The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers important grant programs created and funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), such as the Rural Energy for America Program, the Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program, the National Resources Conservation Service’s Conservation Technical Assistance Program, and other programs to provide assistance and support for underserved farmers. 

Shortly after President Trump took office, he issued an executive order indefinitely freezing all USDA programs funded by the IRA, including to existing grantees performing projects for which USDA had already obligated funds. He also ordered USDA to review its programs for alignment with his own policy preferences. A group of nonprofits and farmers who had been awarded USDA grants to carry out vital work in their communities filed suit to challenge these actions in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.  

In July 2025, CAC filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. Our brief focuses on Plaintiffs’ claims related to the impoundment of congressionally mandated funds. It 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 control 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. Most significantly, after President Richard Nixon unlawfully refused to spend billions of dollars in federal appropriations, the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (ICA) was passed to rein in the President, creating special procedures the President must follow to seek congressional approval for delays or cancellations of federal funding. Recently, in response to the first Trump administration’s efforts to withhold foreign aid, Congress strengthened the ICA with new transparency requirements. 

Third, centuries of executive practice and court precedent confirm that the President and his subordinates have no authority to defy the will of Congress by refusing to execute laws requiring the disbursement of federal funding. In the 1838 decision Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, the Supreme Court held that the executive branch had no inherent constitutional authority to rescind appropriated funds—a point the Court reiterated 150 years later in Train v. City of New York, rejecting President Nixon’s effort to rescind environmental protection funding. Lower courts across the country have similarly rejected presidential efforts to pause or cancel federal funding in defiance of Congress, as have high-ranking and respected executive branch attorneys, including some who went on to become Supreme Court justices.