“House Democrats are grappling with how to respond to President Trump’s blanket resistance to cooperating with their investigations — defiance that legal experts say could upend the nation’s fundamental principle of checks and balances,” the Washington Post reports.
“House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) announced plans on Tuesday to hold one Trump administration official who defied a subpoena in contempt of Congress and has threatened a second with the same punishment if he failed to show for a Thursday deposition. And with Trump promising to bar all former and current aides from testifying, the House began confronting the possibility of issuing multiple contempt citations and initiating civil litigation to defend its oversight role.”
Said Cummings: “This is a massive, unprecedented, and growing pattern of obstruction.”
New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s flurry of moves this week to block multiple congressional investigations signaled a new phase of constitutional friction that could redefine long-murky boundaries of Congress’s power to conduct oversight of the executive branch — and the power of presidents to keep government affairs secret from lawmakers.”
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