What are the odds the Trump settlement could be ruled invalid on the grounds that it amounts in practice to unilateral Presidential expenditure of federal funds independent of explicit Congressional budgetary authorizations?
We have at least SOME precedent for this: Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998) held that, whenever X amounts to Y in practice (in this case, a line item veto amounting to a presidential alteration to the bill), then the law that does X is just as unconstitutional as if the law were to expressly say Y directly.
So applying the legal theory mentioned in the title, what are the odds that the Supreme Court would declare that to be valid?
And let's focus entirely on the Supreme Court, since we all know it's inevitable that they'll grant certiori on it eventually, rendering the actual decisions of the lower courts irrelevant and merely a time-wasting formality, at least for the purposes of this discussion.