Sen. Angus King of Maine told his Senate colleagues on Thursday that America is facing a constitutional crisis as President Donald Trump moves aggressively to slash government spending and drastically reduce the federal workforce without the approval of Congress.

Delivering a floor speech in the Senate Thursday, King said the founders drafted the U.S. Constitution to share power among three branches of government — a deliberate move to ensure the country was not run by a monarch or dictator. He said the Constitution clearly gives Congress the power of the purse and tasks the president with implementing laws passed by Congress.

“This is a constitutional crisis and we have to respond to it,” King said during a 20-minute floor speech. “This is a very dangerous moment. We’ve got to wake up.”

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate Thursday afternoon. Image is taken from C-SPAN video

King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, took aim at Republicans for sitting idly by and watching Trump usurp their constitutional powers with the hope that the courts will stop any overreach. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have already suggested they may not comply with court orders, he said.

Leaving it to the courts is “a cop-out” and “an abdication of our responsibility” as elected officials, he said.

“Many of my friends in this body say, ‘Well it will be difficult. We don’t want to buck the president and everything. And we’re going to let the courts take care of this,'” King said.

“That’s a cop-out. It’s our responsibility to protect the Constitution — that’s what we swear to when we enter this body. But to stand back and say, ‘Well, we’re going stand back and watch as this happens and the courts are going to take care of it,’ that’s an abdication of our responsibility.”

Though Maine’s other senator, Republican Susan Collins, the top senate appropriator, has said that she hopes the courts will overturn any unconstitutional moves to cut congressionally approved spending and agencies, her office pointed out Thursday that she also has pushed back on issues such as the firings at the FBI, funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the National Park Service layoffs that affected Acadia National Park.

Collins also has said that efforts by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are unconstitutional. But she voted to confirm Russell Vought as the White House budget chief despite Vought’s view that the president has the power to cut federal spending and programs without the approval of Congress, a position that Collins opposes.

In describing her thinking, Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, said that presidents should have latitude to choose their cabinet members, and Vought was qualified since he held the post in Trump’s first term.

“If there are impoundments, I believe it will end up in court, and my hope is the court will rule in favor of the 1974 Impoundment and Budget Control Act,” Collins told the Press Herald.

King’s comments came as the Senate began debating government funding bills. He listed a host of controversial decisions in Trump’s first month in office, including the indiscriminate firings and buyouts of federal workers, hiring freezes and ending Congressionally approved programs, like the U.S. Agency for International Development.

He said the administration’s approach is thoughtless, pointing to the firing of hundreds of workers who maintain the safety of the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, which the administration is now trying to reverse, and people charged with airline safety at a time when the country has experienced four high-profile crashes in the last month, including one in Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.

King also pointed to the administration’s firing of probationary employees. While many of those workers may be new, he noted that it also includes recently promoted employees and veterans.

“It’s not a rational or thoughtful way to trim the federal workforce,” King said, noting that the savings from the estimated 75,000 people who accepted buyout offers amounts to one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget. “Given the chaos and the uncertainty in the deletion of services to our American people, I would argue that’s not worth it.”

King also railed against Trump’s foreign policy, including ending foreign assistance, embracing Russia, blaming Ukraine for the war Russia started three years ago without provocation, and threatening U.S. allies.

“What’s it going to take for us to wake up?” King said. “Is it going to be too late? Is it going to be when the president has accreted all this power and the Congress is an afterthought? What’s going to take? The offenses keep piling up.”