Trump Unleashes King George III's Tyranny

Upends the Founding Principles of the Nation.

When Trump announced he would unilaterally redirect funds to pay furloughed troops - a move in flagrant violation of federal law - the White House dismissed the outrage.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Trump “found a creative solution” and that Democrats, rather than congratulating him, “want to sue him for it. They’re saying that it’s illegal.”

Democrats are correct. Trump’s action is a direct violation of the Antideficiency Act, a law that has been a cornerstone of fiscal accountability for over 150 years.

But to focus only on the statutory breach is to miss the far greater danger. This is not merely a legal infraction; it is a direct assault on the foundational principles of American self-governance.

By seizing Congress’s exclusive “power of the purse,” Trump is reviving the very monarchical overreach that forced the thirteen colonies to declare their independence from King George III.

This is not a partisan squabble over budgets. It is a constitutional crisis that resurrects the most fundamental battle in American history: the people’s right to control their own government.

A Breach of Law and Principle

The administration’s plan to take funds Congress appropriated for future military research and use them for current payroll is precisely what the Antideficiency Act was written to forbid.

The law explicitly prohibits any government officer from spending money that Congress has not provided or spending legally provided money for purposes other than those Congress specified.

The Act was forged after the Civil War to end the executive branch’s abusive practice of intentionally overspending its budget to blackmail Congress into providing more funds.

The current action is a modern, more cynical version of the same coercion, using the welfare of military personnel as emotional leverage to circumvent the law.

This statute, however, is merely the enforcement mechanism for a far more profound constitutional principle: the “power of the purse.”

The Founders, deeply suspicious of concentrated executive power, vested the authority over all federal taxation and spending exclusively in Congress - the branch of government closest and most accountable to the people.

They understood that allowing the hand that “holds the sword” (the executive) to also control the purse was, as James Madison warned, the “very definition of tyranny.”

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

~ James Madison, Federalist No. 47

Madison described the power of the purse as the “most complete and effectual weapon” the Constitution provides to the people’s representatives to check an overzealous executive.

The money in the U.S. Treasury belongs to the citizens who paid it in taxes, and only their directly elected representatives can decide how it is spent.

Trump’s action is an attempt to merge the sword and the purse, demolishing the constitutional architecture that protects the nation from executive tyranny.

The Tyrant’s Bargain: An Echo of 1773

To understand the insidious nature of trading a fundamental principle for a tangible benefit, one must look back 250 years to the 1773 Boston Tea Party. The event is often misremembered as a protest against high taxes.

In reality, the 1773 Tea Act lowered the price of tea in the American colonies. The act was a bailout for the British East India Company, granting it a monopoly and allowing it to sell tea directly to the colonies at a price far below even that of smuggled Dutch tea.

The British government’s strategy was a cynical bargain. By keeping a small, symbolic tax on this new, cheaper tea, Parliament hoped the colonists would willingly pay it, thereby implicitly accepting Parliament’s authority to tax them without their consent.

The colonists were offered an economic benefit - cheaper tea - in exchange for surrendering their most sacred political right: self-governance.

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Principle Over Profit

The American colonists were not so easily fooled. Patriots understood the maneuver was a bribe intended to purchase their liberty. They recognized the issue was not the price of the tea but the principle at stake.

Their dramatic act of defiance - dumping 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor - was a profound political statement. As historian Heather Cox Richardson recently summarized, they refused to “throw away the principle of having a say in government for cheaper tea.”

The parallel to today is chilling. A laudable goal - paying the troops - is offered as justification for an act of executive overreach.

The price of accepting this “benefit” is to concede the principle that the President can spend the people’s money however he wishes, ignoring the laws passed by the people’s representatives.

The administration’s suggestion that the President be congratulated for his “creative solution” echoes the arrogance of the British Crown, which expected gratitude for the gift of cheaper tea while stripping away colonists’ rights.

A Betrayal of Presidential Duty

At the heart of the President’s constitutional role is the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Historically, this was not a grant of broad power but a profound constraint, a fiduciary duty that subordinates the President to the law.

By deliberately ignoring the Antideficiency Act, the President is not faithfully executing the law; he is actively subverting it. This is a monarchical view of power, a fundamental betrayal of the presidential oath.

The Choice Before Us

Like the conflict that culminated in Boston Harbor, this crisis forces a choice between the allure of expediency and the difficult defense of principle.

The colonists gave their answer 250 years ago, risking everything because they knew that once the principle of self-governance is surrendered for a short-term gain, it is lost forever.

This is a battle for the foundational belief that in a government of the people, no one is above the law.