Trump Admin Unveils Exciting Plan To Magic Away Impoundment Lawsuits

Worst Tucker Since Carlson

The Trump administration has come up with one weird trick to gut every federal agency and program it doesn’t like. What if, instead of judges enjoining the president from burning down civil society, Trump and his minions break stuff first and then deal with the fallout later in piecemeal suits filed by whoever’s left standing? It’s an argument that’s finding support at the DC Circuit, but whether it ultimately succeeds depends on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of a jurisdictional statute called the Tucker Act of 1887.

Impounder in Chief

In his first 100 days in office, Trump took a machete to federal spending. He slashed research grants to universities from the National Institutes of Health and education funds for federal grantees. He burnt down whole agencies whose funding is allocated directly by Congress as a line item in the budget, like the United States Institute of Peace and USAID, which Elon Musk bragged about feeding to the woodchipper. He even tried to steal back already disbursed funds for immigrant assistance and climate initiatives.

All of that is facially illegal under the Constitution, which gives Congress the power of the purse. The president has no authority to unilaterally impound funds and refuse to spend them. And so federal judges have granted upwards of 100 restraining orders and injunctions, ordering the administration to quit dismembering the federal government and give states, grant recipients, and federal employees what they’re entitled to.

For a while the administration flailed around, seeking to get out from under these orders by shouting EXECUTIVE POWER! or STANDING! or THANK YOU, MISTER CHIEF JUSTICE! But now they seem to have settled on a strategy to recast these cases as mere contract disputes, barring the plaintiffs from injunctive relief, and forcing them into protracted litigation to recoup money damages after the fact — that is, if any plaintiffs are still standing after being systematically starved of the funds to which they are entitled.