During President Trump’s first eight days in office, he issued a series of executive orders directing federal agencies to freeze funding deemed not to be in furtherance of his policy priorities. On January 27, 2025, his Office of Management and Budget issued a directive categorically implementing this massive suspension of federal funding. The spending freeze immediately threw the states into limbo because they rely on federal funding to provide even the most basic services to their residents. Among other things, the federal funding freeze has halted vital programs and public services provided by states like highway planning and construction, childcare programming, veteran nursing care, special education grants, state health departments, and disaster relief.  

A coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia challenged the suspension of funding in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island, and the district court granted a preliminary injunction. The Trump administration appealed the preliminary injunction to the First Circuit and asked it to grant an emergency stay of the injunction pending appeal. 

In March 2025, CAC filed an amicus brief in opposition to the Trump administration’s emergency motion for a stay. Our brief makes two principal points. 

First, the Framers gave Congress control of appropriations and spending to guard against the risk of a tyrannical president. They took pains to deny the President the sweeping powers that the King of England had historically enjoyed, such as the power to spend without Parliament’s approval. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, there was a clear consensus that the legislative branch would have the power of the purse. In the Taxing and Spending Clause, the Framers granted Congress the affirmative power to raise revenue and to spend funds, while the Appropriations Clause limits the executive, stating that “[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The text of the Constitution is clear that the executive branch cannot make an end-run around the legislative process, including in the realm of spending and appropriations. 

Second, centuries of practice and precedent confirm that the President and his subordinates have no authority to defy the will of Congress by refusing to execute laws requiring the disbursement of federal funding. In the 1838 decision Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, the Supreme Court held that the executive branch had no inherent constitutional authority to rescind appropriated funds—a point the Court reiterated 150 years later in Train v. City of New York, rejecting President Nixon’s effort to rescind environmental protection funding. Lower courts across the country have similarly rejected presidential efforts to pause or cancel federal funding in defiance of Congress. 

The First Circuit should leave in place the district court’s order blocking President Trump’s unlawful attempt to usurp Congress’s role in appropriations and spending.