Has Congress Ceded Power To The White House — And Can It Get It Back?

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram.
I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grizalis.
I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And today on the show, we're asking where does Congress's authority end and President Trump's begin?

Between the spending fights on Capitol Hill and the administration's recent military strikes on boats in the Caribbean, executive power is being used in pretty unexpected ways.

So, Claudia, let's start with you. These strikes on the boats in the Caribbean, the administration says these are part of an effort to fight the illegal drug trade.

But what role does Congress have in these actions, or what role should Congress have in these actions?

So, starting with Congress and the role they have in the strikes, it's not much of a role, especially when you consider how little Congress has intervened here.

That lack of intervention signals how weak this Congress actually is. So the public is left with more questions than answers and virtually no oversight.

If Congress was involved, if we've looked at past precedent, Congress would be conducting in-depth planning, questioning, interviews, committee hearings.

So much activity would happen before these strikes would commence because this is such a shift in terms of equating drug traffickers with terrorists.

Now they're being referred to as drug trafficking terrorists. The administration is just saying they're on the same level.
We can use military force because of that.

But this is where Congress would step in and say, wait a second, why do you consider them terrorists? As well as this secret list we keep hearing about. What is that?

So in terms of the contact that members have had with the administration, again, there hasn't been much.

But one thing they were told is that there's a list of targets, but they said the list is secret. We know about Trende Aragua.

We know they're targeting drug traffickers, but we don't know who else is on this list. And those are among the questions that senators haven't been able to get answers to.

Well, is there anyone on the Hill who's expressed concern about this? I mean, that's a pretty big deal. What are they saying?

Well, we have a growing bipartisan list of members who are concerned, albeit the Republican side is a much shorter list.

That said, we saw the first congressional test to weigh in on this new military campaign being waged against Venezuela.

Democratic senators Adam Schiff of California, Tim Kaine of Virginia force a vote last week in respect to the strikes on international waters that have killed at least 27.

We saw Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, and Lisa Murkowski, another Republican of Alaska, join Democrats on this. So it fell short of passage.

But now we're seeing Paul team up with Kane and Schiff to force a new vote next week, as soon as next week, to limit Trump's powers in respect to launching a war against Venezuela without congressional approval.

The reasons we're hearing behind these concerns, one, this is an issue in terms of drug interdiction that is traditionally left to the Coast Guard. Guard.

They will detain boats, they will interview individuals they detain, and they'll pursue charges if they find enough evidence. That's not what's happening here.

I talked to Rand Paul about this quite a bit. He says the U.S.
is essentially shooting first and asking questions later.

I think the idea of indiscriminately killing people without knowing their names, without seeing any evidence, without making a formal accusation or without collecting evidence.

It's kind of ironic that we think these people are so dangerous we're going to kill them without any information.

But then if we actually capture two of them alive, we don't keep them or interrogate them, we're giving them back to their countries.

Well, Mara, let's kind of put this into context here because it has happened before that Congress has not really given the President approval to take military action.

But this is sort of a little different.

Well, this is a d different. And as usual, with all of these things where Donald Trump expands the power of the presidency, he takes what other presidents have done to a new level and a new extreme.

Yes, presidents have authorized military action abroad without going to Congress first. That's happened many times.
But in this case, he's doing this over and over again.

He has not asked Congress to declare war. He has not provided them with any information.

And as Rand Paul says, some of the things that the administration is doing regarding Venezuela don't make any sense.

If these are dangerous people that are threatening the national security of the United States, why let them go?

Yeah, we don't know for sure how many strikes there's been. There's a lot of guessing.
Maybe there have been more that haven't been made public.

And while the administration gave some initial details related to the first couple attacks, that it was related to drug trafficking and stopping members of the Trende Aragua Venezuelan gang from entering the United States, we don't know much more than that.

And same goes for much of Congress. There haven't even been any all-member briefings on this.
Only the Senate Armed Services Committee has held a briefing on this weeks ago.

