Giri Viswanathan, Senior Photographer

Rep. Rosa DeLauro has spoken for New Haveners in Congress since 1991. These days, the congresswoman from Connecticut’s 3rd District is also speaking on behalf of Congress itself, defending its power of the purse amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb federal spending.

DeLauro, an 81-year-old Wooster Square native and the top Democrat on the House Committee on Appropriations, has emerged as one of the most prominent voices of congressional opposition to Trump policies aimed at cutting expenditures, such as foreign aid, already set out by law.

Her position as ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, which she chaired from 2021 to 2023, puts DeLauro at the center of annual negotiations over how to allocate federal funds — and now in the intense national spotlight of a constitutional debate over the separation of powers. She has made a slew of television appearances and posted several stern video messages on social media since Trump took office.

On Monday, she was named one of three co-chairs, beneath a chairman, of a “Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group” formed by House Democratic leadership to challenge what they deem Trump administration overreach. And on Wednesday, DeLauro published an op-ed in The New York Times denouncing Trump’s aggressive approach to reducing federal spending, including via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“I will not surrender the authority of Congress and the Appropriations Committee, where I serve as ranking member, to the tide of cronyism and unlawful decision making that threatens to unravel our constitutional form of government,” DeLauro wrote.

She took aim in particular at impoundment, the withholding of appropriated funds by the president, which DeLauro called “stealing congressionally appropriated dollars promised to Americans.” Trump and his allies have claimed that the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which generally prohibits the president from unilaterally stopping spending, is unconstitutional, a view that cuts against legal precedents.

DeLauro’s op-ed echoed her remark, at a Hartford press conference last month, that Trump’s attempted federal grant funding freeze amounted to “nothing less than highway robbery” from the grants’ designated recipients. A separate State Department stop-work order led to significant layoffs at New Haven’s Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services.

But in addition to pointing out the local impacts of Trump’s policies, DeLauro is mounting a constitutional case against the president’s broad claims of executive power. She began her New York Times essay by invoking the Constitution and quoted Article I, which establishes the legislative branch.

“She literally has put the entire branch on her back,” Vincent Mauro Jr., the chair of New Haven’s Democratic Committee, told the News. “She is putting herself at the forefront to defend a branch of this government that very few people are defending, and by doing so she is going to make herself a target.”

Mauro, who has known DeLauro through a lifetime in New Haven politics, said he was proud but not surprised that she would throw herself passionately into opposing the president’s actions. He added that DeLauro is inviting the wrath of wealthy and powerful Trump allies like Musk.

She already has. After DeLauro criticized Musk’s role in upending a congressional spending deal in December, Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “This awful creature needs to be expelled from Congress!”

The bill eventually enacted at the time extended federal spending through March 14, necessitating another so-called continuing resolution in the next month. DeLauro will play a central role representing Democrats in negotiations to avoid a government shutdown, and she has said she will use the process to push Trump to keep previously appropriated money flowing, all from her perch on the Appropriations Committee.

“That is a committee that does an enormous amount of business across the aisle,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired law professor at the University of Baltimore who worked for 11 years in the House of Representatives’ general counsel office.

He noted that the House is nearly balanced between Democrats and Republicans, who currently control both chambers of Congress. DeLauro “can be chair of Appropriations two years from now if there’s a stiff breeze at the polls, or even if there’s a light breeze at the polls,” Tiefer said.

Lawsuits challenging Trump spending cuts will mostly come from people and organizations directly affected by them, according to Tiefer, but DeLauro “has the bona fides to defend the House appropriation authority” in the court of public opinion.

DeLauro was elected to her 18th term in Congress in November.