The Department of Education Illegally Withholds Congressionally Allocated Funds to Humor Trump—Again

Who controls the purse strings of the federal government? The Constitution says Congress. Trump thinks he does. So he is now arbitrarily withholding $7 billion of education funding, seemingly in an attempt to dismantle the Department of Education without congressional approval.

The New York Times reports:

The Trump administration has declined to release nearly $7 billion in federal funding that helps pay for after-school and summer programs, support for students learning English, teacher training and other services.

The money was expected to be released by Tuesday. But in an email on Monday, the Education Department notified state education agencies that the money would not be available.

The administration offered little explanation, saying only that the funds were under review. It gave no timeline for when, or if, the money would be released, saying instead that it was “committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the president’s priorities.”…

The move is likely to be challenged in court and has already been criticized as illegal by Democrats and teachers’ unions, who emphasized that the money had been appropriated by Congress and was approved by President Trump in March as part of a broader funding bill. …

The administration has taken an aggressive approach to cutting back the federal government’s role in education, including plans to eliminate the Education Department entirely. Though only Congress can abolish the department, the Trump administration has taken an ax to education staffing and funding more broadly as it seeks to whittle down the department.

Note that cutting English language programs is specifically intended to target immigrants. According to this report, “families who do not speak English could be cut off from schools and the support system they need.”

But the key sentence here is the administration’s insistence that money be spent “in accordance with the president’s priorities”—not the priorities of Congress. It is an implementation of one-man rule.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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