President Trump signed a memorandum on March 27 directing the Department of Homeland Security to resume paying Transportation Security Administration employees, bypassing a Congress that had failed for 41 days to fund the department. [1] Two weeks later, constitutional scholars are still debating whether he had the authority to do it.

The legal question is straightforward: the Constitution's Appropriations Clause gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse. No money may be drawn from the Treasury without a congressional appropriation. [2] Trump's memo directed DHS to pay TSA workers from existing departmental funds, but those funds were never specifically appropriated for that purpose during the shutdown.

"The president cannot appropriate money. Full stop," one constitutional law professor told PBS. [3] Others argued the memo fell within the president's emergency management authority, though that interpretation has never been tested in court for domestic federal employee pay.

The political context muddied the legal picture. TSA workers had gone weeks without paychecks. Airport security lines stretched for hours. The NTSB chair revealed that a crash investigator had been stuck in a TSA line for three hours. [1] Public pressure to do something was immense.

The House eventually passed a stopgap bill funding DHS through May 22, which retroactively covered the payments. [4] That legislative action may have mooted the constitutional question — for now. But the precedent stands: a president paid federal workers without congressional authorization, and nobody sued.

The next shutdown will remember.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington