Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump’s Day One blitz of executive actions, Democrats on Capitol Hill mobilized Tuesday to fight his move to freeze a broad range of federal cash.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and other top House Democrats held a private call on Tuesday with more than 100 people, including leaders of outside groups, to discuss government funding strategy and how to stop Trump from violating so-called impoundment law by usurping Congress’ “power of the purse,” according to three people familiar with the call.
People on the call included advocates for a federal program granting food assistance to pregnant women and babies and the Head Start early education program.
It’s Democratic leadership’s first steps in coordinating a united front against what they see as the Trump administration’s violation of impoundment law, which is meant to block presidents from withholding money Congress has previously passed through the Congressional appropriations process.
Congressional Democrats are still trying to figure out exactly what funding Trump intends to freeze after the president’s barrage of executive orders Monday night that would cut off funding Congress previously appropriated. Those orders call broadly for federal agencies to pause foreign assistance to Ukraine and other countries, as well as halt money already contracted under Democrats’ signature climate and spending law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
Whether Trump’s executive orders hold up in court will be a major test of any president’s power to unilaterally withhold funding Congress has cleared — specifically whether such an action undermines lawmakers’ “Article I” authority under the Constitution to control the government purse strings.
Once it is clear what accounts Trump is targeting through these executive orders, Democrats can determine who is being “harmed” and has legal standing to challenge the president’s orders in court.
“There are a whole array of political countermeasures that one could undertake in terms of having standing to sue, to vindicate the will of Congress,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the former chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a brief interview on Tuesday.
Besides a state or an organization representing people affected, a committee chair or party leader could potentially be “suitably implicated” to challenge Trump’s orders in court, said Whitehouse, who is also a former attorney general of Rhode Island and is also tracking the impoundment issue.
Democrats are planning other strategies to counter Trump’s orders to freeze funding, too, from a messaging standpoint, including by highlighting the ways Americans are hurt by the president’s moves.
“The President spent his first day in office stealing from American taxpayers,” the House’s top Democratic appropriator, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, said in a statement Tuesday night. “In the coming weeks, I will be focused on sharing with the American people the direct consequences of undercutting these investments.”
Democrats also plan to push for a federal probe into the legality of Trump’s moves to freeze funding. During Trump’s first presidency, the Government Accountability Office concluded on multiple occasions that the administration violated the law by withholding Ukraine aid and other funding.
Russ Vought, who was in charge of freezing that funding during Trump’s first presidency in his capacity as the White House budget director, is now seeking confirmation to a second stint leading the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought already told senators during his first confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Trump believes it is unconstitutional for the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to require the executive branch to spend money as Congress prescribes.
As Vought prepares to testify on Wednesday before the Senate Budget Committee in his second confirmation hearing necessary to secure the OMB job, Democratic senators are ready to question the nominee specifically about the legality of Trump’s new executive orders.
