‘It’s an Illegal Executive Order. And It’s Stealing.’

Buried within one of the dozens of executive orders that President Donald Trump issued in his first days in office is a section titled “Terminating the Green New Deal.” As presidential directives go, this one initially seemed like a joke. The Green New Deal exists mostly in the dreams of climate activists; it has never been fully enacted into law.

The next line of Trump’s order, however, made clear he is quite serious: “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” The president is apparently using “the Green New Deal” as a shorthand for any federal spending on climate change. But the two laws he targets address much more than that: The $900 billion IRA not only funds clean-energy programs but also lowers prescription-drug prices, while the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law represents the biggest investment in roads, bridges, airports, and public transportation in decades. And the government has spent only a portion of each.

In one sentence, Trump appears to have cut off hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that Congress has already approved, torching Joe Biden’s two most significant legislative accomplishments. The order stunned even some Republicans, many of whom supported the infrastructure law and have taken credit for its investments.

And Trump didn’t stop there. Yesterday, the White House ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans—a move that could put on hold an additional tens of billions of dollars already approved by Congress, touching many corners of American life. Democrats and government watchdogs see the directives as an opening salvo in a fight over the separation of powers, launched by a president bent on defying Congress’s will. “It’s an illegal executive order, and it’s stealing,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told me, referring to the order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law.

Withholding money approved by Congress “undermines the entire architecture of the Constitution,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told me. “It essentially makes the president into a king.” Last night, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans “blatantly disobeys the law.”

The Constitution gives Congress the so-called power of the purse—that is, the House and the Senate decide how much money the government spends and where it goes. Since 1974, a federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act has prohibited the executive branch from spending less than the amount of money that Congress appropriates for a given program or purpose. During Trump’s first term, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the administration had violated that law by holding up aid to Ukraine—a move that became central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

[Jonathan Chait: Trump’s second term might have already peaked]

Trump has argued that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional, and so has his nominee for budget director, Russell Vought, who had the same job at the end of the president’s first term. Vought also helped write Project 2025, the conservative-governing blueprint that attracted so many attacks from Democrats that Trump disavowed it during the campaign.

In his Senate confirmation hearings this month, Vought repeatedly refused to commit to abiding by the impoundment act even as he acknowledged that it is “the law of the land.” “For 200 years, presidents had the ability to spend less than an appropriation if they could do it for less,” he told senators at his first hearing. During his second appearance, when Van Hollen asked him whether he would comply with the law, Vought did not answer directly. “Senator, the president ran against the Impoundment Control Act,” he replied. His defiance astonished Democrats. “It’s absolutely outrageous,” Van Hollen told me.

The pause on funds for the Biden-signed laws did not draw as much attention as other moves Trump made on his first day back in the White House, especially his blanket pardons for January 6 defendants. Nor was it the only one that appeared to test the limits of his authority. A separate executive order froze nearly all foreign aid for 90 days, while others targeted birthright citizenship and civil-service protections for federal employees.

But the order cutting off spending for the IRA and the infrastructure law could have far-reaching implications. State and municipal governments in both Democratic and Republican jurisdictions worry that they may not be able to use investments and grants that the federal government promised them. “It’s creating chaos,” DeLauro said. “I honestly don’t think the people who are dealing with this know what they are doing.” She listed a range of popular and economically significant programs that appear to be on pause, including assistance for home-energy bills and money to replace lead pipes that contaminate drinking water.

“It was alarming,” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska told me. Bacon, a Republican who narrowly won reelection in a district Trump lost, called the White House after reading the text of last week’s executive order to seek assurance that money he’d secured for Nebraska—including $73 million to upgrade Omaha’s airport—wouldn’t be stopped.

The immediate confusion became so intense that a day after Trump signed the order, the White House issued a memo seeking to clarify its scope that seemed to slightly narrow its impact and open the door for some spending to continue. Bacon told me that he was assured the directive applied mostly to Biden’s electric-vehicle mandate, which Trump railed against on the campaign trail and is part of the IRA. DeLauro, however, said the memo offered little clarity: “Everything is at risk.”

Yesterday’s memo extending the funding pause to all federal grant and loan programs set off another frenzy. The directive sought to exempt Medicare and Social Security recipients, as well as other direct aid to individuals. But according to a copy of the memo published by The Washington Post, it explicitly targets “financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Whether the funding pause constitutes an illegal impoundment is unclear. The executive branch does have some latitude in how it spends money. And yesterday’s memo instructs federal agencies to halt funding only “to the extent permissible under applicable law.” Describing last week’s order targeting the IRA and infrastructure law, Vought told senators that it was merely a “programmatic delay,” a term that arguably falls within what federal departments are allowed to do.

More broadly, executive orders are frequently less consequential than they appear, Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan and occasional Atlantic contributor, told me about last week’s directive. “It’s one thing to try to get a really nice headline for cutting back on government spending. It’s another thing altogether to decline to spend money that people are expecting you to spend,” Bagley said. “I would not be surprised if rhetoric does not match reality.”

To Charlie Ellsworth, a senior adviser with the nonprofit watchdog Congressional Integrity Project, Trump’s executive order on clean energy unmistakably oversteps the law. “They could have done this legally, but they didn’t,” Ellsworth, a former Schumer aide, told me. A new administration, for example, could have justified a pause in spending to ensure that a program was being funded in accordance with the law. But the order instead instructs agencies to ensure that the spending aligns with new policies set by the Trump administration. Ellsworth said that the order is “self-evidently” illegal.

The fight is almost certain to wind up in the courts, which have repeatedly ruled against the president’s ability to withhold funds appropriated by Congress. Indeed, Vought’s Senate testimony seemed to invite a legal challenge that could lead the Supreme Court, now with a 6–3 conservative majority and three Trump-appointed justices, to reconsider the question. “That seems to be their game plan,” Ellsworth said. “They want to get sued. They want to go to the Supreme Court.”

Van Hollen told me that he believes the Court would rule against Trump but that preferably the dispute won’t get that far. “You would hope that Republicans in Congress recognize they have an institutional interest in protecting Article I [of the Constitution] and the power of the purse, which is clearly congressional,” Van Hollen said.

[David A. Graham: It’s already different]

Beyond the question of legality, Van Hollen warned that Trump’s orders would jeopardize virtually all negotiations over spending on Capitol Hill, because Democrats would not be able to trust the administration to keep its end of any agreement. Although Republicans have majorities in both the House and the Senate, they will need to strike deals with Democrats to avert government shutdowns and a catastrophic default on U.S. debt.

There were early signs of GOP pushback on last week’s spending freeze, but it fell well short of a revolt. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chair of the Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, said at one of Vought’s hearings that he disagreed with the administration’s view on spending and impoundments. “I think if we appropriate something for a cause, that’s where it’s supposed to go, and that will still be my position,” Paul said. And Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chair of the Budget Committee, said at a second Vought hearing that he, too, had “concerns” about impoundment. But neither of them planned to stand in the way of the nominee who has argued for the president to wrest control of spending from Congress. “When you win, you get to pick people,” Graham told Vought. “And I’m glad he picked you.”

On the Republican side, the fight might be left to lawmakers such as Bacon, who has some protection from presidential retribution because he represents a purple district where voters might reward him for standing up to Trump. The GOP, he said, should go after policies it opposes through legislation, not executive order. “You just can’t determine what laws you want to execute and what you don’t,” Bacon said of Trump. Executive orders, he added, “have gotten out of hand” from presidents in both parties. “You can’t change the law,” Bacon said. “I think Republicans should stay true to that notion.”