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The 'Nexus' Plot: Trump Has Seized Congress's 'Most Compleat and Effectual Weapon'
New memos claim the presidential power to use the Treasury at will.
Brad Johnson
April 08, 2026
“The house of representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. They in a word hold the purse; that powerful instrument by which we behold in the history of the British constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people, gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse, may in fact be regarded as the most compleat and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”
A replica of the January 6, 2021 plaque displayed in protest against Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La., no relation) refusal to install it, January 5, 2026. Credit: Drew Murray.
“The administration has engaged in impoundment on a massive scale. It has refused to comply with the apportionment transparency law Congress passed in the wake of the Ukraine scandal. And it has repeatedly removed, sidelined, or run roughshod over those offices and officials within the Executive Branch who would otherwise impose internal checks on its actions. . . . The vision of interbranch relations that underlies appropriations law doctrine seems to be breaking down before our eyes. The Executive Branch is abandoning its robust system of internal checks. And Congress does not seem to be enforcing its power of the purse through oversight and the annual appropriations process.”
Last week, the war-criminal Trump regime took another major step to render Congress irrelevant by asserting the “emergency” power to pay Department of Homeland Security employees with moneys not appropriated by Congress for that purpose. This illegal directive is in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution and multiple statutes, including the Purpose Statute, the Antideficiency Act, and the Impoundment Control Act.
If this action stands, Trump will have yet again seized for his own use the House of Representatives’ power over the purse, described by the founding fathers as the “most compleat and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”
The March 27th executive memorandum, which called for TSA employees to be paid with “funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations,” and an April 3rd memo which similarly directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to “use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to the functions of DHS” to pay “each and every employee of DHS” despite the lapse in appropriations for the department that began February 14th, were signed by President Donald Trump and almost certainly authored by his vizier Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
This “nexus” argument is bunk.1 As Georgetown administrative law scholar David A. Super wrote on April 5th:
The claim that paying DHS employees has “a reasonable and logical nexus” begs the question: “to what?” If the Administration had an appropriation whose purpose met this test, surely it would have disclosed it in the presidential memoranda or in response to questions thereafter. Indeed, if the Administration thought paying DHS employees was permissible under existing law, surely it would have done so in February.
The only funds that have such a “reasonable and logical nexus” to pay for DHS employees are funds appropriated by Congress to pay for DHS employees.
Because of Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La., no relation) refusal2 to pass the Senate’s bipartisan appropriations deal to fund all of DHS except for ICE and part of the Border Patrol, those funds still don’t exist.3
“As best I can tell,” legal scholar Zachary Price noted on March 31 in the Yale Journal on Regulation, “paying TSA would be unlawful.”4
And yet, the stolen money has started flowing.
If Acting Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Management Benjamine Huffman and Senior Officer Performing the Duties of the Chief Financial Officer Holly C. Mehringer were smart, they would have filed for an advance decision from the U.S. Comptroller General on the legality of complying with these memoranda.
“I assume anyone taking these actions either is unaware of the state of the law,” Professor Super tells Hill Heat, “or is trusting that they will be covered by an omnibus pardon when President Trump leaves office.”
If their bet is wrong, they'll be going to jail.
We’ll leave Professor Super with the final word:
Should Congress ever muster the will to cut off funding for President Trump’s war against Iran or other foreign adventures (Greenland? Cuba?), we may expect that the President will simply declare a national emergency and order that funds continue to flow based on some wild “nexus” theory, perhaps again not even bothering to state which unrelated appropriation he chose to pilfer.
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1 The GAO usually uses the term “logical relationship” in its Antideficiency Act determinations but sometimes uses the equivalent phrase “reasonable nexus.”
For example, the first Trump administration failed GAO’s “reasonable nexus” test with respect to the Border Patrol when funds appropriated for “consumables and medical care” were used to buy boats and ATVs and funds for “establishing and operating migrant care and processing facilities” were used to buy consumables and medical care.
2 On April 1st, Johnson (no relation) said he would accept the Senate deal. April Fool’s!
3 It’s barely defensible that funds exist, thanks to the One Big Brutal Bill Act, to pay for ICE (Sec. 100052) and CBP (Sec. 100051) employees. However, the OBBBA language restricts that spending to hiring and training, bonuses, and the like, not salaries and benefits.
4 The $10 billion in OBBBA money that anonymous officials have cited as available for the salaries of TSA employees (Sec. 90007) was intended to reimburse past state-level spending on border security.
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