The federal government may still be shut down, but that hasn’t stopped President Donald Trump from promising some eye-wateringly large checks.
How can Trump continue to fund his pet programs even though federal appropriations ran out roughly three weeks ago? As it turns out, Trump is often leaning on creative accounting and a slush fund that legal experts argue may violate federal law.
With the federal shutdown expected to drag on, Trump tasked Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought with finding ways to keep money flowing without congressional approval—which is often required—and Vought was apparently happy to oblige.
“OMB is making every preparation to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats’ intransigence,” the OMB wrote in an Oct. 14 post on X. “Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the [reductions in force], and wait.”
Trump made good on Vought’s threat this past Wednesday, when he signed an order authorizing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay the nation’s troops using funds that Hegseth “determines are provided for purposes that have a reasonable, logical relationship to the pay and allowances of military personnel, consistent with applicable law.”
But federal policy experts at the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense say that such a move likely violates the Antideficiency Act of 1888, which “prevents the government from spending money it doesn’t have.”
That’s of little concern to Trump, who knows that unpaid troops will quickly lose their patience with his destructive shutdown antics.
As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern point out, Trump’s attempt to turn himself into a one-man Congress is a power grab unprecedented in American history—and clearly in violation of the enumerated powers of Congress.
In fact, even Trump’s move to pay troops was serious enough that some Republican senators griped that the White House wasn’t being straight with them about its legal reasoning. Shocking!
“We’ve been given two different explanations,” said Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, regarding paying troops during the shutdown. “One, is that it’s unobligated balances. One, is that it’s taken from certain research and technology programs. But we don’t have the specifics. We have asked for the specifics.”
A farmer in Indiana drives a combine down a row of soybeans in 2019.
But Trump’s plan for his supposed slush fund goes far beyond just repurposing money already appropriated by Congress.
Last month, he promised struggling American farmers a federal aid package, saying he’d fund it with tariff revenue—yes, the very tariffs responsible for causing those farmers this much pain. But Congress would have to authorize that move, and it hasn’t even formally debated it yet.
As with so many things Trumpian, the problem is not necessarily who will benefit from these financial moves. For instance, the administration has said it wants to use tariff revenue to maintain food assistance for pregnant women, mothers, and young children—a very worthwhile endeavor. Rather, the issue is that Trump is pushing the envelope on what extraordinary new powers he has, and this ploy can—and likely will—be used to serve even more of his own interests in the future.
It’s easy to imagine Trump ramping up tariffs simply to swell a war chest he alone oversees, free of congressional oversight and used solely to advance his personal goals. $10 billion to ICE for the purchase of military weaponry? Done. No purpose is too self-interested or shady in a system where Trump controls the purse strings of a parallel government treasury.
Democrats and government watchdogs are pinning their hopes on the federal courts to enforce the law, but that may be wishful thinking in a federal judiciary jam-packed with Trump loyalists.
Of course, Congress could stand up for itself, even going so far as to pass new laws explicitly criminalizing Trump’s creative accounting, but that would require a Congress willing to protect its own constitutional prerogatives. And that’s unlikely as long as MAGA-aligned Republicans control both chambers.
Trump’s latest federal shutdown has offered him yet another testing ground for the unconstitutional power grabs that define his second term. His administration has made clear it intends to press forward unless Congress or the courts stop them.
