Trump's vast federal cuts create distrust on Capitol Hill as shutdown risk grows

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The money started drying up quickly, almost as soon as President Donald Trump began issuing his executive orders.

Head Start funds for early childhood programs. National Institutes of Health grants. Funding for the nation’s public libraries and museums. Money from a landmark bipartisan infrastructure law to help schools renovate classrooms and states build electric vehicle charging stations. Federal Emergency Management Agency food and shelter assistance.

“There’s a lot of fear out there,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, whose organization raised early concerns about funding delays that could impact children and families.

While the money is largely flowing again, he said, thanks in large part to Head Start's track record — celebrating its 60th anniversary this year — “Obviously, we need to make sure our funding is reliable.”

All told, billions upon billions of dollars have been single-handedly stalled, scrapped or withheld by the Trump administration so far this year — with as much as $410 billion at risk, by certain congressional estimates — in one of the most brazen affronts to the federal process in 50 years, since the budget laws were overhauled in the Nixon era.

Trump’s willingness to order the government agencies to simply halt spending that’s already been approved by Congress and signed into law is a violation, according to a nonpartisan government watchdog. And it’s creating a crisis on Capitol Hill and beyond, with an undercurrent of deep distrust as lawmakers clash over legislation to prevent a federal government shutdown.

“Every single one of us should be deeply alarmed by the lawless course the administration is charting here,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said at a summer hearing with Trump's budget director, Russ Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025.

On the surface, the standoff between Congress and the White House looks like a governmental dispute over federal spending levels, and the Trump administration's desire to end so-called “woke” and wasteful programs across the nation, and the world.

But from DOGE's budget-slashing efforts under billionaire Elon Musk to the budget rescission packages Vought has sent to Capitol Hill, what's unfolding is a deeper debate over the separation of powers — raising stark questions over what happens if the White House moves more aggressively to cut House and Senate lawmakers out of the federal funding process.

This week, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget under Vought directed agencies to prepare for mass firings — reductions in force — rather than simply furloughs of federal workers, in the event of a shutdown next week.

“This is a high point in presidential assertion over the spending power — it might be the highest point ever,” said Kevin Kosar, a scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

While past presidents challenged Congress before — Jimmy Carter simply vetoed dozens of spending bills, and George W. Bush used presidential signing statements to carve out sections of legislation he disagreed with — Kosar said what Trump is doing “really garbles the logic” of the entire budget process.

“The rules don’t really apply much any more,” he said.

And it’s coming to an inflection point next week, Sept. 30, when Congress must pass legislation to keep the government from shutting down.

Vought’s office did not respond to a request for an interview, but he has been vocal about his views — and what’s to come.

Writing in Project 2025, Vought explained that “the great challenge” facing a conservative president “is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.”

Vought said this will require a “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.”

Since Trump took office in January, the federal watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, has issued a flurry of notices of violations in a rare reprimand of instances where the Trump administration has failed to unleash the money in accordance with the appropriation laws from Congress.

Among the dozens of investigations GAO opened this year, the funding uncertainty around Head Start, the NIH, museums and libraries, energy and transportation infrastructure programs and FEMA are among those that rose to become violations. More decisions are expected in the days ahead, before the Sept. 30 deadline for the federal government to get certain funds out the door.

Edda Emmanuelli Perez, the general counsel at GAO, which was created more than 100 years ago as a check on federal spending, said presidents have the ability to roll back spending, so long as it follows the process.

“The president has that authority to make these proposals,” she said in an interview.

“If Congress then decides, yes, we agree, we’re going to pass a law to cancel the funds, then the funds get cancelled,” she said. “If Congress does not pass it, then that means the president has to, again, go back to the terms of the law and release those funds.”