still-searching-for-something:

So, brief civics lesson, guys.

The power of the purse is Congress’s power to choose how the government spends its money. The president is supposed to spend money in accordance with Congress’s directives. The president does not have the right to refuse to spend money on the things Congress says he will.

This is one of the most basic, important powers of Congress, explicitly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution as a power reserved for Congress and Congress alone. It’s one of the main checks on the executive branch.

Trump’s freeze on federal grants is explicitly unconstitutional and illegal, and is an unabashed attempt to seize the power of the purse for himself, which would grant the US president an unparalleled amount of power over the U.S. government.