The administration’s courtroom drama continues

Most of us understand that Congress controls the power of the purse – that it determines how tax dollars are to be spent and how those tax dollars are raised.

Apparently, some members of the Trump administration were absent that day in civics class or, more likely, they have decided to interpret the U.S. Constitution in ways that are most convenient in pursuing their agenda.

With less than a week before the end of the federal government’s fiscal year, the Trump administration notified Congress that it intended to rescind more than $800 million earmarked for health and education programs. With Congress gone, there is little time for it to react.

Republican Senator Susan Collins, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in the midst of a tough re-election fight in Maine, said: “This move shows that O.M.B. intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law.”

Her Democratic counterpart, Washington Senator Patty Murray, was more blunt: “This is theft from the American people, plain and simple.”

But then the administration’s M.O. has been to push every constitutional boundary to see if anyone was willing to try to stop them. The courts often react glacially while the GOP-controlled Congress-- more often than not-- bends a knee.

In recent weeks plenty of examples of the administration’s constitutional creativity have been evident.

In pursuing its immigration crackdown, it has been convincing (bribing) some 30 countries (often authoritarian in nature ) to take planeloads of deportees who are not citizens of their countries. These countries are not willing to be on the hook for the deportees’ care when they arrive (disoriented and perhaps not speaking the local language) and so the administration is paying (via a U.N. agency) hundreds of millions of dollars to house and feed them.

Very generous considering these are allegedly the “worst of the worst.”

The administration’s hostility toward alternative energy and particularly wind projects are well known. It has cancelled or delayed federal support for numerous projects, some of which were well along. Now it is spending $1.4 billion to buy back offshore leases with the goal of pushing those energy companies to invest in natural gas. Lawsuits from multiple states have followed.

Then there is Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy. It is reported he is shifting money from a congressionally approved program that provides vaccines for children to a study to determine if vaccines given to pregnant women cause autism, a theory that has been debunked over and over again.

I think we all know what it means when you keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

Of course, these are small potatoes compared with the dismantling (Washington Chainsaw Massacre) of USAID, an agency created by Congress but shuttered by DOGE, a federal agency not created by Congress that, theoretically, should not have existed.

The lawsuits challenging the closing of USAID grind slowly through the system as do hundreds of other lawsuits challenging the administration’s firehose of executive orders. Trackers show the administration has been sued more than 900 times and 500 of those are in active litigation.

The president once said the American people would get tired of winning so much if he were elected, but his record in these lawsuits is pretty dismal. As you scroll down various case trackers, you see the words “government action blocked” time and again.

Yes, the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are narrow, but other than the Big Beautiful Bill, the president has not tried to govern by passing laws, but by executive fiat. Thus, the first 20 months of this administration has been a courtroom drama.

Your tax dollars at work.

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86. His book “American Dreams: The Story of the Cyprus Fulbright Commission” is available from Amazon.com.