Trump Threatens to Take Over Congress’s Powers in Budget War

Donald Trump has just sent Republicans in Congress a budget proposal that cuts nearly everything, and if they don’t like it, he says he’ll withhold cash that they approve, setting up a constitutional crisis.

The budget proposal, released Friday, would slash nearly every federal program by $163 billion, except for defense spending, which would remain flat. Many Republicans are already unhappy with it, but the White House may not heed their concerns. One official in the Office of Management and Budget told Politico that the administration wouldn’t rule out impoundment, or overriding Congress’s decision by withholding funding it has already approved.

“We’re working with Congress to see what they will pass, and I believe that they have an interest in passing cuts,” said the official.

Such a move would violate the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which Trump and his allies have called unconstitutional. The law prevents the president from withholding money allocated by Congress or using it for different purposes. Trump attempting to impound funds in this way would be a direct challenge to the Constitution’s separation of powers, and could result in a legal fight that ends up in front of the Supreme Court.

Trump hinted at bringing back “presidential impoundment authority” while campaigning for president, making his attempt to seize appropriated funds a real possibility, despite the Constitution clearly stating that the authority over government spending lies with Congress. The head of OMB, Project 2025 author Russell Vought, also called the Impoundment Act unconstitutional in his confirmation hearing.

So, will the president try to impound funds, and will Republicans stand up for their own constitutional authority if he does? The GOP has not shown much, if any resolve, in standing up to Trump, and Democrats have little they can do as the minority in the House and Senate. It seems that if Trump tries to seize funds, the courts may be the only check on his power.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller may be up next for a new position in Donald Trump’s administration: Axios reported Friday that he’s a top candidate to replace Mike Waltz, Trump’s departing national security adviser.

Miller, the ghoulish white nationalist behind the president’s anti-immigrant crusade, is already serving as the president’s adviser on Homeland Security; reportedly he runs the Homeland Security Council “like clockwork.”

Miller has already been working with the National Security Council, running what The Atlantic reported was the “most active and well-staffed” section on homeland security, which at times operated entirely independently from the leadership office previously run by Waltz. It worked so well that Alex Wong, Waltz’s deputy, expressed concerns about the perceived split between the two factions.

It’s unlikely that Miller’s work as a homeland security adviser would stop him from taking on an additional role: Right now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has four. The secretary is also serving as the head of what remains of the United States Agency for International Development and the acting archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration—and in doing so, has found himself leading both an agency that has violated the Federal Records Act and the one that is meant to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Two White House sources told Axios that Miller’s work with Rubio made him well suited for the role. Another said that the fiery advocate had already expressed his interest in taking on the job, and another said that “if Stephen wants the job, it’s hard to see why Trump wouldn’t say yes.”

In recent weeks, Miller has been a fierce advocate for the Trump administration’s immigration policies—sometimes too fierce—and has set off on unhinged rants during multiple television interviews and addresses.

Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla aid ship aiming to break Israel’s two-month siege on Gaza, was struck by drones off the coast of Malta in the early hours of Friday. There were no casualties as a nearby tugboat helped put out the fire.

Footage shows smoke, flames, and massive, gaping holes in the ship’s hull. “Conscience has been bombed two times [just] a few minutes ago in 14 miles to the Maltese port,” one of the flotilla workers said through coughs as smoke filled his lungs.

“Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said in a statement. And while the coalition stopped short of directly blaming Israel, they demanded that “Israeli ambassadors be summoned and answer to violations of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel in international waters.”

“Our Flotilla is challenging not only that blockade that has kept all of the food and water and everything out of Gaza now for almost a month and a half, on the genocide that the U.S. is complicit [in]. The Israeli genocide of at least 55–60,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” said Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who now works for the Freedom Flotilla. “Right here, we are in Malta dealing with a brutal attack on an innocent ship, a ship that was anchored or outside of territorial waters, waiting for us, the activists to come on board so that we could then head toward Gaza to say to the world, ‘Here are some citizens who are willing to take action where our government has failed to act.’ … While we cannot yet identify the source of the drones, there is no doubt in my mind that there’s a history of violence that has been directed toward the flotillas from the state of Israel.”

