Trumps illegally orders halt to all federal loan programs
By 
The White House budget office has ordered a pause in grants, loans and other federal financial assistance, according to a memo sent to government agencies on Monday, potentially paralyzing a vast swath of programs and sowing confusion and alarm among the array of groups that depend on them.
The directive threatened to upend funds that course throughout the American economy: Hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to state, local and tribal governments. Disaster relief aid. Education and transportation funding. Loans to small businesses.
But the two-page memo from Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, left the scope of the pause, and much else, unclear.
Among the uncertainties was whether President Trump has the authority to unilaterally halt funds allocated by Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said in a statement that the memo “blatantly disobeys the law.”
This is “unclear” in the sense that an executive order dividing Alabama into three new states or ordering the immediate imprisonment of a political enemy is of uncertain legality.
We’re going to party like it’s 1969:
The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) reasserted Congress’ power of the purse. Specifically, Title X of the Act – “Impoundment Control” – established procedures to prevent the President and other government officials from unilaterally substituting their own funding decisions for those of the Congress. The Act also created the House and Senate Budget Committees and the Congressional Budget Office.
Congress passed the ICA in response to President Nixon’s executive overreach – his Administration refused to release Congressionally appropriated funds for certain programs he opposed. While the U.S. Constitution broadly grants Congress the power of the purse, the President – through the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and executive agencies – is responsible for the actual spending of funds. The ICA created a process the President must follow if he or she seeks to delay or cancel funding that Congress has provided.
An “impoundment” is any action – or inaction – by an officer or employee of the federal government that precludes federal funds from being obligated[1] or spent, either temporarily or permanently.
Several court cases were brought challenging President Nixon’s executive overreach on impoundments. Although decided after the ICA passed, the Supreme Court unanimously held in Train v. City of New York
that even without the ICA, the President does not have unilateral authority to impound funds. Congress has the power of the purse.
The Impoundment Act is really just a statutory restatement of the core holding in Youngstown Sheet and Tube, which itself stands for the previously banal proposition that presidents can’t just pass new legislation without some participation by Congress. Nevertheless, given Richard Nixon’s tyrannical tendencies, congressional action at that time was warranted.
During the new presidency of Stupid Nixon we’re going to need a bigger legal boat.
This is all just straight up all Project 2025 stuff of course — the acting head of OMB is about to be replaced by Russell Vought, who literally wrote the thing — and it’s clear Trump is just going to sign whatever these lunatics keep putting in front of him.
I usually don’t like my contradictions heightened, but at this point I’m hoping that this is swiftly litigated, the SCOTUS votes 7-2 to block the order, and Trump simply refuses to comply, on the basis of whatever Very Serious Legal Theory That We Must Treat With Great Seriosity is cooked up by whatever comes after John Yoo John Eastman farce.
Speaking of Chuck Schumer, what did he have to say 24 hours after our latest national catastrophe?
Welcome home Donnie, welcome home.
. . . Kevin Drum asks if Trump is “losing it,” since California gets all its water from the Sierra Nevada, not up north:
@realDonaldTrump
The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!
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As an LGM commenter pointed out, Trump probably thinks that you have to bring the water to southern California from the north since water flows downhill. I am 71% certain of this, just like I’m 96% certain he thinks Greenland is as big as the continental US because of the Mercator projection.
Poster rm gets credit for the water rolling downhill from the north insight. (The Mercator projection thing was noticed by several people simultaneously, a la Newton and Leibniz).