Trump Uses Pocket Rescission to Cancel $810 Million in Unspent Funds for Noncitizen Services and Race Programs

President Trump notified House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday that he is rescinding $810 million in already appropriated but unspent money at seven agencies, five days before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30. The letter cited the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and listed 11 accounts at Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Commerce, and international assistance. It is the second “pocket rescission” of his presidency. Last year he used the same timing to cancel billions in foreign aid. The New York Post first reported the package.

A pocket rescission is a request sent so close to the fiscal-year deadline that the money expires before Congress can finish the 45-day review the statute normally allows. The White House Office of Management and Budget said the largest item, $567 million from HHS’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance account, is no longer needed because illegal crossings have collapsed and the Office of Refugee Resettlement is overfunded. The White House described that money as having gone to NGOs that served refugees, asylees, and other noncitizens and that “put unaccompanied children in harm’s way.” DHS is losing $15 million from a Biden-era grant stream the administration said paid NGOs for legal help, mental-health services, and cultural orientation for illegal aliens and asylum seekers. Education is losing $25 million from migrant-student programs the White House said funded items including an “LGBT youth summit” and “Therapy for Latinx workshops.” HUD is losing $56 million in housing-counseling grants the administration said went to groups that “peddle DEI and discriminate based on race.” Justice’s Community Relations Service, which works on racial-tension cases, is losing $15 million. The Minority Business Development Agency is losing $10 million after a federal court found its race-based grant rules unconstitutional. HHS research accounts the White House called “blatantly ideological” and the Office of Minority Health are also on the list.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said Congress received the package “without warning or consultation” and that OMB “intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law.” She said the Government Accountability Office has already concluded pocket rescissions are not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act. House Budget ranking member Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, called the action illegal. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on Appropriations, called it “theft from the American people.” OMB Director Russell Vought has pointed to older GAO correspondence and last year’s foreign-aid package, which the Supreme Court allowed the administration to keep frozen while litigation continued. The fiscal year ends Wednesday. The accounts named in Friday’s letter will lapse unless a court or Congress intervenes first.