Letters from an American - October 16, 2025

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

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October 16th, 2025. Yesterday, the Trump administration announced it would pay furloughed troops by using funds Congress appropriated for research, development, testing, and evaluation, or RDTE, for fiscal year 26. Today, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said Trump, Trump had found a creative solution to keep the troops paid. And rather than congratulate the president for doing that, this unprecedented action to get our troops paid, the Democrats want to sue him for it. They're saying that it's illegal.

Democrats are saying it's illegal because it is illegal. The Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that has evolved over time since 1870, prohibits the government from spending money that Congress has not appropriated for that purpose, or agreeing to contracts that spend money Congress has not appropriated for that purpose. This summer, Democratic Senators charged Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem with triggering the Anti-Deficiency Act by overspending her department's budget. But Trump's claim that he can move government money around as he wishes is an even greater threat to the country than Noam's overspending.

There is more at stake here than a broken law. Trump's assumption of power over the government's purse is a profound attack on the principles on which the founders justified independence from King George III in 1776. The founders stood firm on the principle articulated all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215 that the government could not spend money without consulting those, putting up that money by paying taxes. That principle was at the heart of the American Revolution. The 1773 Tea Act that sparked Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts to throw chests of tea into Boston Harbor, did not raise the price of tea in the colonies. The law lowered those prices.

To pay for the cost of what colonists knew as the French and Indian War, Parliament in 1767 had taxed glass, lead, oil, paint, paper, and tea, but boycotts and protests had forced Parliament to repeal all the taxes except the one on tea. It kept that tax to maintain the principle that it could tax the colonies despite the fact they were unrepresented in that body. Then in 1773, Parliament gave a monopoly on colonial tea sales to the Foundering British East India tea company. That monopoly would have the effect of lowering the price of tea. Lower prices should persuade colonists to buy the tea despite the tax, thus cementing the principle that Parliament

could tax the colonies without their consent. But colonists protested the maneuver. In December 1773, the Sons of Liberty held what became known as the Boston Tea Party, ruining newly arrived chests of tea by throwing them into the harbor, thus paving the route to the American Revolution. When leaders from the former colonies wrote the U.S. Constitution in 1787, they made sure the people retained control over the nation's finances in order to guarantee that a demagogue could not use tax money to concentrate power in his own hands. They gave the power to write the laws to the legislative branch, the House of Representatives and the Senate, alone, giving the President power only to agree to or veto those measures. Once the laws were enacted, the President's rule was to

take care that the laws be faithfully executed. To make sure that the power of the purse remained in the hands of the people, the framers wrote into the Constitution that all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. Trump's declaration that he will ignore the laws Congress passed and take it upon himself to spend money as he wishes undermines not just the Anti-Deficiency Act, but also the fundamental principle that the American people must have control over their own finances. That Levitt suggests giving up that principle to pay the troops, which lawmakers agree is imperative, but cannot write into law because Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, will not recall the House of Representatives,

echoes the T Act that would have thrown away the principle of having a say in government for cheaper tea. Since Trump took office, his administration has undermined the principle that Congress controls funding. It has withheld funds Congress appropriated, a practice that vizabeth. violates the 1974 Impoundment Act and the Constitution. The cost of such impoundment became evident on Sunday when catastrophic flooding hit the village of Kipnuk, Alaska. A disaster, Andrew Friedman of CNN, notes, was exacerbated by the lack of weather data

after cuts left a critical shortage in weather balloon coverage in the area. Earlier this year, the administration canceled a $20 million-dollar Biden era, Environmental Protection Agency or EPA grant awarded to the community to prevent flooding. Maxine Jossalo and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times noted that when EPA administrator Lee Zeldon cut grants this year, he boasted that he was eliminating wasteful, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and environmental justice grants.

