White House Claws Back $810 Million in Congressionally Approved Funds

The Trump administration announced Friday evening that it was rescinding more than $810 million in congressionally approved spending, invoking a rarely used and legally disputed presidential maneuver to cancel the funds with just five days remaining in the federal fiscal year.

The White House said President Trump was deploying a "pocket rescission" — a mechanism in which a president requests Congress cancel appropriations so close to the end of the fiscal year that lawmakers effectively have no opportunity to respond before the money expires. The Government Accountability Office has previously concluded that pocket rescissions are unlawful, and the administration used the same tool in 2025 to cancel approximately $4.9 billion in foreign aid spending.

The Supreme Court allowed those earlier foreign aid rescissions to stand on a procedural stay, though it noted explicitly that its order should not be read as a final ruling on their legality.

This time, the administration is targeting domestic programs. The largest single item is $567 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, which the White House described as funding for organizations that provided services to refugees, asylees and unaccompanied minors and that the administration alleges "put unaccompanied children in harm's way." Additional rescissions target programs the administration described as providing welfare services to undocumented immigrants. Other agencies affected include the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, responded with sharp criticism. She said Congress received the $810 million package from the Office of Management and Budget with no advance notice and accused OMB of deliberately sitting on the funds for months before announcing the cancellation.

"Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law," Collins wrote on social media. "OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding."

Collins said she would work with Senate colleagues to address what she called illegal actions. She specifically cited the GAO's finding that pocket rescissions are not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act — the same law Trump invoked as his legal authority for the move.

The White House characterized the targeted programs as among "the most harmful government spending" and tied several to former Obama administration officials who it said led some recipient organizations.

The rescissions land during a period of intensifying conflict between the executive branch and Congress over who controls federal spending. The administration has previously impounded foreign aid funds, reduced agency staffing through mass terminations, and launched the war in Iran without a congressional authorization — each action placing the burden on the judiciary to draw lines around executive power.

A pocket rescission requires congressional approval to take effect permanently, but the compressed timeline — with the fiscal year closing Sept. 30 — makes a congressional vote practically impossible in the days remaining. Critics argue that structure is the very reason the maneuver is illegal: the president is not presenting a genuine rescission request but engineering a result Congress never voted for.

Democratic senators also condemned the announcement, with the Senate Appropriations Committee vice chair describing the move as "theft from the American people." The funds targeted, she noted, had passed on a bipartisan basis.