February 10, 2025 02:43 PM UTC

The Constitutional Crisis is Here, and You Need to be Paying Attention

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• by: Colorado Pols

For years Donald Trump has been ignoring many of the social and political norms that once existed in this country. Trump attacks everyone, spares no-one, spews misinformation at every opportunity, and ignores guardrails put in place to separate politics from government (such as holding his 2020 Presidential nomination speech on the White House lawn).

But President Trump hadn’t just flat-out ignored the other branches of government (specifically the Judiciary Branch)…until now.

As The New York Times reports:

A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate.

The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called “the plain text” of an edict he issued last month.

Judge McConnell’s ruling marked a step toward what could quickly evolve into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after a social media post by Vice President JD Vance claimed that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis. [Pols emphasis]

Already, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration, challenging Mr. Trump’s brazen moves, which have included revoking birthright citizenship and giving Elon Musk’s teams access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. Judges have already ruled that many of these executive actions may violate existing statutes.

Both Judge McConnell and a federal judge in Washington, D.C., had previously ordered the White House to unfreeze federal funds locked up by a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that demanded that billions of dollars in federal grants be held back until they were determined to comply with President Trump’s priorities, including with ideological litmus tests.

On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday that money for clean energy projects as well as transportation infrastructure allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill was exempt from the initial order, because it had been paused under a different memo than the one that prompted the lawsuit.

Judge McConnell’s ruling on Monday explicitly rejected that argument.

What happens next — how the Trump administration responds to this unambiguous order — will determine whether this is a “break glass in case of emergency” sort of moment in American history. Earlier this morning, Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet joined Gov. Jared Polis in a letter to Office of Management  and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought to unfreeze the federal money he had illegally blocked in digital ice. From a press release:

U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet and Colorado Governor Jared Polis called on Office of Budget and Management (OMB) Director Russell Vought to address the more than $570 million in federal funding that remains inaccessible for Colorado grantees, following the OMB’s illegal attempt to pause all federal funding. [Pols emphasis]

Two weeks ago, in a chaotic late-night, two-page OMB memo, President Donald Trump froze all federal grants and loans. The sudden freeze from this memo and multiple executive orders threatened hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, which would have affected thousands of organizations in Colorado and hurt millions of Americans. Federal courts ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the freeze on federal funds. However, over $570 million in federal funding obligated for Colorado organizations remains withheld.

“We write to express deep concern regarding the ongoing challenges Colorado grantees face in accessing obligated grant funding… The consequences of this continued uncertainty are severe and could have a devastating effect on the programs and people this funding supports,” wrote the lawmakers. “Companies are considering staff furloughs. Employers in rural communities are rescinding job offers. Long-standing Colorado businesses, some with over 40 years of operation, now struggle to pay contractors working on facility expansions.’

They continued: “This disruption threatens local economies and the workforce across the state, particularly in rural communities, where the funding freeze creates widespread ripple effects.”

In their letter, the Colorado lawmakers called on Vought to explain what steps OMB is taking to comply with the court orders and clarify which streams of funding did not immediately resume following the multiple court orders to halt the funding freeze.

CLICK HERE to read the full text of the letter.

Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic was warning about this very issue just today:

The United States is sleepwalking into a constitutional crisis. Not only has the Trump administration seized for itself extraconstitutional powers, but yesterday, it raised the specter that, should the courts apply the text of the Constitution and negate its plans, it will simply ignore them…[Pols emphasis]

…The Trump administration is not refusing to share power with an opposing party. It is refusing to follow the constitutional limits of a government that its own party controls completely.

Donald Trump is unilaterally declaring the right to ignore spending levels set by Congress, and to eliminate agencies that Congress voted to create. What makes this demand so astonishing is that Trump could persuade Congress, which he commands in personality-cult style, to follow his demands. Republicans presently control both houses of Congress, and any agency that Congress established, it can also cut or eliminate.

Yet Trump refuses to even try to pass his plan democratically. And as courts have stepped in to halt his efforts to ignore the law, he is now threatening to ignore them too. [Pols emphasis]

It is not enough for Trump and Prime Minister Elon Musk that a Republican-controlled Congress is already doing whatever Trump wants and ignoring the BRIGHT RED FLASHING WARNING LIGHTS telling them to do something, anything, to act like…well, like Congress. Musk certainly hasn’t bothered following any of those pesky “laws” as he and his 20-something minions poke around inside highly-sensitive information contained within Treasury servers and elsewhere. As Chait continues:

Elon Musk has described one judge who issued an unfavorable ruling as “corrupt”—using the word in the Trumpian sense, not to describe flouting ethics rules or profiting from office, but rather to mean “opposed to Trump”—and demanded his impeachment. Trump told reporters, “No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision; it’s a disgrace.”

So, what happens now if the White House just keeps ignoring federal judges?

What happens if requests from the likes of Hickenlooper, Bennet, and Polis are shrugged off?

What if a Republican-led Congress just cedes its “power of the purse” to Trump and Musk altogether?

We don’t have a good answer, but the key to finding a solution to any great problem is recognizing with clear eyes the danger ahead.

It is no hyperbole to say that the very future of our democracy could hang in the balance. Americans can either work to stop this…or get ready to accept the birth of an autocracy.