Politics
Is Trump pushing his presidential powers beyond what the Constitution allows?
WASHINGTON — President Trump has begun his second term pressing his power to reshape the government by firing federal officials, ending diversity policies and deporting immigrants who are in this country illegally.
Despite fierce criticism, he is likely to succeed on those fronts because the Constitution and the laws generally put those powers in the hands of the president.
“Under our Constitution, the executive power — all of it — is vested in a president,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in 2020. And that includes the president’s nearly “unrestricted removal power” of officials throughout the government, he said.
The court’s conservative majority has also struck down racial diversity policies in universities and said repeatedly that the president has broad authority to enforce immigration laws.
In some areas, however, Trump appears to be claiming powers that go well beyond the president’s authority set out in the Constitution.
He says he can, by executive order, rewrite the 14th Amendment of 1868 and deny citizenship to some children who are born in the United States to parents who are not citizens.
And this week, the White House claimed the power to temporarily freeze federal spending that has been approved by Congress to see whether it is aligned with “presidential priorities.”
On Wednesday, the White House quickly rescinded the freeze memo that set off alarm and confusion across the country. But a legal debate persisted over whether Trump exceeded his authority by making the move.
The Constitution gives Congress what is often called the “power of the purse.” While the president may propose a budget and veto spending bills he opposes, Congress in the end gets to decide how much is spent and for what.
The current spending measures came from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Even so, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget said in its two-page memo that it needed to pause spending to prevent using federal money to “advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering.”
Despite those novel claims, the conflicts over spending are not new.
Presidents have often disagreed with Congress on budget matters, and the dispute flared up in the early 1970s when President Nixon refused to spend money on social programs that had been supported by congressional Democrats.
In response, Congress adopted the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to resolve disputes. It says the president may seek to “defer” some spending temporarily or “rescind” it entirely if Congress approves. This hold or pause can last for 45 days.
Under that law, the Trump administration could ask Congress to reconsider some spending items. But if Congress refuses, the law says the money must be disbursed.
Trump, however, has insisted the impoundment act is unconstitutional, and he has been determined to challenge it. His campaign website said the law’s restrictions infringe the president’s powers to “crush the Deep State.”
Moreover, he said, “leading constitutional scholars agree that impoundment is an inherent power of the president.”
Stanford Law professor Michael M. McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush and the director of its constitutional law center, finds that claim questionable.
“I do not know a single scholar who thinks the president has the constitutional authority to violate the Impoundment Control Act,” McConnell said.
A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship and described it as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
On Tuesday — before Trump rescinded the spending-freeze memo — a federal judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily blocked the administration’s “pause” on federal spending.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said rescinding the memo should “end any confusion.” But she added that the budget office will continue to examine the spending programs to see whether they comply with Trump’s executive orders.
These tests of presidential powers may ultimately reach the Supreme Court, particularly if Trump administration lawyers file emergency appeals to challenge any judges who block his orders.
They will go before a court with six conservative justices who are Republicans appointees — three named by Trump — and believers in strong executive power.
Last year, justices surprised many legal experts when they ruled broadly that an ex-president cannot be prosecuted for “official acts” while in the White House.
“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers,” the president may not be punished in court for the “exercise of his core constitutional powers,” Roberts wrote in Trump vs. U.S.
Now, the court may have to decide whether the president’s powers extend well beyond the core duties of his office.
Politics
Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting childcare funds to Democratic states over fraud concerns
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A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from stopping subsidies on childcare programs in five states, including Minnesota, amid allegations of fraud.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, a Biden appointee, didn’t rule on the legality of the funding freeze, but said the states had met the legal threshold to maintain the “status quo” on funding for at least two weeks while arguments continue.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns.
The programs include the Child Care and Development Fund, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, and the Social Services Block Grant, all of which help needy families.
USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
“Families who rely on childcare and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement on Tuesday.
The states, which include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, argued in court filings that the federal government didn’t have the legal right to end the funds and that the new policy is creating “operational chaos” in the states.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian at his nomination hearing in 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In total, the states said they receive more than $10 billion in federal funding for the programs.
