The White House announced Friday evening that it was rescinding over $800 million in congressionally appropriated funds across a range of government programs.
In a statement, the White House said President Donald Trump was invoking authority under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy a “pocket rescission” of funds, a legally questionable maneuver Trump also used in 2025 to claw back billions in appropriated funds for foreign aid programs.
The Supreme Court effectively allowed that rescission to proceed — staying a lower court order last September requiring those funds to be obligated — but noted that the “order should not be read as a final determination on the merits” of the rescission.
President Donald Trump waits before welcoming China’s President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan for tea at the White House, in Washington, September 25, 2026.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Pocket rescissions occur when the president requests Congress to cancel funds as the end of the fiscal year approaches, according to the Government Accountability Office. While Congress needs to approve rescissions, it only has 45 days to respond, and “when not enough time is given to consider this request or for funds to be used before they expire, the president is bypassing congressional authority over government funding,” the GAO notes.
According to the release from the White House, the new rescissions target programs across a variety of federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice.
Among them are $567 million in funds to HHS which the administration alleges went to “pro-illegal immigration programs and Non-Governmental Organizations that provided services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens and put unaccompanied children in harm’s way.”
The administration also lists programs under the DHS which it claimed “laundered taxpayer dollars” to provide “welfare” to undocumented immigrants.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, questions Dr. Heidi Overton during her nomination hearing to become the commissioner of Food and Drug Administration at the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Washington.
Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins — who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee — blasted the move in a statement on social media on Friday, calling it an attempt to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse” and a violation of the law.
“The independent Government Accountability Office has concluded that pocket rescissions are unlawful and not permitted by the Impoundment Control Act,” Collins wrote. “Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”
Collins said that Congress received the $810 million package of rescissions fromthe White House’s Office of Management and Budget with no warning and alleged 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.”
“OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding,” she said, adding that she will “work with my colleagues to address these illegal actions.”
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