The new Trump order mandating a freeze on all federal payments that may in some way promote Marxism or wokeness created chaos, probably to the delight of the man on golf cart. It has already been blocked temporarily. What comes next?
A few observations are pertinent here. First, while the administration is arguing that the freeze is not an attempt at impoundment, the supposed constitutional right to impound is inherently implicit in it. Second, if the pause truly is very temporary, it may well escape meaningful judicial review this time around. Third, if impoundment is ultimately reviewed against the legal standard applied in the Truman-era Youngstown case, as it should be, Trump will lose at every level of the judiciary, including “his” Supreme Court. Will that cause him to stop? If he doesn’t, and I have my doubts, we will have a full-blown constitutional crisis on our hands, because legislative control of the power of the purse goes back to the days of the English Civil War and is at the heart of our system.