Now that the government is shut down, Trump has told reporters that his administration is using the shutdown to take funds Congress appropriated away from Democratic districts. Tony Rahm and Lazaro Gamio of the New York Times estimate that the administration has canceled more than $27.24 billion in funds for Democratic districts and states, while cutting $738.7 million from Republican districts and states. Speaker Johnson told reporters he thought such withholding was both lawful and constitutional, but did not explain his reasoning. Today, Annie Greyer and Adam Cancran of CNN reported that not just Democratic representatives, but also Republicans, are out of the loop of presidential funding cuts, finding out about cuts to their districts through press

releases. Even Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, we are really not consulted. Speaker Johnson told CNN that he hasn't received details about the administration's offer of $20 billion in public money and another $20 billion in private sector financing to Argentina to prop up the government of Trump's right-wing ally Javier Malay before upcoming elections there. Trump is also taking control of the previously non-partisan Department of Justice, or DOJ. Yesterday in the Oval Office, Trump stood in front of three top officials from the DOJ and called for investigations into former Deputy Attorney General in the Biden administration,

Lisa Monaco, former FBI official Andrew Weissman, who led the team investigating the ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russian operatives. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who investigated and indicted Trump for the Trump for the events of January 6th and for retaining classified documents, and Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, who led the House impeachment team in Trump's first impeachment trial. Glenn Thrush of the New York Times noted the DOJ officials smiled, nodded, and shuffled in place as he spoke. Today, the U.S. attorney in Maryland indicted John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor in Trump's first term,

alleging that he shared classified information in the form of a diary with two of his relatives. That material later informed his book, The Room Where It Happened, a White House memoir, which covered his time in the first Trump administration and so infuriated Trump that he tried to stop its publication. The U.S. attorney charged Bolton with eight counts of communicating secret information with those not in touch. to receive it, and 10 counts of having unauthorized possession of documents containing secret information. These charges are similar to those Jack Smith brought against Trump himself, although Trump's election to a second term stopped that prosecution. The indictment references Bolton's criticism of the Trump administration's handling of secret information.

In particular, Defense Secretary Pete Heggsith's use of the signal messaging app to plan a military strike on the Houthis in Yemen, especially after a journalist had been added to the call, and Heggsett's additional signal chat about the strike with family and friends. A court will determine the merits of the case against Bolton, but there is no doubt it is intended to send a signal to others in government that Trump will persecute those whom he perceives as disloyal. Today, Steady State, a group made up of more than 340 former U.S. intelligence officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the State Department,

and other intelligence agencies, released a report assessing the state of American democracy. Applying the tools of their craft to the U.S., they assess that the nation is on a trajectory toward competitive authoritarianism, a system in which elections, courts, and other democracies, institutions persist in form, but are systematically manipulated to entrench executive control. The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics, Assessment of Democratic Decline, finds that American Democracy is weakening as the executive branch is consolidating power

and actively weaponizing state institutions to punish perceived opponents and shield allies, and that Congress is refusing to check the president, creating openings for authoritarian exploitation. We judge that the primary driver of the U.S.'s increasing authoritarianism is the increased frequency of executive branch overreach, the report says, noting that President Donald J. Trump has leveraged emergency powers, executive orders, federalized military forces, and bureaucratic politicization to consolidate control

and weaken checks and balances. But the Trump administration is increasingly unpopular. Trump loyalists are working overtime to portray those who oppose the administration as anti-American criminals and terrorists. Today, White House Press Secretary Levitt told the Fox News channel that the Democrat Party's main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. And administration loyalists have spent the week claiming that the No King's

rally scheduled for Saturday, October 18th, is a hate America rally. Joe Perticone of the bulwark noted that indivisible, the organization sponsoring the No King's protests, has an extensive extensive track record that shows a long-standing emphasis on safety and non-violence. Pertocone spoke to Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, who said, go to a no-kings rally. What do you see? You see moms and grandmas and kids and dogs and funny signs and dancing and happy displays of opposition to the regime that are foundationally non-violent. And on the other hand, you've got to regime that's led by a guy who cheered the January 6th insurrection.

Levin noted that authoritarian regimes fear mass organizing and peaceful protest because they reveal a regime's unpopularity and show that it is losing its grip on power, much as tossing chests of tea into Boston Harbor did about 250 years ago. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Mawes.