Late on Monday night, the Trump administration sent out a stunning memo suspending all federal grants. Chaos followed, with everything from veteran’s charities facing financial ruin to reports of Medicaid portals shutting down across the country.

It was so bad, that on Tuesday, the administration released a second piece of guidance attempting to clarify the initial memo’s scope. At the end of the work day, a federal court issued a “brief administrative stay” while litigation on its overall legality plays out.

It appears quite plausible that courts strike down the order permanently. Existing law, including both Supreme Court rulings and federal legislation, have found that the president cannot “impound” (meaning unilaterally stop) funds that Congress has authorized to be spent. Expert legal opinion on how this applies to the memo is divided: Some believe Trump’s order is obviously unlawful in its entirety, while others think it’s possible he could get away with a truly limited pause of some spending.

But regardless of how the legal wrangling works it out, the ideology behind this order is clear: a deep sense on the modern right that winning elections grants them a democratic mandate to ignore any constraints on their power.

Article I of the Constitution gives exclusive powers of the purse to Congress in order to ensure that it can actually make laws and force the president to follow them. Impoundment basically neuters Congress’s lawmaking powers, as it would allow the president could simply refuse to spend whatever money they allocate for it.

Matt Glassman, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies Congress, posted on X that “accepting inherent presidential authority to impound is akin to shifting the balance of power between legislature and executive to something that resembles 16th century........

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