In mid-May, the Department of Government Efficiency — which was established by an executive order, does not have the statutory authority of a government department or agency, is not funded by Congress and claims to not be subject to legislative oversight — tried to embed a team in the Government Accounting Office. The GAO helps Congress audit government spending to identify waste, fraud and mismanagement.
Officials of the GAO, a legislative branch agency currently investigating more than three dozen allegations that the Trump administration illegally withheld congressionally authorized funds, refused. The GAO “is not subject to executive orders,” a spokeswoman added.
Faced with the same demand, officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting said no as well, citing a statute stipulating that it “will not be an agency or establishment of the United States government.”
Nonetheless, a staff member of DOGE reportedly declared that his “department” intended to investigate “every institute or agency that has congressional monies appropriated to it,” including private nonprofits.
The distribution of power into three separate, coequal branches of the federal government is a foundational principle of American democracy. The Constitution authorizes Congress “to lay and collect taxes, duties,” including tariffs, and approve government spending. Congressional authority in these areas was reinforced in 1974 by a law prohibiting the executive branch from impounding funds. The Constitution says the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” and that the judiciary shall interpret them.
Any assault on the separation of powers should concern all Americans — especially conservatives, who have in the past railed against the augmentation of executive branch power.
Although reducing the deficit is certainly a reasonable goal, the slapdash, sledgehammer cuts to existing programs as outlined in executive orders or specified by DOGE and implemented by administration officials without congressional approval, are certain to harm many, many people in the U.S. and abroad.
Over the last four months, the Trump administration has frozen, canceled, clawed back and impounded $430 billion approved by Congress. Affected programs include research into cancer, diabetes and dementia; relief for states recovering from natural disasters; early childhood education; and repairing, replacing and building infrastructure such as roads, bridges, airports, sea ports and public transit.
In April, the National Science Foundation terminated 1,040 grants, totaling $739 million. The NSF was then ordered to freeze funding on all grants until further notice, amid a vague new requirement that they be “in alignment with agency policies.” To date, the NSF has received only a quarter of the money Congress appropriated for the fiscal year.
Between Feb. 28 and Apr. 8, the National Institutes of Health terminated 694 grants, totaling $1.8 billion. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is tasked, among other functions, with developing vaccines for potential pandemics, experienced the biggest reduction, $506 million. These cuts affected red states as well as blue states, with $100 million at risk in Arkansas, for example, much of it allocated to work on pediatric asthma at Children’s Hospital in Little Rock and research on cancer, ALS and Alzheimer’s.
A 50 percent reduction in federal government funding for science, according to one study, would reduce U.S. GDP by a whopping 7.6 percent. Even if the cuts are smaller, first-rate researchers are likely to seek positions in other countries. China may well overtake America as the global leader in basic and applied science, medicine, artificial intelligence and engineering.
Meanwhile, DOGE and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have eliminated 83 percent of the programs administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was established by Congress some 60 years ago. The HIV/AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR was the largest of them. Established in 2003 by President George W. Bush and renewed by Congress four times — most recently (along with USAID) in the 2025 continuing resolution that avoided a government shutdown — PEPFAR has been credited with saving 26 million lives and making it possible for 7.8 million children to be born.
A stop-work order initially froze all PEPFAR programs and services. On Feb. 1, PEPFAR received a limited waiver to conduct “life-saving HIV services,” but since thousands of HIV workers had been fired, community outreach terminated, nonprofit organizations not paid and drug supply chains disrupted, 71 percent of prevention and treatment services were not restored. Ending PEPFAR, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates, will result in 3 million additional HIV-related deaths in 26 countries by 2030.
In March, Federal Judge Amir Ali declared that the Trump administration lacked the authority to freeze funding for USAID. “The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the President’s own,” the judge declared, “and it is Congress’ own.” He dismissed the “unbridled view of executive power that the Supreme Court has consistently rejected.” The Trump administration, however, has not revived the thousands of canceled contracts.
Lawsuits to reinstate USAID have been filed, but it is likely too late to save the agency, which now has a skeletal staff and is under the direct supervision of the State Department. And it will be difficult to restore American “soft power” in developing countries, where China has increased its foreign aid.
As the Trump administration continues to bypass, ignore and essentially overrule Congress, Republicans in the Senate and House remain missing in action. Asked why the congressional DOGE caucus hasn’t met in months — a question that applies as well to asserting its responsibility over the levying of tariffs — Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) gave a “can’t walk while chewing gum” excuse. “We’re so damn busy,” he said, “with our own great, great big bill.”
Until and unless the Republicans who control Congress take affirmative steps to reclaim their rightful role in the separation of powers, the U.S. will continue to move away from the democratic constitutional order that has served us well for a long, long time.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
