By Saqib S. Qureshi — SCN News
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has moved to withhold $810 million that Congress had already approved, targeting refugee assistance, immigrant services, education and minority-focused programmes in a new expansion of his drive to redirect federal spending toward White House priorities without waiting for lawmakers to approve the cuts.
The package announced late Friday reaches across six federal departments and international assistance programmes, but its largest impact falls on services for refugees, asylum seekers and other non-citizens. The White House is seeking to claw back $567 million from programmes administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that Trump’s border crackdown has sharply reduced crossings and left Washington with less need for money previously allocated to migrant services.
The move is significant not simply because of the size of the reduction but because Trump is applying an extraordinary budget tactic increasingly central to his second-term effort to reshape the federal government. Instead of persuading Congress to pass another spending bill eliminating programmes he opposes, the administration is moving against money lawmakers have already appropriated and that was signed into law.
The White House described the programmes as wasteful or harmful and said Trump was using every available tool to stop federal spending that does not benefit American citizens. In addition to the $567 million refugee-services reduction, the package targets programmes involving immigrant assistance, international education, housing, minority-business development and other initiatives that conflict with administration priorities.
That gives the latest cuts a distinctly policy-driven character. They are not an across-the-board attempt to reduce the federal deficit. The administration selected programmes closely associated with immigration, diversity policies and other areas Trump has sought to dismantle since returning to office.
Among the targeted accounts are $15 million in Department of Homeland Security programmes providing services including legal assistance, mental-health support and cultural orientation to migrants and asylum seekers. The administration is also seeking to eliminate tens of millions of dollars in international education grants and fellowships and funding connected to housing and minority-focused programmes.
The White House says falling illegal border crossings have fundamentally changed the spending requirements inherited from the previous administration. Its argument is that Congress allocated large sums when the federal government was dealing with substantially greater numbers of migrants and that keeping all of that money available no longer makes fiscal sense.
But the administration is doing considerably more than adjusting immigration spending to changing border conditions.
Friday’s action extends a confrontation over who ultimately controls federal money after Congress has approved it. The Constitution gives Congress authority over appropriations, while presidents administer the programmes those appropriations finance. Trump has increasingly challenged the practical boundaries between those two powers by seeking greater executive discretion over whether congressionally funded programmes should continue.
The mechanism being used is known as a pocket rescission. Ordinarily, a president who wants to cancel spending sends Congress a rescission request and lawmakers receive time to decide whether to approve it. Trump submitted the latest package only days before the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year, creating a situation in which the money can expire before Congress has the normal opportunity to act.
That timing is what gives the White House strategy its power. Congress does not have to affirmatively agree with Trump for the targeted programmes to lose their money if the funds expire while they remain withheld.
The administration used the same strategy last year against $4.9 billion in foreign assistance. This year's action takes the tactic further into the domestic government, where the president has less room to argue that his constitutional authority over foreign affairs gives him special discretion.
That expansion has produced opposition from inside Trump’s own party.
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Congress received the $810 million package without warning or consultation and accused the Office of Management and Budget of undermining Congress’s constitutional spending authority.
Her objection highlights an important dimension of the confrontation: this is not simply another Republican-Democratic dispute over federal spending. The administration is asserting power at the expense of Congress as an institution, including Republican lawmakers who participated in approving the appropriations Trump now wants cancelled.
The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan investigative arm, has maintained that pocket rescissions cannot legally be used to keep money frozen until it expires. The White House disputes that interpretation and argues that the Impoundment Control Act gives the president authority to submit rescission requests late in the fiscal year.
That disagreement has never been conclusively resolved by the Supreme Court.
When Trump used the mechanism against foreign aid last year, the court allowed the administration to keep billions of dollars frozen while litigation continued. But the justices specifically stopped short of issuing a final ruling establishing that pocket rescissions themselves were lawful.
The latest move could consequently become a more important test because of where the money comes from.
Last year's confrontation focused overwhelmingly on foreign assistance. The new package reaches directly into Health and Human Services, Education, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Justice — agencies responsible for domestic programmes that Congress routinely finances through its annual appropriations process.
If Trump can successfully withhold that money until it expires, the practical implications could extend far beyond the $810 million announced Friday.
Future administrations could potentially use the same strategy near the end of fiscal years to eliminate programmes they oppose even when Congress refuses to cancel them legislatively. That would shift additional leverage over federal spending from Capitol Hill toward the White House.
For Trump, however, the immediate policy objective is also clear.
Immigration has been one of the defining priorities of his second presidency, and the administration argues that reduced border crossings should translate into reduced government spending on the infrastructure created to process, shelter and support migrants. The $567 million reduction in refugee and migrant-related services therefore allows Trump to connect his border policies directly to his wider campaign to shrink federal spending.
The White House has also singled out organisations receiving federal grants, arguing that taxpayers should no longer finance groups whose immigration policies or programmes conflict with the administration’s agenda.
Critics say Congress — not the Office of Management and Budget — determines whether those programmes should receive federal money and that the administration cannot substitute its political judgment after appropriations have become law.
The confrontation arrives at an unusual moment on Capitol Hill. The Senate is scheduled to be in Washington during the final days of the fiscal year, but the House is away until after the November elections. That leaves lawmakers with little practical opportunity to process the rescission package before the fiscal-year deadline.
The timing therefore appears integral to the administration’s strategy rather than incidental to it.
Trump has already demonstrated that rescissions can become a powerful instrument for changing federal policy. Congress last year approved a separate $9 billion rescissions package requested by the administration, formally cancelling money through the legislative process. The latest action differs because the White House is moving forward without first securing another congressional vote.
The difference goes to the heart of the emerging struggle between Trump and Congress.
The president argues that his administration should not continue financing programmes it considers unnecessary, ideologically driven or inconsistent with the policies voters elected him to implement. Congress’s institutional position is that once lawmakers appropriate money and the president signs the legislation, the executive branch must carry out that law unless Congress subsequently agrees to cancel the spending.
The $810 million package puts those competing interpretations into direct conflict.
It also signals that pocket rescissions could become a recurring tool rather than an exceptional maneuver. Trump revived the technique last year after it had effectively disappeared from presidential budget practice for decades. Using it again — and extending it into domestic programmes — suggests the administration sees the mechanism as part of a broader strategy for exercising control over the federal bureaucracy.
The immediate financial effect is concentrated heavily on immigration and refugee programmes. The longer-term impact could be considerably wider.