In 2010, Israel raided six Freedom Flotilla ships in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 10 people and wounding dozens.

Donald Trump, who saw an increase in support from rural voters in the 2024 election, is now seeing huge defections, according to a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll.

The poll taken last week found that only 40 percent of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, down from 59 percent in February, according to Newsweek. Forty-five percent of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s performance in April, which is up from 37 percent who said they disapproved in February.

In the weeks between polls, Trump has unveiled a slate of policy directives that threaten the livelihoods of rural voters, including his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy that has undermined essential trade with America’s top trading partners.

Last month, the European Commission agreed to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on cigarettes from Florida, beef from Kansas and Nebraska, chicken from Louisiana, car parts from Michigan, and most importantly, soybeans—of which the European Union bought $2.43 billion’s worth in 2024. Trump responded with his own insipid optimism, counseling everyone to “BE COOL!”

Farmers were also hurt by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which lost them $2 billion, and the administration’s upending of programs for farms to provide produce for schools and food banks lost them at least another $1 billion.

Farmers aren’t the only rural residents hurt by Trump—workers and small businesses have also been impacted by shrinking consumer confidence and fears about an impending economic recession caused by roiling markets. Some believe it’s already begun.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The president’s massive cuts to disaster preparedness programs threaten vulnerable rural regions that could be hit by the oncoming hurricane season. After Trump floated eliminating FEMA altogether, the agency stopped paying for temporary housing for more than 1,200 families displaced by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

As recently as Friday, Trump’s directive to slash federal funding at NPR and PBS would also disproportionately impact rural areas, which receive the most of the sliver of money granted by the government for educational and cultural programming.

The only group of voters, between those in urban, suburban, and rural areas who reported an increase in support for the president, were small-town voters, with 53 percent approving of his job performance, in an increase from 46 percent in February.

In the 2024 presidential election, a whopping 62 percent of rural voters supported Trump, while only 36 percent backed Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast. This demonstrated a 4 percent increase in rural support for Trump compared to 2020.

CBS’s flagship news magazine show 60 Minutes is upping the ante in its fight against Donald Trump. The show’s upcoming Sunday segment will focus on how the Trump administration has targeted law firms in an apparent quest to punish those who dared to challenge him when he was out of office, according to an online listing for the episode.

“On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to wield the power of the presidency to go after his perceived enemies,” the listing reads. “Now in the White House, Trump is using executive orders to target some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.”

The show has had a tumultuous year covering the MAGA leader, who has continued to dedicate significant attention to a sit-down interview that aired on 60 Minutes prior to Election Day with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has repeatedly argued that a version of Harris’s answer regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the broadcast had essentially “defrauded” the American public, since two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her 21-second answer on different days.

Trump sued CBS for $20 billion after the interview, claiming that the different clips amounted to “election interference” and that Harris should drop out of the presidential race over the GOP-baked scandal.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Trump and his allies have also insisted that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answer. And on Wednesday, the president attempted to rope The New York Times into the affair, protesting online that the newspaper’s decision to quote individuals who described the case as “baseless” is tantamount to “tortious interference.”

An independent review by the Federal Communications Commission showed that the two answers were in fact cut from the same longer response. Editing answers for time is considered general practice in television news and regularly happens.

The mounting pressure from the lawsuit forced out the show’s chief producer, Bill Owens, last week, shocking employees who described the 24-year show runner’s exit as akin to pulling a “pin from his last grenade.” Owens had refused to apologize or admit wrongdoing in handling Harris’s interview. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is reportedly moving to settle the lawsuit.

“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” one unidentified 60 Minutes employee told CNN, referring to the non-executive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global. “60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer.”

But regardless of Trump or executive perspectives, the media industry has continued to recognize the value of 60 Minutes’ programming. On Thursday, the show’s controversial Harris segment was nominated for an Emmy.