An appellate panel has squashed the Trump administration”s plans to keep under wraps a “Public Apportionment Database” that tracks how the executive is spending congressionally appropriated taxpayer dollars — voting unanimously on Saturday to put the data back online after it was concealed by the government.

“To grant the executive a stay pending appeal in this separation-of-powers standoff would effectively cut the Congress’s purse strings,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in a joint opinion with Judge Robert Wilkins on why they ordered the Trump administration to make the database public.

Judge Bradley Garcia joined the pair in voting to unveil the information in question by Friday but did not join Henderson’s opinion, which blasted the government for trampling on Congress’ authority over government spending and the separation-of-powers with its concealment of the database.

“No court would allow a losing party to defy its judgment,” Henderson proclaimed. “No President would allow a usurper to command our armed forces. And no Congress should be made to wait while the executive intrudes on its plenary power over appropriations.”

As Law&Crime has previously reported, the “Public Apportionment Database” came about, at least in part, as a consequence of Donald Trump’s Ukraine impeachment, which at its core had alleged the first Trump administration had illegally impounded congressionally appropriated military aid on the condition that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announce investigations into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election.

The database was in use until March, when — “without notice” — the government “took the database offline” under the notion that the underlying law was “an unconstitutional encroachment on the executive branch’s decision-making authority,” according to Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who ruled last month that the Trump administration must restore the website and its information after a lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Protect Democracy group.

On July 23, the D.C. Circuit issued an administrative stay after the Department of Justice’s civil division sought an emergency halt of Sullivan’s ruling, which determined that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ran afoul of the law by removing the the database. The appellate panel noted that the administrative stay was “not to be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” but that in the meantime and until further notice, the lower court’s orders were on ice.

Henderson, who is the D.C. Circuit’s most senior active GOP appointee — put on the bench by George H.W. Bush — criticized the Trump administration for failing to maintain “the separation-of-powers balance struck by the Constitution,” per her opinion. She and Wilkins, a Barack Obama appointee, said this was “especially so” if the challenged statutes “keep the citizenry abreast regarding duly appropriated expenditures,” according to the filing.

“Appellees, for their part, have shown harm if a stay is entered,” Henderson said. “They will be deprived of information that the Founding generation — from Franklin to Jefferson to Madison to Mason — all thought vital to our Republic.”

Sullivan, who has previously drawn the ire of Trump supporters, had ordered the government last month to “stop violating the law!” and administratively stayed his own ruling in anticipation of the appeal. In its emergency motion for an administrative stay and a stay pending an appeal of Sullivan’s ruling, the Trump administration insisted that Sullivan “gave short shrift” to OMB Director Russ Vought’s “determinations” and “failed to appreciate” the way that the law “intrudes upon the Executive Branch’s constitutional prerogatives[.]”

Henderson noted Saturday how the government “insists” that because it is “executing” laws, the source of its power is Article II, not Article I — and thus the Congress cannot “impair” it in the performance of its “constitutional duties,” per her opinion. She wrote that the Trump administration claims public disclosure of apportionment decisions “risks intrusion into core executive powers” and that disclosure is unnecessary for the Congress to safeguard its authority because “Congress exercised its spending authority for centuries.”

Henderson said, “Our country’s history teaches otherwise.”

“Disclosure of the very information at issue here is not only a permissible exercise of legislative authority; at the Founding, it was considered a necessary exercise of that authority,” she explained. “To hear the government tell it, the separation of powers hangs in the balance and only this court can set things right. But when it comes to appropriations, our Constitution has made plain that congressional power is at its zenith. Because the executive has not made the requisite showing to support its motion for a stay pending appeal, the motion must be denied.”

Unless the Supreme Court is asked to step in or the full bench of the appeals court gets involved, the Trump administration will now have until Friday to bring the database back online for U.S. citizens to view. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment by Law&Crime on Sunday.