The second Trump Administration has wasted little time in testing the boundaries of executive authority. While many of the President’s supporters are cheering him on, some legal experts see a constitutional crisis unfolding, as many of Trump’s moves raise urgent legal and constitutional questions that could take years to fully unravel.
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00:00Attempting to dismantle independent agencies, granting private individuals access to government systems,
00:05and offering unprecedented federal employee buyouts.
00:08These are three recent political moves Trump pushed to test the limits of his presidential power.
00:13But can he do that without legal challenges?
00:16Trump and Musk want to dismantle USAID,
00:19a key agency providing humanitarian aid around the world, and place it under State Department control.
00:24It's a move that could drastically alter decades of humanitarian efforts.
00:39Trump is quickly shutting down many of USAID's efforts around the world,
00:43but legal experts say he can't shut down the agency entirely without Congress' approval
00:48because of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998.
00:52USAID's current legal status restricts the president's ability to abolish the agency unilaterally.
00:58Any attempt to dissolve USAID would require new legislation from Congress,
01:02and it would be difficult for such a bill to get support from 60 senators,
01:06which would be needed to overcome an all-but-certain filibuster.
01:09Elon Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE,
01:13now has access to the federal payment system,
01:15giving them the ability to monitor and flag potential wasteful or improper payments
01:20in a system that handles over $5 trillion annually in federal disbursements,
01:24including Social Security, Medicare, and tax refunds.
01:28We're trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else.
01:33But the Treasury Department's payment records are more than a federal checkbook.
01:36They are part of a highly sensitive system that processes the country's essential transactions.
01:41It includes personal information from taxpayers, beneficiaries of federal programs,
01:46and contractors raising alarm over the potential for misuse or mishandling of such data.
01:52Legal experts say granting Musk and his team access to such sensitive government data
01:56potentially contravenes multiple federal statutes, including the Privacy Act of 1974.
02:01According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
02:04it's not clear whether Musk or others at DOGE have been granted the proper security clearance
02:08for the records they are accessing.
02:09If they have been granted that clearance,
02:11it's unclear if they went through the rigorous vetting federal employees normally go through to get it.
02:15And the president can't just unilaterally ignore the Privacy Act,
02:19or ignore the tax privacy provisions,
02:21or ignore the Federal Information Security Management Act, also known as FSMA.
02:25Trump's federal buyout program, launched in a series of ultimatum emails to federal workers
02:29to return to the office full-time or resign with a generous buyout, might not be legal either.
02:34The government's funding is currently set to expire in mid-March.
02:38The buyout involves a commitment to pay employees beyond the current appropriation cycle.
02:43The move may violate the Anti-Deficiency Act,
02:46a law that prohibits the government from spending more money than Congress has appropriated,
02:50and the Administrative Leave Act,
02:52which prevents government agencies from using administrative leave
02:55to sideline employees for extended periods without clear justification.
02:59Some Democrats have warned that the scheme could lead to unintended consequences,
03:04such as the exodus of essential employees,
03:06and thereby jeopardizing the government's ability to perform critical functions.
03:10Some federal employees have also expressed confusion
03:13over whether their positions will be exempt from the resignation offer,
03:17with unclear exclusions for certain categories of workers,
03:20including those in national security and immigration enforcement.
03:24The uncertainty has left many federal employees wondering
03:26whether they would truly receive the promised benefits should they opt to leave.