[President Donald Trump’s dramatic pause of federal grants and loans is queuing up a Supreme Court showdown over the Constitution that will test the court’s recently muscular commitment to curb executive power.
Although the 6-3 conservative court has often sided with Trump, most notably granting him sweeping immunity from prosecution in July, the justices have also been engaged in a yearslong project of limiting the president’s ability to exercise powers usually wielded by Congress. Former President Joe Biden was often on the losing end of those fights and now the question is whether the trend will continue under Trump.
An internal White House memo circulated Monday ordered federal agencies to “temporarily pause” federal grants and loans beginning Tuesday evening, freezing potentially trillions of dollars and affecting millions of Americans. A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday temporarily blocked the administration’s plans to freeze funding for “open awards” already granted by the federal government.
“There’s every reason to think that, unless this memo is quickly rescinded, the litigation it is going to provoke will get to the Supreme Court in one big hurry,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Just like birthright citizenship, another blockbuster test of conventional legal wisdom that’s now on a fast track for Supreme Court review, the Trump administration appears eager to have that fight in front of the nation’s highest court.
Several nonprofit groups, including the National Council of Nonprofits, also filed suit in federal court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. The pause in funding, the groups said, “will have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of grant recipients who depend on the inflow of grant money to fulfill their missions, pay their employees, pay their rent – and, indeed, improve the day-to-day lives of the many people they work so hard to serve.”
Incoming Trump administration officials believe the nation’s history with executive spending power is on their side. They also believe that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which lays out strict rules for how a president can pause spending, is unconstitutional. That law effectively requires presidents to seek congressional approval before freezing funds that lawmakers have approved.
The Trump administration’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, recently told a Senate committee that the time before the 1974 law was enacted was marked by presidents having the ability to spend less than an appropriation, if they could do it for less, and that this law has contributed to waste, fraud, and abuse.
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