Congress

Congress hankers for closure in funding war with Trump. SCOTUS is slow to deliver.

Published

10 months ago

September 2, 2025

Lawmakers have been waiting all year for the Supreme Court to save them from President Donald Trump’s unprecedented moves to suspend funding Congress already approved. But they might not get closure anytime soon.

Trump began freezing federal cash the day he was sworn into a second term as president. Seven months later, the courts are littered with legal challenges to his administration’s abrupt, massive and often indiscriminate cuts to spending, contracts and personnel. None of these lawsuits, however, have yet risen to the Supreme Court in a way that would give the justices the necessary opening to settle longstanding disagreements about Congress’ control of the federal pursestrings — and whether the administration’s actions violate the law.

In recent weeks, several of the leading cases that have a shot at reaching the Supreme Court were set back due to two technical tripwires: Who can bring the lawsuits and what courts have to hear them first.

That means the high court’s justices are unlikely to wade into the substance of the issue, if they choose to at all, until at least next year. In the meantime, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill will have to navigate tense funding negotiations to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1 and beyond without any assurances that Trump will be forced to spend the money as stipulated.

“Whatever your prediction is about when we get a full-year appropriation … we won’t have heard from the Supreme Court — in any way that anyone can count on — when that is done,” said Georgetown University law professor David Super.

For a few days last week, one prominent case challenging Trump’s withholding of funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development seemed like it might get an emergency decision by the Supreme Court in short order. That case could have sent strong signals about how the justices view the broader question of impoundment, which refers to the president’s act of withholding congressionally appropriated cash.

But on Friday, the Trump administration dropped its request for the justices to rule in the case after a lower court effectively sent the issue back before another judge.

Meanwhile, Trump added new urgency on Friday for the high court to weigh in on impoundment of foreign aid funding: He advanced his assault on Congress’ funding power by declaring a “pocket rescission,” the seldom-used maneuver to cancel federal dollars in the final days of the fiscal year without requiring an up-or-down vote.

Many lawmakers and Congress’ top watchdog argue the gambit is illegal. But the courts won’t necessarily see the “pocket rescissions” tactic championed by White House budget director Russ Vought as meaningfully different from the other actions the Trump administration has taken this year, according to Super.

“It’s a cute term that Mr. Vought came up with. But it is essentially just sitting on the money, and that’s what they’ve been doing now,” he said.

Still, Trump’s latest attempt to assert more control over federal spending has made lawmakers of both parties desperate for certainty, even as they’re jittery over the prospect that the justices could side with Trump and erode their funding power.

After all, the court has repeatedly ruled in the president’s favor of late, including allowing the Trump administration to cut off health research grants, proceed with mass layoffs at the Education Department and implement sweeping elements of his mass deportation agenda.

“I’m worried,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in an interview.

“They’re inventing what they thought was good policy,” Merkley said of the Supreme Court justices. “That’s not their role. And so they’re violating their oath of office through the Constitution. So we’re in deep trouble when this comes to the Supreme Court.”

To some lawmakers, the Supreme Court’s eventual, inevitable role in resolving these interbranch fights could be a clarifying inflection point for the nation.

“My prediction is: When we look back on this administration, there’ll be more Supreme Court decisions defining separation of powers than in the 250-year history of the country,” said Sen. Rand Paul in an interview.

The Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee in charge of vetting Trump’s nominees to top budget posts, told a White House official earlier this year that he doesn’t think the president “can impound direct funds indefinitely.”

“It’s a reasonable question to ask. And it’s never been all the way to the Supreme Court,” Paul said. “And of course, everybody has to adhere to what the final decision will be.”

But even then, the Supreme Court could skirt the overarching argument many lawmakers are hoping the justices settle.

“The biggest question for the next few months is whether the court has the appetite to squarely take on the basic issue — the fundamental issue — which is the administration’s broad claim that it can refuse to spend appropriated funds for policy reasons,” said Gregg Nunziata, a conservative lawyer who served as counsel for Senate Republicans and now heads the Society for the Rule of Law.

Already, the Supreme Court has dealt a major setback to lawsuits over funding the Trump administration has withheld for grants and contracts. Late last month, the justices signaled such cases need to start over in the slow-moving Court of Federal Claims, which has jurisdiction over cases involving financial damages and breached contracts.

And the USAID case — in which humanitarian groups are challenging Trump’s decision to withhold billions of congressionally appropriated dollars — now faces several new twists in its path to Supreme Court consideration too.

On Friday, a White House official said the Trump administration sees revoking USAID funding as its strongest case for canceling federal cash at the end of the fiscal year, arguing, “there’s nothing that we can do within these accounts, because of the way they’re written, to shift them to things that the president would support in the foreign aid space.”

