Trump’s abuses of spending power fall into three categories.

First, he has refused to spend money that Congress allocated.

He avoided allocating foreign aid with a maneuver known as a pocket rescission,
and he withheld funds for electric vehicles, libraries and museums, preschools, other schools, grants for scientific research and emergency response operations.

Second, Trump has spent money that Congress has not allocated.

During the shutdown, he paid military troops and some other federal workers without congressional approval.

He used private funds from a billionaire supporter for some of the payments,
setting a dangerous precedent.

Earlier in his term, he declared an emergency to divert funds for the military to his border crackdown.

Third, the president has taken steps that effectively overturn Congress’s spending decisions.

In these cases, he has not added or subtracted federal funds,
but he has taken other steps that make it so an agency cannot carry out the mission that Congress envisioned for it.

He has gutted the Department of Education with layoffs,
making it impossible for the agency to do things, such as protect students’ civil rights, that Congress appropriated funds for it to do.

He has taken similar steps with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In some of these instances, courts have attempted to stop Trump,
but his policies remain in effect while the cases wind through the courts.

In too many other instances, the Supreme Court has unwisely endorsed Trump’s approach.
(It allowed his cuts to foreign aid, for example, asserting that the president has broad authority over foreign policy.)

Either way, the result is an expansion of presidential power and a weakening of the legislature that should alarm anybody who shares the American founders’ suspicion of centralized power