John Hudson of the Washington Post reported this evening that the Trump administration is openly defying Congress. He is taking $52 million in military assistance lawmakers appropriated for European and Middle Eastern countries hurt by Russia’s war on Ukraine and diverting it to right-wing governments in Panama, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.
When the State Department notified Congress last month that it intended to make the switch, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) put a hold on the funds.
Then the administration told Congress it is defying the hold and moving ahead. Shaheen and Meeks objected, warning the White House that Congress had provided the money for a specific purpose and that “[t]he Executive Branch does not have unlimited discretion to redirect these funds toward unrelated Administration policy priorities or countries.” The State Department told Hudson that Trump is prioritizing the Western Hemisphere and that the money would be better spent in Latin America than where Congress wanted it.
The U.S. Constitution is clear. Only Congress can appropriate money and that the president must execute the laws as Congress passes them.
The Trump administration has been aggressive about its intention to take control of the power of the purse from Congress.
Then Tarini Parti, Marianne LeVine, and Michelle Hackman of the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration appears to have taken $20 million from the funds Congress appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security to pay for the ads boosting Trump before the midterms.
The destruction of the fundamental separation of powers at the heart of our government has gotten very little pushback from Republican lawmakers.
Predictably, Congress is now in recess until after the midterms.
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