Trump claims impoundment power, triggering 43-day shutdown

President Trump asserted executive impoundment authority — the power to refuse spending funds Congress has appropriated — as leverage in the 2025 government shutdown. The claim echoed Nixon-era impoundment that Congress outlawed in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. The resulting shutdown lasted 43 days, the longest in U.S. history, as Trump used the standoff to pressure Democrats on ACA subsidies and demand federal spending cuts.