And what I heard, especially from Democrats, is that they didn't get any information that provided legal justification for these strikes, and they still don't know who was killed, and so many other questions that follow.

And just to just remind people, this is not an opposition Congress. This is a Congress that is likely to be very supportive of what Donald Trump presents to them or asks them.

But he's totally dissing a Congress run by his own party. Well, speaking of Congress, let's kind of move on to the power of the purse here.

Claudia, how is the White House stepping on that congressional power? Right.

We've seen President Trump beating this unilateral power drum over and over this year, building upon expanding the powers of the executive.

For example, with shutting down federal agencies without congressional involvement there, pushing rescission packages through this year, clawing back billions in spending that was congressionally approved, and now during a government shutdown, moving money around to pay some federal workers.

And that, among the other decisions that Trump has made, has raised questions about the legality of doing this.

It seems like the White House is making all these moves, but no one's standing in their way.

No, not those who could.

For example, I talked to Senate Republican leader John Thune of South Dakota, and he, like many other Republicans, defend all of these actions by the president and say they're still in charge.

They still have a critical role in our government. I mean, we have the power of the purse, obviously.
Everybody's waiting for the government to be opened up. Congress has to do that.

There are things they can do. They're moving money around.
They're doing things that any administration has done in the past to try and keep people, as many people as possible, getting paid.

But at the end of the day, it's still Congress that has to fund the government. Mara, has the White House said anything about this?

Russ Vogt, who's the head of the Office of Management and Budget, says that he considers appropriations by Congress to be merely a ceiling, not a floor.

In other words, if Congress appropriates a certain amount of money, Vogt says that means we can't spend more than that amount, but we could spend less, including zero.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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And we're back. So for both of you, Claudia and Mara, I want to zoom out here for a moment because there are three co-equal branches of government, right? Each of them has their own roles.

But with the current state of affairs in this Trump administration,

How broken is the separation of powers right now?

I think it's pretty broken. I've spoken with some experts about this, professors who have been watching the balance of power for government for decades.

And I've heard everything from it's a constitutional crisis to it's a collapse. I talked to Stephen Vladek, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

I asked him, are we seeing an actual erosion of congressional powers? And he said, there's more we're seeing here. I think erosion is almost not strong enough.

I think we've seen a radical collapse of congressional power oof radical collapse yeah yeah i think we're seeing a transformation of the american form of government i mean the idea that the founders had that you'd have three co-equal branches of government each one would jealously guard their prerogatives right uh ambition against ambition is what they wrote in the federalist papers and there would be checks and balances.

They didn't want an executive who would be like a monarch. But, you know, I think we are moving towards a system where instead of three co-equal branches, we have a very powerful executive branch.

You've seen Donald Trump fire the heads of independent agencies, and the Supreme Court has supported him. He almost has total control now over the executive branch.

He can fire tens of thousands of workers who used to be protected by civil service rules.

And now it's not really a fight because Congress is giving up in advance, but now we're seeing the president take more and more power over the power of the purse, over appropriations and spending.

And this did not start with Trump. I mean, Congress has failed to

execute its most basic constitutional functions for years. And I think the question about what happens to congressional authority if Congress doesn't wield it, I think it does wither.

The other question is, are we heading to a purely partisan system where Congress only asserts itself if it's an opposition Congress and there's a different party in the White House?

I don't believe that congressional Republicans, especially in the Senate, would be this accommodating to a Democratic president.

I know you don't have a crystal ball here, but is it possible that this changes, that maybe in a Republican-controlled Congress where Donald Trump maybe isn't the president, that things might shift?

Sure. Sure.
I think that you've seen Republican Congresses recently push back against Democratic presidents. That's very possible.

But the trend is definitely towards a stronger executive and a weaker legislative branch.

Yeah, at least with this Republican-led Congress, what we basically would need to see is for Republican leaders to take ordinary actions in extraordinary times.

They've really followed the president's lead time and time again, and we just don't know where that line is where they will stop the president from going too far in terms of expanding his executive powers.

All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram.
I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grizares, I cover Congress.
And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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