Howard Schweber, a UW-Madison professor who studies constitutional law, said it is widely accepted that Congress, as the branch of government that holds the power to tax and spend public funds, sets the terms of federal grant restrictions.
What is debated is how much power the president has to alter those terms after Congress has appropriated funds to federal agencies, he said.
According to Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, federal grant funding has followed a predictable structure of laws and contracts for decades. Trump’s declarations are challenging the limits of constitutional law, he said.