Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Why Trump’s funding freeze is deepening fears that he seeks unlimited power

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/29/politics/donald-trump-funding-freeze-analysis/index.html

US District Judge Loren L. AliKhan summed up a surreal and baffling day after pressing a Justice Department attorney, saying: “The government doesn’t know the full scope of the programs that are going to be subject to the pause.”

In seeking to freeze loans and grants and align them with his priorities laid out in a blizzard of executive actions, Trump was seeking to redirect or halt funding already appropriated by Congress.

“It is a direct challenge against Congress and its ability to be able to approve and authorize its expenditure of money,” Kettl said.

But presidents and their advisers are not kings and don’t get to decide what is constitutional. If they did, the system of US democratic governance would collapse.

“What democracy requires isn’t that as soon as the president comes into power, they could wipe away everything that came before,” said Corey Brettschneider, author of “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens who Fought to Defend it.”

“The idea of a democracy is that when laws are passed, take the 1964 Civil Rights Act or environmental protection, that those laws bind not just citizens, but bind even the president,” said Brettschneider, a constitutional law and politics professor at Brown University.

4 comments :

  1. When Justin Trudeau came to power in Canada in 2015, one of the first things he did was cancel dozens of laws passed by the previous Conservative government because he considered them "unCanadian." But that was okay with people because, you know, liberals.
    Obama frequently did end-runs around Congress, especially with Obamacare and the Capitulate to Iran deal but no liberals cried because it was something they wanted to happen.
    Once again, someone you don't like does something that others before him did and suddenly it's a crime.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ironhead is an idiotJanuary 30, 2025 at 4:33 AM

      Why can't you ever answer the question rather than just claim hypocrisy? Is it or is it not legal what he is doing? Just answer rather than ducking the question. Be honest. For once.

      Delete
    2. Wow! Disagreeing is not illegal but the way Trump does things he doesn't care about law, constitution or honesty or even commonsense. He has immunity against being accountable!

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    3. The answer to the question is: both sides skirt around the laws and do things that are technically illegal but it seems only one side gets criticized when they do.

      Delete

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