How the HELL is this LEGAL? Sean Duffy to withhold transportation funds from cities with anti-ICE protests

[moniss]

35. It will make a hell of a court case because

it touches on the laws regarding Impoundment, Bill of Attainder (in some sense) and denial of due process. Typically Federal funds to the states from various agencies are governed by program rules. In other words the Federal DOT doesn't just transfer one big chunk of money to a state DOT encompassing the entire amount of spending. There will be various programs, projects etc. and they will each proceed under various subsections within the two main bodies. These programs all have specific areas of activities and these are written out and described in departmental regulations and sometimes by the state legislatures specifically for some things. How funding is done, program administration and project approval are all the kinds of things everybody gets down on paper so that this isn't just some Wild West run thing where anything goes.

In those regulations etc. will also usually be language about what can constitute a "review" of funding and how it can proceed. The reason being is if you didn't have it then funding could be yanked around on a whim by any administrator for any reason. An example would be a Federal administrator wanted his brother-in-law to be given a no-bid contract for some portion of work on a road construction project. The state DOT refused and so now the guy from the Feds tries to yank all of the funding for this project. If things like that were allowed it would be petty chaos all across the nation.

So Duffy might think he can, and the Feds could unless the courts stop them, but getting into that battle with states is a quagmire since there are plenty of Federal projects that require coordination with the states and getting along.

So to sum it up in order to pull funding for projects you usually have to go through a review process where some sort of misconduct on the project is alleged like overspending, unauthorized changes etc. or the need for the project has changed etc. and then a decision is made. It does not include things completely unrelated to the project such as you didn't hire my cousin or "we don't like that your city council voted to allow food trucks" etc.