"Disregarding . . . or impounding . . . grow from . . ."

[Annabel Lee]

"This is what happens when we take a wrecking ball to our heritage. Disregarding our democratic institutions and the rule of law or impounding funds that Congress has already approved grow from the same source of disregard for our founding ideals, and the norms and laws that have helped us move, over time, closer to a more perfect union, the cardinal call of our U.S. Constitution" (Chelsea Clinton, USA Today, 23 October 2025).

The second sentence of the quotation above is rather involved, grammatically, and I find it perplexing in a couple of respects. The main verb of its one independent clause is grow, and the sentence has a compound disjunctive subject consisting of -ing phrases coordinated by or. My question is, shouldn't Ms. Clinton have written grows (singular) rather than grow?

Apart from that main issue, I find "grow from the same source of disregard" a bit awkward, and would still find it so even if grow were changed to grows. I think the sentence might flow better if "grow/grows from the same source of disregard" were changed to "reflect/reflects disregard." If that change were made, shouldn't the subject-verb agreement still be singular?

• Disregarding our democratic institutions and the rule of law or impounding funds that Congress has already approved reflects disregard for our founding ideals and the norms and laws that have helped us move, over time, closer to a more perfect union, the cardinal call of our U.S. Constitution.

Thank you.

 

[5jj]

My question is, shouldn't Ms. Clinton have written grows (singular) rather than grow?

Yes.

 

[jutfrank]

Instead of 'grow' being 'grows', I'd prefer to say that 'or' should be 'and'.

I think she's using 'or' just as a way of introducing an additional example. What I guess she really means is 'and', and so the sentence subject is not really a disjunctive compound but a conjunctive one, psychologically speaking, which is precisely why she uses the plural agreement 'grow', I would guess.