There seems to be a good bit of power of the purse interference. Separation of powers and such.
but if the last admin could have done this kind of thing and folks on the right would’ve said “I guess that’s legal“, I suppose they probably should’ve. But I don’t think that’s the case.
I honestly don't know what you're talking about, as far as separation of powers being breached. Congress has the power of the purse, which they continue to wield, with increasing vagueness over the years. One way to have avoided all this in the first place is if Congress would put specifics into law exactly how money they approve is allocated. That mostly doesn't happen. They say $40 billion must be spent by this outfit." That gives the executive branch a heckuva lot of leeway on how that money gets spent by that agency. And that leeway has been exercised since time immemorial....this is not some new thing we're dealing with. The president may run into legit legal challenges if he tries to just stop spending USAID $ altogether. But the executive branch absolutely can rearrange that $, making tweaks, cuts, or reallocations across a broad scope, and the executive branch has always done so. If Congress were to have specified exactly how USAID spends the money they allowed it, then sure, there'd be a lot more rules in place. But there aren't. And no judge who has currently halted the freezes has said anything unconstitutional has been done. They've said "Let's take a look at this and rule on it." That's neither power of the purse interference nor a constitutional crisis. On the contrary, if anything, it's checks and balances working as it should.
What DOGE is doing now, President Carter attempted to do back in the 70's, but he ran into so much blowback that he folded. After him, Reagan tried to do the same thing, but abandoned the project, having been told by his aids (who were probably right, at the time) that the beast was too hopelessly complicated, and auditing the executive branch just wasn't possible. Nobody said anything about separation of powers or constitutional crisis then. They told Carter they didn't want him to, and then told Reagan it couldn't be done, but nobody said the presidents weren't authorized to try.
We were far closer to a breach in separation of powers when Biden stated in multiple addresses that he openly defied the Supreme Court on the student-loan forgiveness thing, or when he hilariously tried to tweet the 28th Amendment into existence. And even then, we were nowhere near a crisis, or, imo, an actual breach of separation of powers. Separations of powers goes hand in hand with checks and balances, and so far, I don't see anything that's not working properly here. Mostly just that a lot of folks don't like it.
