I’m mindful of the fact that technocratic phrases about federal spending powers may make some readers scramble to click elsewhere, but stick with me for a minute, because the latest gambit from the White House’s budget office is as consequential as it is controversial. The Associated Press reported Friday night:

President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives. […]

Most of the cuts are focused on Health and Human Services programs that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. … Also targeted for cuts were a Department of Education program for migrant students, a Department of Justice office focused on reducing racial tensions, a business development initiative for minority entrepreneurs, housing counseling services from the Housing and Urban Development Department and a series of grants from the Health and Human Services Department that the administration called “outright harmful and blatantly ideological.”

Let’s pause here to review the difference between rescissions and “pocket” rescissions. (I know, I know, but bear with me.)

When Congress appropriates funds, the White House is obligated to spend the tax dollars accordingly. Presidents, at least for now, do not have the legal option of simply ignoring lawmakers’ wishes and impounding the money (though Richard Nixon tried and failed to do so).

But there is a legal mechanism in place that allows the White House to send Congress requests to undo funds that were appropriated but not spent. These are called rescission packages. Once they arrive on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have 45 days either to approve the packages and unspend the money, or to ignore the president’s request, which in turn would force the administration to do what Congress directed in the first place.

Sometimes these requests are anodyne — if a spending project is completed under budget, for example — while other times they’re highly problematic. Either way, however, the process is legitimate and legally permissible.

“Pocket” rescissions are different.

Sometimes, an administration will try to cancel funding near the end of the fiscal year in order to deliberately leave Congress with insufficient time to weigh in. Instead of giving Congress a 45-day window, the White House in this case waited until there were just days remaining in the fiscal year — at a time when lawmakers were not in session.

Russell Vought, the far-right director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, has warned throughout his tenure that he and his colleagues would have no qualms about using such a tactic, and it now appears he wasn’t bluffing.

Why should the public care? For a few reasons. First and foremost, the consensus view among most credible observers is that pocket rescissions are illegal. The Government Accountability Office has said so, explicitly.

Indeed, while congressional Democrats responded to the White House’s abuse with predictable apoplexy, several Republicans agreed that the president and his team could not legally defy Congress over the power of the purse.

If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because we have been down this path before. A year ago this month, Vought pulled a nearly identical stunt, though in that instance, the funds related to foreign aid. A legal fight ensued, and as The Washington Post reported, “The Supreme Court allowed the 2025 effort to proceed, though it did so by issuing a stay of a lower court’s ruling that the move was illegal and rested part of its justification on the president’s wide-ranging authority to act on foreign affairs. It held back from declaring that Trump was on solid legal ground.”

This year’s gambit, in contrast, relates to domestic spending, but the indifference to the law remains the same.

With this in mind, let’s also not forget that this isn’t just an academic exercise: The Republican administration, as part of its legally dubious power grab, intends to undo investments that were poised to help people in need of assistance. People will suffer, in other words, if Team Trump succeeds.

“This is theft from the American people, plain and simple,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said in a written statement. The vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee added, “These are funds Congress has delivered on a bipartisan basis and should be helping people — not cut off by a president more focused on building a ballroom than investing in families. Every Republican who voted for these bills should be furious because Vought is saying their votes don’t count.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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