Trump admin asks Congress to cancel $5 billion in foreign aid using hotly-contested maneuver

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the cancellation of nearly $5 billion in funding for a wide array of foreign aid programs Friday morning, building on the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on spending determined to be wasteful.

President Donald Trump sent House Speaker Mike Johnson a letter Thursday evening of his intent to rescind $4.9 billion in congressionally approved funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department through the rarely-used “pocket rescission” maneuver. The administration is seeking to clawback more than $3 billion in funding for USAID, roughly $300 million for the USAID-States Democracy Fund as well as State Department contributions to peacekeeping activities and international organizations, the New York Post first reported.

A pocket rescission can only be achieved in the last 45 days before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The request is made so close to when the funds are scheduled to expire, that the funding is cancelled regardless of whether Congress approves the request.

The move is likely to face pushback in Congress from Democratic lawmakers — as well as some Republicans for expanding the executive branch’s power over federal spending.

“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Friday.

Conservative lawmakers, however, celebrated the Trump White House’s use of a pocket rescission to slash government spending.

Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy heralded the clawback funding request as “historic.” The last administration to cancel funding using a pocket rescission was under former President Jimmy Carter in 1977.

The Trump administration’s use of the pocket rescission could also be subject to litigation. The Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog that has routinely clashed with the Trump White House, has stated that the maneuver is illegal, citing the legislative branch’s “power of the purse.”

OMB counsel Marc Paoletta slammed GAO’s claim as “absurd” in a lengthy post on X on Aug. 7, noting that the congressional watchdog previously told Congress pocket rescissions were permissible under the Impoundment Control Act.

The new clawback funding request comes after Trump signed legislation into law in July that rescinded $9 billion in congressionally approved funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

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