President Donald Trump has in the span of just four days fired thousands of government employees, transferred billions in federal funds and threatened to unilaterally cancel “Democrat programs” — all during a shutdown and without Congress’s approval.
The moves, playing out against the backdrop of a stalemate over federal spending now entering its third week, mark a stunning and unchecked escalation of the administration’s efforts to use the federal budget to centralize power.
Republicans, who control the House and the Senate, haven’t tried to stop him either.
Congressional Republican leaders have so far largely backed the White House’s expanded power claims, asserting that Trump has wide-ranging authority during a shutdown to pay military personnel and make other necessary moves in the absence of new federal funding. Others, however, disagree.
“Many of these things certainly look illegal unless they have a very complicated theory going places that I have never imagined,” said Georgetown Law professor David Super.
No other president in modern history has tested the bounds of executive authority during a shutdown to the extent that Trump has in the last two weeks.
He’s already used the shutdown to freeze infrastructure projects in states that voted Democratic in last year’s presidential election, while his administration has changed agency websites and out-of-office emails to blame “radical left Democrats” for the shutdown. Rather than consult Congress, as required, to move around $8 billion in defense funds to make military payroll, he did so on his own. And on Friday, he’s expected to release a list of programs favored by Democrats that he intends to terminate.
“So we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we wanted to close up or that we never wanted to happen,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “The Democrats are getting killed, and we’re going to have a list of them on Friday.”
Democrats broadly reject the idea that their actions are in any way forcing Trump’s hand on the expansive cuts, and have sought to cast political blame on the president while continuing to insist that extending health care subsidies set to expire at year’s end are essential to reopening the government.
“His whole goal is to just hurt people. That’s all he’s doing,” said Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a veteran of previous shutdown fights. “He has no authority to do that, he doesn’t have to. He’s just choosing to.”
Long-Term Effects
Trump’s hardball tactics risk prolonging the shutdown, already the fourth longest in US history, with no end in sight.
He scarcely needed encouragement. Even before the shutdown, the president has spent the first months of his second term signing executive orders at a dizzying pace and enacting tariffs that are reordering the global economy based on emergency legal powers designed for national security threats. Meantime, Russell Vought, who Republicans have gleefully portrayed as a sort of budgetary grim reaper, has cut billions in spending through a controversial legal back door called a “pocket rescission” — timing cuts in such a way that Congress is unable to restore them.
“If you’re a Democrat, you’re looking at it and you say why, why am I going to try to be helpful if Mr. Vought at OMB is just going to do a back door move and rescind what we’ve been working on?” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told reporters.
“So yeah, there’s a lack of trust,” she said. “Does it make it harder to come to terms on terms on hard things like the government shutdown? Absolutely.”
The administration’s moves also threaten to blunt one of Congress’s most powerful checks on the president, the power of the federal purse — a repercussion that could extend well beyond the current funding battle.
“That’s why I want to get rid of the shutdown to avoid just this kind of action,” Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who usually votes with Democrats but has backed the Republican spending bill, said on Tuesday night.
West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a moderate Republican who frequently negotiates with Democrats, said Trump’s threats would cease if Democrats would end the shutdown. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune argued Tuesday that Democrats’ pushback on the stopgap measure only makes it harder to negotiate the full-year spending bills.
Yet Trump’s actions appear to be hardening Democrats’ resolve. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats blocked the Republican spending bill for the eighth time.
Absent House
Trump’s unilateral shutdown moves — and Congress’s response — is a continuation of the prevailing theme of his second term.
House Republicans have already maneuvered to avoid a vote on Trump’s sweeping tariff campaign until at least early next year by quelling short-lived dissent among anxious GOP lawmakers. They’ve also complied with the White House’s decision to claw back billions in already appropriated federal spending for public broadcasting and foreign aid targeted for cuts by Elon Musk’s efficiency task force.
But now Republicans need at least eight Democratic senators to overcome a filibuster on the House-passed temporary spending package. Democrats are using their moment of leverage to demand any short-term spending bill include an extension of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, which expire in January.
Speaker Mike Johnson has kept House lawmakers back home, a move intended to force the Senate into voting for his bill, which did not address the health-care subsidies. He has repeatedly defended the decision by noting members are doing work in their districts, and arguing that House Republicans already did their job by passing a bill that didn’t include partisan requests.
But detractors, including long-time Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, argue the chamber should return to Washington and continue its work on full-year spending bills and other priorities.
The House hasn’t held a full legislative session since Sept. 19, making it one of the longest periods away from Washington during a government shutdown.
“The Speaker shouldn’t even think about cancelling session for a third straight week,” said Representative Kevin Kiley, a California Republican, in a social media post last week. Johnson ultimately did —
The absence has given Democrats — many of whom have returned to Washington — a political opening. Several, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have posted videos on social media poking fun at the empty chamber halls and questioning where their GOP colleagues are.
On Tuesday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries equated GOP lawmakers’ absence to a vacation.
“Republicans have gone radio silent,” he added.
