Despite the policy’s bipartisan support, earlier this year, Russell Vought, who leads the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told Congress that Donald Trump and his team had decided they weren’t going to follow the law anymore. In fact, Vought said that the administration had concluded that the spending included “sensitive” information, which required that the website to be taken down.

This claim didn’t fare well in court. The Hill reported:

A federal judge ruled the Trump administration violated federal law by taking down a public website that showed how funding is apportioned to federal agencies, ordering its reinstatement. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Monday that removal of the online database overseen by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated legislation passed by Congress, which requires the OMB to make apportionment decisions publicly available within two business days.

Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a written statement, “Today’s ruling is a major win for transparency and for Congress’s power of the purse. The courts have affirmed that the American people have a right to know how President Trump is using their money and what he may be trying to hide. This decision leaves no doubt: The data must be public.”.....

While this has hardly been the most high-profile legal fight the White House has dealt with in recent months, it caught my eye for a few reasons.

First, federal court rulings tend not to feature exclamation points, but jurists are struggling with increasing frequency to manage their frustrations with the administration.

Second, the fact that Vought, the far-right OMB director, relied on “an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power” is a definite sign of the times.

Third, for all of the recent talk in Republican circles about how “transparent” this White House is, the public is constantly confronting evidence to the contrary.

And finally, in our constitutional system of government, it shouldn’t be necessary for a federal court to tell the White House “to stop violating the law,” and yet, here we are