As Trump pushes limits of power, courts and lawmakers increase pushback

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s push to dramatically shrink the government, led by billionaire Elon Musk, hit some setbacks last week in federal courts and in talks with Republican lawmakers concerned about the legality of funding cuts.

Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, his administration and Musk have axed thousands of federal employees and claim to have sliced $105 billion in federal spending without sharing a budget or financial roadmap to Congress, spurring scores of lawsuits and frustration among lawmakers.

As the Trump administration enters its eighth week, the president and Musk have begun to encounter increased pushback in the courts and in Congress, prompting the president to post on social media that Musk should step back and allow cabinet secretaries to carry out the task of downsizing their departments and agencies. 

But as lawmakers question the administration’s methods in cutting, Trump has yet to send Congress a budget for the next fiscal year or even a roadmap of how much he plans to reduce federal spending and employment.   

“We have kind of these one-off shots. We don’t have a consistent across-the-board picture of what the level of spending should be, of what the level of taxes should be,” said former Senate Republican budget adviser G. William Hoagland, now senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit that works to get policy-makers to work across party lines.

“There is a role for Congress, and this cannot be a one-man show, chainsaw approach to governing,” he added.

Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) and Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) said they are concerned about the president’s apparent overreach by not seeking congressional approval of his funding cuts, but Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) said Congress can ratify the cuts Trump proposes.

Court battles

With Congress left on the sidelines by Trump, most of the policing of the cuts in spending and firings of federal employees have been in the courts.

On Thursday, judges in two separate cases required the release the billions of dollars that Congress had appropriated but the Trump administration unilaterally had frozen, rulings that the administration likely will seek to take to the Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island extended an order to prevent the Trump administration from freezing billions in congressionally approved funds whose pausing in January set off panic among nonprofits and other recipients.

“Here, the executive put itself above Congress,” he wrote in his opinion. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali in Washington, D.C. ruled the State Department and USAID must pay AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Global Health Council and other plaintiffs foreign aid funds owed for completed work.

Government lawyers made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on the case and on Wednesday the justices in a 5-4 split rejected their request that the court uphold that its freeze on $2 billion in funding that already has been spent.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling [Wednesday] was a major setback for the administration’s efforts to keep the foreign assistance freeze in place,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Nicholas Sansone told Newsday.

Both of those cases hinged on the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which Congress enacted after then President Richard Nixon refused to spend the full amount appropriated for the Environmental Protection Agency by the House and Senate.

That law requires presidents to spend exact funds appropriated by Congress, or if they want to spend less to submit what is called a recission resolution to Congress detailing the amount to be withheld and giving legislators 45 working days to approve or reject it.

Trump and a top adviser, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, have been carrying out the deep cuts without the approval of Congress in defiance of that act.

GOP’s concerns

But on Wednesday, Senate Republicans said after a closed-door meeting with Trump and Musk said they would pass a retrospective rescission resolution to cover all the cuts of appropriations passed by Congress — to make it comply with the law.

“I love all the stuff they’re doing, but we got to vote on it,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told reporters after the meeting, adding, “Let’s send it back as a rescission package because then what we have to do is lobby to get to 51 senators or 50 senators to cut the spending.”

After the meeting, Trump said he wanted his Cabinet members to “go first” in firings and in keeping those they deemed effective at their jobs, while warning that if they did not reduce staffing that Musk would step in and do it instead.

LaLota, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a phone interview with Newsday, “I hope that Congress can consider and ratify, ultimately, a lot of these spending cuts the president outlined a couple of nights ago in his address to Congress.”

LaLota added, “I hope that both Republicans and Democrats in the Appropriations Committee can agree that we have to pare back spending in some areas while protecting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other very important programs that law abiding American citizens rely on.”

But Suozzi, speaking about the DOGE spending cuts, told Newsday, “It’s not just the Democrats, even Republicans are saying that what they’ve been doing has been overreach.”

Suozzi in a phone interview said the administration needs approval to make those cuts. “I’ve always said, ‘Make a list of the things you want to cut and present them to the Congress,’” he said.

 “The Republicans have the majority in the Senate and in the House, so if they’re good ideas they’ll pass by the Republican majority,” Suozzi said, “and if they’re really good ideas, they will get some Democratic support.”

Gillen said in a statement: “I support tightening the belt of government but it must be done responsibly and in accordance with the law. The haphazard, across-the-board cuts by the Administration are clear examples of presidential overreach that undermines Congress’ power of the purse.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in an e-mail said, “These budget cuts do not discriminate between Democrats and Republicans and are universally harmful, especially to some of our nation’s most vulnerable. Congress has the power of the purse, and I will do everything in my power to work in Congress to ensure that Trump and Elon Musk do not further harm the lives of everyday Americans.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, said in an email, “DOGE is spreading across the federal government like a virus, and it’s Long Island homeowners, workers, veterans, business owners, and more who will suffer or pay the price when their benefits or payments are illegally taken away.”