White House move to cancel $4.9B foreign aid with 'pocket rescission' blasted as illegal

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle panned the White House’s move to cancel billions in foreign aid funding as illegal and warned that it could have dire consequences on the fast-approaching deadline to fund the government.

The White House on Thursday notified Congress of the administration’s intent to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid funding through a "pocket rescission."

"Last night, President Trump CANCELED $4.9 billion in America Last foreign aid using a pocket rescission," the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said on X. "[President Donald Trump] will always put AMERICA FIRST!"

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The pocket rescissions package obtained by Fox News Digital includes cuts to a variety of foreign aid programs over several fiscal years that the administration argued did not comport with Trump’s agenda.  

Included in the cuts are roughly $520 million from the Contributions to International Organizations account, over $390 million in cuts to the Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities account, $322 million from the Democracy Fund, $445 million from the Peacekeeping Operations account and over $3 billion from Development Assistance.

The rescissions process allows the president to make a request to Congress to cancel already-approved funding within a 45-day period. Lawmakers successfully went through that exercise earlier this year when they approved $9 billion to be slashed from public broadcasting and foreign aid.

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However, a pocket rescission is designed to skirt that 45-day window by coming so close to the end of a fiscal year that lawmakers wouldn’t have time to weigh in. And the White House’s maneuver is already giving Senate Republicans and Democrats heartburn.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a statement that the move was an "apparent attempt to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval."

She also argued that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that under the Impoundment Control Act, the law that governs rescissions, this style of pocket rescission was illegal.

"Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law," she said.

"Instead of this attempt to undermine the law, the appropriate way is to identify ways to reduce excessive spending through the bipartisan, annual appropriations process," Collins continued. "Congress approves rescissions regularly as part of this process."

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A White House official argued that the goal of the pocket rescission was to remove the last remaining vestiges of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and was confident that if it was challenged in court, the administration would win. 

"This will, I'm sure, be something that is litigated in court, and we are well-prepared for those," the official said on a press call. "We've been winning these cases in the court system as recently as the last two weeks."

Lawmakers will also have to grapple with how the pocket rescissions will affect negotiations to keep the government open. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., already warned that further attempts to claw back congressionally approved funding would be a bridge too far for Democrats.

Prior to the announcement, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., imploring both to meet with them to discuss the looming Sept. 30 deadline. 

In the letter, they specifically asked if more rescissions were coming.

Now, Schumer charged that the "unlawful ‘pocket rescission’ package is further proof President Trump and Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on rejecting bipartisanship and ‘going it alone’ this fall."

"As the country stares down next month’s government funding deadline on September 30th, it is clear neither President Trump nor Congressional Republicans have any plan to avoid a painful and entirely unnecessary shutdown," Schumer said in a statement.

"In fact, it seems Republicans are eager to inflict further pain on the American people, raising their health care costs, compromising essential services and further damaging our national security," he continued. 

The administration appears to want a clean government funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR). That means no extra spending would be added to the bill. The White House official charged that doing so could get some Republicans on board who don't necessarily support CRs. 

But they did not believe that the pocket rescission package would derail the government funding process. 

"We believe this is in no way contributing to the argument put out there by Democrats that this will lead to a government shutdown," the official said. "Secondly, we don't believe that this should distract from the appropriations process that is underway."