Comment by refurb

> The president doesn't have to spend on fraud but he doesn't get to decide lawful Congressional agencies like CFPB and USAID are "waste" by his own metric, and shut them down unilaterally.

Those agencies still exist, they have just been shrunked down. For USAID, it's folded under State.

> If the agency is not doing what it's designed by Congress to do, we have an entire oversight system to handle that. IGs are there specifically for that purpose, but Trump fired them all.

No, that's not the role of the IG. The IG is focused on financial and management audits. It doesn't determine whether an agency is fulfilling the law set by Congress.

That's the job of the courts and Congress, which they can still do.

> Trump and Musk claim absolute authority over the executive, so any restrictions would be unlawful in their eyes.

Trump does have absolute authority over the executive. It's in the Constitution. He also has the ability to delegate his authority to US government employees like Musk.

However the President has obligations to execute the laws passed by Congress. Both the legislative (Congress) and judicial (courts) are the check on the executive and have a number of levers they can pull if Trump violates the Constitution.

This is all US civic 101 here.