The White House notified House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday that it is canceling $810 million in federal funding Congress had already approved, using a disputed budget maneuver known as a pocket rescission.
The largest single cut, $567 million, strips money from the Health and Human Services Department's Refugee and Entrant Assistance account, which funds Office of Refugee Resettlement programs, according to NBC News's review of the rescission letter. Other reductions include roughly $70 million earmarked for international education and foreign-language programs, $56 million in housing counseling grants, and about $25 million for migrant student education, spread across the Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice departments.
A timing that leaves Congress little room to object
The administration's letter arrived five days before the September 30 end of the fiscal year, timing that all but guarantees lawmakers cannot complete the 45-day review the Impoundment Control Act normally allows before the funds lapse. The White House argues that proximity to the fiscal deadline places the move outside the law's ordinary process, a legal theory the Government Accountability Office has previously called illegal.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, a Republican, said lawmakers were informed of the cuts "without warning or consultation" and described the move as an "attempt ... to undermine Congress's Constitutional power of the purse." Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray, a Democrat, was sharper still, saying "Russ Vought's message to Congress is that your votes don't count, and your laws are optional," referring to the White House budget director. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the administration of "illegally stripping nearly $1 billion in critical funding."
The White House defended the cuts as targeting "the most harmful government spending," with officials arguing the refugee account in particular is overfunded because illegal border crossings have fallen under Trump's immigration policies, according to CNBC's reporting on the administration's justification.
The maneuver echoes one the administration used a year ago, when it blocked $4.9 billion in foreign aid through a similar pocket rescission — the first time in roughly 50 years a president had tried the tactic. The Supreme Court allowed that earlier rescission to stand without ruling on whether it was lawful, leaving the underlying legal question unresolved as this fresh dispute heads toward the same unsettled ground, with Congress's usual review window set to lapse well after the money is already gone.
