Breaking the law, defying the courts

He withheld money Congress had already approved, and the GAO ruled it broke the law six times.

The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse, and a 1974 law says a president cannot simply refuse to spend approved funds. In 2025 the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found the administration broke that law at least six times, including holding back about $8 billion from the National Institutes of Health, plus Head Start and FEMA money. Republican Senator Susan Collins called it unlawful.

SourcesGAO, NIH · GAO, Head Start · GAO, FEMA · Sen. Collins (R)

He withheld money Congress had already approved, and the GAO ruled it broke the law six times.
More on this
He froze roughly $2.6 billion of Harvard’s funding over campus antisemitism. A federal judge vacated it as a First Amendment violation and “a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault” on universities, and a second judge later threw out his related lawsuit.As deaths in ICE custody hit their highest level in decades, his administration indicted a Democratic congresswoman over an inspection visit and rewrote the rules to block surprise congressional inspections.He ordered military strikes across Venezuela and seized its president, with no authorization from Congress.

← Back to the full record