Trump’s Military Payroll Gambit Is a Baldly Illegal Seizure of Power
Treasury is supposed to listen to Congress when it decides where this money goes. Musk, a South African-born billionaire with little understanding of American civics or political culture, had a different idea. He unilaterally blocked large swaths of federal spending under the false pretense that he was seeking to eliminate fraud and waste. Trump and Bessent not only did not stop it, they encouraged it. Hence the “legal fiction”: it turns out that the power of the stock market actually belongs to the person who holds it.
Musk is no longer part of the federal government, but his anarchic vision remains. Trump increasingly believes that he, not Congress, decides where and how public money is raised and spent. On the revenue side, he began by imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on American businesses and consumers, through an almost certainly illegal interpretation of a 1977 law. The Supreme Court will hold arguments on this issue in November and decide its final legality.
On the spending side, the Trump administration began by targeting discretionary programs – those for which it has some legal leeway – before moving to more ambitious mandatory targets. Congress passed laws creating the Department of Education, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other federal agencies. Trump and Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, still demolished these agencies by laying off employees and shutting down most of their operations.
