-old law known as the Impoundment Control Act makes that explicit by prohibiting the president from halting payments on grants or other programs approved by Congress.”
“The proposed halt on grants comes after Trump, who during the campaign pledged to be “a dictator on day one,” has taken a number of provocative moves to challenge legal constraints on his power. He fired the inspectors general of his Cabinet agencies without giving Congress the warning required by law, declared that there is an immigrant “invasion” despite low numbers of border crossings, is requiring loyalty pledges from new hires, challenged the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and is moving career staff out of key positions at the Department of Justice to ensure his loyalists control investigations and prosecutions.”
apnews.com
Comedy here is that the one entity that Trump is shifting on is his own GOP Congress, in effect, making them irrelevant, and all these supposed lovers of the Constitution can’t kiss his ass fast enough to help him
And the right said the Democrats were grandstanding when they portrayed Trump as a threat to out democracy
“Though the Republican administration denied Medicaid was affected, it acknowledged the online portal allowing states to file for reimbursement from the program was shut down for part of Tuesday in what it insisted was an error.”
“Legal experts noted the president is explicitly forbidden from cutting off spending for programs that Congress has approved. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to appropriate money and requires the executive to pay it out. A 50-year-old law known as the Impoundment Control Act makes that explicit by prohibiting the president from halting payments on grants or other programs approved by Congress.”
“The proposed halt on grants comes after Trump, who during the campaign pledged to be “a dictator on day one,” has taken a number of provocative moves to challenge legal constraints on his power. He fired the inspectors general of his Cabinet agencies without giving Congress the warning required by law, declared that there is an immigrant “invasion” despite low numbers of border crossings, is requiring loyalty pledges from new hires, challenged the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and is moving career staff out of key positions at the Department of Justice to ensure his loyalists control investigations and prosecutions.”
Trump makes moves to expand his power, sparking chaos and a possible constitutional crisis
Donald Trump's effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants is the most provocative of his many attempts to expand his power in the first days of his presidency.
apnews.com
Comedy here is that the one entity that Trump is shifting on is his own GOP Congress, in effect, making them irrelevant, and all these supposed lovers of the Constitution can’t kiss his ass fast enough to help him
And the right said the Democrats were grandstanding when they portrayed Trump as a threat to out democracy