The administration “wanted to make the case as clean as we possibly could, as we navigate the different critics that we know would arise,” the official added.

Last month, in the USAID case, a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only Congress’ top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, can sue the administration over breaking impoundment law. That ruling has derailed the effort by humanitarian groups to sue directly.

University of Michigan administrative law professor Nicholas Bagley described the courts as taking a “lawyerly, careful, minimalist” approach in their decisions on Trump’s funding moves. “And the vice is the courts don’t appear to be registering the full depth of the concern about the erosion of the appropriations power,” he added.

But the fact that those lower-court issues are hindering lawsuits from making it to the Supreme Court isn’t necessarily a failure of the judicial system, argues Zachary Price, a law professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

“It’s just a kind of mismatch between litigation timelines and the way the appropriations cycle works,” Price explained. “It’s a process that works a lot better when it’s a matter of push and pull between the branches.”

Those so far reluctant to exert real pressure on the administration to back down from its funding moves are congressional Republicans. GOP lawmakers could take steps like barring funding for White House operations if the Trump administration doesn’t spend federal cash as lawmakers mandate or reject Trump’s proposals like the $9 billion rescissions package they passed earlier this summer.

But most Republicans don’t want to appear antagonistic of the president, and they’re hoping instead that the legal system will settle a messy fight on their behalf.

“Is Congress determined to protect its own power of the purse or not?” said Philip Wallach, who studies the separation of powers at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “Congress has a very bad habit of relying on the courts to rule and make everything clear, and fix everything for them, so that they don’t have to do it.”

Congress

Congressional Black Caucus blasts Slotkin over her calls for new leadership in the House

Published

12 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Congressional Black Caucus is emphatically declaring its support for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — and denouncing Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s call for new leadership in Congress.

In a statement posted to social media on Friday, the entirely Democratic CBC declared that it stands united behind the nation’s first Black minority leader of the House. The caucus accused the Michigan senator of “posturing for higher office in 2028” and called attention to her votes to approve multiple members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

“House Democrats don’t need a lesson on reading the political moment from someone who handed Donald Trump one of the most corrupt Cabinets in American history,” the CBC said. “Voting to confirm Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and five other Trump Cabinet secretaries is not the posture of someone who understood the moment’ after 2024.”

The CBC closed its defense of Jeffries with a sharp parting shot of remaining focused on providing for Americans rather than “engaging in distractions that only serve to divide Democrats at a moment when unity and resolve are essential.”

A spokesperson for Slotkin, who has repeatedly called for a new generation of leadership in Congress, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress

Key Democrats urge House to reject kids’ safety proposal

Published

15 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Commerce Committee’s top Democrat Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned House lawmakers against advancing their chamber’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act, arguing it would face intense lobbying from tech companies in the Senate and risk unraveling years of bipartisan work.

“If it is passed by the House it will come to the Senate,” Blumenthal, the bill’s Senate cosponsor, told reporters at a Friday press briefing. The Connecticut Democrat said he is concerned senators will be influenced by the tech industry’s “armies of lawyers and lobbyists” who may “confuse and exploit” misunderstandings about a House bill with the same name as a Senate version but excludes key provisions, such as the “duty of care.” (This concept requires online companies to design social media platforms with an eye for children’s safety.)

“We’re not going to let bad legislation with a good title just get across and think somebody’s done something,” Cantwell said.

The House version of KOSA — which is included in the KIDS Act, a revised bipartisan package that the Energy and Commerce Committee advanced along party lines in March — is scheduled to be considered on the House floor next week under suspension of the rules.

“We need to stop this bill in the House, and we need to prevent the White House from forming an alliance with Big Tech on this issue,” said Blumenthal, who characterized the version of KOSA that House leadership is pushing as a “sham.”

Both Democratic lawmakers also expressed concern that Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) could adopt the House version of KOSA in a kids’ safety package he has yet to publicly release but has pledged to markup by August recess. Cruz said “negotiations are ongoing” earlier this week when asked by Blue Light News whether he would be open to incorporating such changes put forward in the House.

Cruz’s package is expected to include KOSA as well legislation barring companies from using minors’ personal data for targeted advertising, banning kids under age 13 from social media, and providing greater oversight for how children interact with AI chatbots.

Although Blumenthal remains hopeful that Cruz will “stay true to his first vote in favor of KOSA,” which overwhelmingly passed in the Senate last Congress, the Connecticut Democrat said Friday he’s worried Cruz and others may be tempted to “take the bait” and abandon the bill’s basic principles.