HHS said it had “reason to believe” that the programs were offering funds to people in the country illegally.
‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’: SENATE REPUBLICANS PRESS GOV WALZ OVER MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
The table above shows the five states and their social safety net funding for various programs which are being withheld by the Trump administration over allegations of fraud. (AP Digital Embed)
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital has reached out to HHS for comment.
In what might be the most decisive critique yet of President Trump’s remake of the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera’s board approved a resolution on Friday to leave the venue it has occupied since 1971.
“Today, the Washington National Opera announced its decision to seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity,” the company said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Roma Daravi, Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, described the relationship with Washington National Opera as “financially challenging.”
“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with the WNO due to a financially challenging relationship,” Daravi said in a statement. “We believe this represents the best path forward for both organizations and enables us to make responsible choices that support the financial stability and long-term future of the Trump Kennedy Center.”
Kennedy Center President Ambassador Richard Grenell tweeted that the call was made by the Kennedy Center, writing that its leadership had “approached the Opera leadership last year with this idea and they began to be open to it.”
“Having an exclusive relationship has been extremely expensive and limiting in choice and variety,” Grenell wrote. “We have spent millions of dollars to support the Washington Opera’s exclusivity and yet they were still millions of dollars in the hole – and getting worse.”
WNO’s decision to vacate the Kennedy Center’s 2,364-seat Opera House comes amid a wave of artist cancellations that came after the venue’s board voted to rename the center the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. New signage featuring Trump’s name went up on the building’s exterior just days after the vote while debate raged over whether an official name change could be made without congressional approval.
That same day, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) — an ex officio member of the board — wrote on social media that the vote was not unanimous and that she and others who might have voiced their dissent were muted on the call.
Grenell countered that ex officio members don’t get a vote.
Cancellations soon began to mount — as did Kennedy Center‘s rebukes against the artists who chose not to appear. Jazz drummer Chuck Redd pulled out of his annual Christmas Eve concert; jazz supergroup the Cookers nixed New Year’s Eve shows; New York-based Doug Varone and Dancers dropped out of April performances; and Grammy Award-winning banjo player Béla Fleck wrote on social media that he would no longer play at the venue in February.
WNO’s departure, however, represents a new level of artist defection. The company’s name is synonymous with the Kennedy Center and it has served as an artistic center of gravity for the complex since the building first opened.
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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leveling a stunning accusation at Vice President JD Vance amid the national furor over this week’s fatal shooting in Minnesota involving an ICE agent.
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not,” the four-term federal lawmaker from New York and progressive champion argued as she answered questions on Friday on Capitol Hill from Fox News and other news organizations.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good after she confronted ICE agents from inside her car in Minneapolis.
RENEE NICOLE GOOD PART OF ‘ICE WATCH’ GROUP, DHS SOURCES SAY
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by an ICE agent during federal operations on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Video of the incident instantly went viral, and while Democrats have heavily criticized the shooting, the Trump administration is vocally defending the actions of the ICE agent.
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Vance, at a White House briefing on Thursday, charged that “this was an attack on federal law enforcement. This was an attack on law and order.”
“That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation,” the vice president added. “The president stands with ICE, I stand with ICE, we stand with all of our law enforcement officers.”
And Vance claimed Good was “brainwashed” and suggested she was connected to a “broader, left-wing network.”
Federal sources told Fox News on Friday that Good, who was a mother of three, worked as a Minneapolis-based immigration activist serving as a member of “ICE Watch.”
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Ocasio-Cortez, in responding to Vance’s comments, said, “That is a fundamental difference between Vice President Vance and I. I do not believe that the American people should be assassinated in the street.”
But a spokesperson for the vice president, responding to Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation, told Fox News Digital, “On National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, AOC made it clear she thinks that radical leftists should be able to mow down ICE officials in broad daylight. She should be ashamed of herself. The Vice President stands with ICE and the brave men and women of law enforcement, and so do the American people.”
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