A few years ago, Congress approved a seemingly uncontroversial law related to government transparency: The measure, signed into law by Joe Biden, required the executive branch to maintain a publicly accessible website that showed how funding is apportioned to various federal agencies.
Despite the policy’s bipartisan support, earlier this year, Russell Vought, who leads the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told Congress that Donald Trump and his team had decided they weren’t going to follow the law anymore. In fact, Vought said that the administration had concluded that the spending included “sensitive” information, which required that the website to be taken down.
This claim didn’t fare well in court. The Hill reported:
A federal judge ruled the Trump administration violated federal law by taking down a public website that showed how funding is apportioned to federal agencies, ordering its reinstatement. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Monday that removal of the online database overseen by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated legislation passed by Congress, which requires the OMB to make apportionment decisions publicly available within two business days.
Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a written statement, “Today’s ruling is a major win for transparency and for Congress’s power of the purse. The courts have affirmed that the American people have a right to know how President Trump is using their money and what he may be trying to hide. This decision leaves no doubt: The data must be public.”
As for the OMB claim about “sensitive” spending information, Boyle’s office also confirmed that the existing law, as written, already allows the apportionment database to exclude classified material.
According to the judge in this case — which was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Protect Democracy, two independent watchdog organizations — Trump and Vought relied on “an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power” to justify its indifference to their statutory requirements.
Sullivan added, “The law is clear. Congress has sweeping authority to require public disclosure of how the Executive Branch is apportioning the funds appropriated by Congress,” and “there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money. Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!”
While this has hardly been the most high-profile legal fight the White House has dealt with in recent months, it caught my eye for a for reasons.
First, federal court rulings tend not to feature exclamation points, but jurists are struggling with increasing frequency to manage their frustrations with the administration.
Second, the fact that Vought, the far-right OMB director, relied on “an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power” is a definite sign of the times.
Third, for all of the recent talk in Republican circles about how “transparent” this White House is, the public is constantly confronting evidence to the contrary.
And finally, in our constitutional system of government, it shouldn’t be necessary for a federal court to tell the White House “to stop violating the law,” and yet, here we are.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