Congress

Moderates beware: Mamdani coalition portends a dramatically different Democratic Party in NYC

Published

18 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A coalition powered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani expanded the left’s reach Tuesday, winning younger voters across racial and ethnic lines and once again upending conventional wisdom about elections in New York City.

A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from U.S.-Israel relations.

The results were staggering.

Midterm election cycles in deep-blue New York City tend to be sleepy affairs. Both this year and in 2022, just over 500,000 people cast ballots, less than 20 percent of eligible voters. But turnout within a congressional district spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx increased by roughly 50 percent between 2022 and Tuesday, with more than 66,000 voters heading to the polls.

In another seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, turnout more than doubled from 2022, though state and federal elections were held on different days that year and the seat was not competitive, which would have reduced the number of voters going to the polls.

Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate the mayor’s success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem. Combined with the DSA’s base in relatively wealthy neighborhoods, the result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.

“This was a big wave for DSA and they did a good job capitalizing on it,” said Evan Roth Smith, a pollster with Slingshot Strategies. “The question now is: Was this a wave cycle that will abate, or is it the start of the takeover?”

Much of Mamdani’s base is concentrated in the so-called “commie-corridor,” a series of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront filled with young, educated and affluent voters who’ve propelled several DSA candidates into office. They went gaga over Mamdani’s candidacy and, as Tuesday’s results show, will turn out for candidates he supports.

The area was crucial to Assemblymember Claire Valdez’s crushing 56-38 defeat of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

“The factor that felt most significant to me were all of these New Yorkers who got activated and politicized in the mayor’s race last year who were looking for the next fight,” said Andrew Epstein, a political adviser to Mamdani who worked on Valdez’ campaign. “Those people didn’t go away. And they want to keep going.”

Valdez also won several heavily Latino areas that were expected to break for her opponent.

Reynoso was born in Brooklyn to Dominican parents and just a few years ago was a City Council member representing Bushwick, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Latino families and young hipsters. Valdez was born in Texas, moved to New York City in 2015 and served in the state Assembly for just one term before launching her Mamdani-backed bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat.

She ended up winning areas of Bushwick by even greater margins than the total results — in some election districts winning upwards of 80 percent of the vote.

“You don’t win the district by 35 points if you don’t have broad advantages across age and demographic groups,” said Michael Lange, an election analyst and Mamdani supporter who has tracked several contested races with extreme granularity. “Is she blowing him out of the water with Hispanic voters under 50? I see tons of evidence that the answer is yes.”

The age advantage was the common thread across several other races.

In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, for example, younger Black voters in Harlem were key to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s win over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who had built a small political empire in the district.

While gentrifying, the neighborhood remains a seat of Black political power and is home to younger households who tend to rent. That particular demographic is a strong indicator of why Mamdani won the area in 2025, even as he lost the Black vote overall to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose support was concentrated among older Black homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens.

While Espaillat never healed a rift with the Black community in upper Manhattan opened during his election in 2016, which contributed to his weak performance, Avila Chevalier demonstrated Tuesday that a significant share of voters there were not just supportive of Mamdani the person, but of the broader political movement he’s now leading.

Overall, she edged out Espaillat with Black voters 48-46, according to an analysis from The New York Times, which charted demographic breakdowns for several contested races.

Three winning congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani — including former city Comptroller Brad Lander in Brooklyn, who unseated incumbent Dan Goldman — share several similarities. They won younger, college-educated and wealthier voters by huge margins, in several cases by 30 points or more, and lost lower-income voters to incumbents or candidates affiliated with incumbents — a sign that the movement seeking to boost struggling New Yorkers has not won them over.

While the DSA was able to win three state races without the support of Mamdani — a testament to the organizing prowess of the left that was essential to reactivating the mayor’s coalition — there were limits to the city’s leftward shift.

Rep. Grace Meng won her reelection race, though she only vanquished challenger Chuck Park by 14 points, an uncomfortable margin for an incumbent of her stature. Park, who ran to Meng’s left, was boosted by a huge turnout in Woodside, Queens, a multiethnic neighborhood that went heavily for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race.

Elsewhere in the Bronx, however, incumbents remained strong. Rep. Ritchie Torres handily won reelection with 72 percent of the vote, though it was a low-turnout affair more consistent with an uncompetitive midterm. Nevertheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries touted the results — even as he watched a series of his endorsed candidates fall to the DSA in Brooklyn, his home borough, in a preview of the intraparty battles to come.

“In some higher-income districts, there was an outsized focus on the Middle East. In other districts, for instance, in the South Bronx, Ritchie Torres ran against somebody who was heavily critical of his position on Israel, and he won by fifty points,” Jeffries told MS NOW on Wednesday.