In 2021, Congress passed the Digital Equity Act, a $2.75 billion program designed to help close the digital divide—the gap between those who have access to modern telecommunication and information technologies and those who do not. Among other things, the Act created a Competitive Grant Program to implement this goal. Yet in 2025, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the Digital Equity Act was a “woke handout[]” which he was “ending . . . IMMEDIATELY.” The next day, the executive branch formally terminated the Competitive Grant Program.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), a group which advocates for digital access in underserved communities, challenged the elimination of this mandatory program in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. In May 2026, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief in support of NDIA. Our brief makes three principal points.

First, the Framers gave Congress control of appropriations and spending to guard against the risk of a tyrannical president. They took pains to deny the President the sweeping powers that the King of England had historically enjoyed, such as the power to spend without Parliament’s approval. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, there was a clear consensus that the legislative branch would have the power of the purse. In the Taxing and Spending Clause, the Framers granted Congress the affirmative power to raise revenue and to spend funds, while the Appropriations Clause limits the executive, stating that “[n]o Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The text of the Constitution is clear that the executive branch cannot make an end-run around the legislative process, including in the realm of spending and appropriations.

Second, for hundreds of years, Congress has passed federal legislation guarding its power of the purse. Since the earliest days of the Republic, when the Tenth Congress passed the Purpose Statue requiring appropriations to be “solely applied to the objects for which they are respectively appropriated,” Congress has made clear that the President cannot disobey its spending decisions. The Anti-Deficiency Act reiterates that the executive branch cannot make spending decisions outside of what is authorized by law. And after President Richard Nixon unlawfully refused to spend billions of dollars in federal appropriations, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to create special procedures the President must follow to seek congressional approval for delays or cancellations of federal funding.

Third, the Trump administration’s unilateral termination of the Competitive Grant Program violates the separation of powers and the Spending Clause through executive usurpation of Congress’s power of the purse. The President’s authority to act must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself. Here, neither justification is present. The President may not make an end-run around the process the Framers prescribed for legislating. Where Congress has not delegated any discretion to alter the terms of the Competitive Grant Program created by the Digital Equity Act, the President has no power to change the text of the law, much less wipe it off the books completely. To the contrary, the Constitution requires that the President “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” even when he disagrees with those laws.