Just over two weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump has already thrown American democracy into crisis.

On his first day in office, the president pardoned those who had violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a bid to obstruct his removal from power. He then fired more than a dozen federal prosecutors who had brought charges against the January 6 rioters — a pair of moves that signal that the federal government will not necessarily punish Americans who perpetrate political violence in the president’s name.

The administration has also coerced corporations into giving Trump money and other concessions, through tactic threats of regulatory scrutiny. Its Federal Communications Commission has pressured CBS News into giving regulators an unabridged version of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year, as though the government has a right to veto the editing practices of independent news networks.

But Trump’s starkest assault on democratic norms is his usurpation of Congress’s authority over spending.

The separation of powers is a fundamental feature of our constitutional order: The people’s legislative representatives determine what the government will spend money on and the president administers that spending.

Upon taking power, the Trump administration has commandeered Congress’s prerogatives. Trump paused the disbursement of trillions of dollars in congressionally authorized spending. Faced with a court order to halt this spending freeze, the administration backed down only partially. The White House rescinded a memo that had ordered a sweeping pause in federal grants but insisted that “the federal funding freeze” was still in place — and continued blocking spending on green energy,

© Vox