The Legal Battle Over Trump Defunding Democratic States

By Thor Benson  |  October 9, 2025 | 10:11am
Photo by The White House
Trump Administration Donald Trump
The Legal Battle Over Trump Defunding Democratic States

While the government has been shut down, Donald Trump has been trying to convince the Democrats that this is good for him and bad for them. The polling suggests otherwise so far, but one thing Trump is doing is trying to pull funding from infrastructure projects in Democratic states, such as New York. This is a continuation of behavior we’ve seen from this administration, and it brings up many serious legal questions.

Before there was much talk of a shutdown at all, Trump was pulling funding from renewable energy projects around the country—often in Democratic states but not always. These actions have raised questions around the power of the purse, impoundment, appropriations. Is the president allowed to defund projects like this at all?

When it comes to what Trump has been doing since the shutdown started, it doesn’t appear Trump is on stable legal ground.

“This is entirely unprecedented and thoroughly illegal,” David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University, told Splinter. “It has nothing to do with the shutdown. The administration is merely associating it with the shutdown to put pressure on Democrats. The shutdown could end tomorrow, and the administration would likely continue to defund blue states and cities.”

Without getting into granular detail regarding the relevant laws here, Super said Trump can’t legally do what he’s been doing. There are times when the federal government can stop funding to projects to “protect human life or property against imminent threats,” but that’s not what’s happening here.

As for what Trump was doing before the shutdown, which was cutting funding to renewable energy projects, Super said there are also serious legal issues present with those actions.

“In many instances, these actions were unlawful impoundments. The Supreme Court held unanimously in Train v. City of New York that the president lacks the power to refuse to spend funds Congress has appropriated,” Super said. “With some of the green energy projects it has defunded, such as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, it also has employed unlawful means, such as invading private bank accounts without legal authority.”

We’ve seen a president try to unilaterally decide what they wanted to fund and what they didn’t want to fund in the past, Super said, in the case of former President Richard Nixon. He tried to withhold funds from projects he didn’t like, so Congress passed a law to prevent that from happening after he left office. That’s the Impoundment Control Act in 1974. Trump is violating that law, among others.

We will see a legal fight play out in the months ahead, and we’ll see if this will be another case where the Supreme Court will side with the president, or if it will be one of the times they decide to limit his power. Regardless, Super said Trump is making it hard for Congress to end the shutdown by violating deals and making it clear that he can’t be trusted with the proper handling of appropriated funds. 

“The administration’s unlawful impoundments, its refusal to honor the agreement it reached with congressional Democrats to enact the March 2025 continuing resolution and its refusal to follow the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act have made it very difficult to reach an agreement to resolve the current government shutdown,” Super said.

 
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