Trump administration uses rare authority to claw back nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is reversing nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced Friday, using a rare and contested power to cut funding for immigrant services and diversity initiatives.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending.”

Most of the budget cuts concern health and social services programs for refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says those funds are no longer needed because illegal border crossings have declined significantly.

The cuts also targeted an Education Department program for migrant students, a Justice Department office focused on reducing racial tensions, a business development initiative for minority entrepreneurs, housing counseling services from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and a series of Department of Health and Human Services grants that the administration has called “downright harmful and blatantly ideological.”

A White House press release announcing the funding cuts said some of these organizations are run by people who worked in Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration.

Trump’s decision was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican during a tough re-election campaign and chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Collins said in a statement that the action was taken without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address “these illegal actions” with her colleagues.

“Not only is the delay itself a seizure that was not reported to Congress, but it is also a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers,” Collins said. “OMB is an executive branch agency. It does not decide which programs deserve funding.”

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Under federal law, Congress has 45 days to consider the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that virtually impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal budget year and the House out of session until the November election. The Government Accountability Office, which is a branch of Congress, says the maneuver known as “pocket override” is illegal.

Collins called this OMB’s latest attempt to “undermine Congress’s constitutional power over the purse.”

A year ago, Trump issued a pocketbook rescission for the first time in nearly 50 years by blocking $4.9 billion in foreign aid approved by Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the reversals, saying Trump’s authority over foreign affairs weighed heavily on its decision. This year, Trump is targeting domestic spending.

The use of “pocket override” is part of a broader pattern by the Trump administration to exert greater control over the U.S. government, thereby eroding the power of Congress.

What was essentially the last pocket reversal occurred in 1977 when then-Democratic President Jimmy Carter rescinded it, and the Trump administration maintains that it is a legally permissible tool, despite some obscurities, since Carter had initially proposed the clawback well before the 45-day deadline.

The administration also fired federal workers, imposed a historic tariff increase, and started the war in Iran without going through Congress, putting the onus on the judiciary to determine the limits of presidential power.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the White House’s action “theft from the American people, plain and simple.”

“These are funds that Congress distributed on a bipartisan basis that should help people, not be cut by a president more focused on building a ballroom than investing in families,” Murray said.

Murray said that during recent spending negotiations, Democrats fought to include language preventing the administration from usurping Congress’s power over spending decisions, but Republicans refused to accept them.

“As Trump spends taxpayer dollars on ads to promote himself, Congress must reassert its powers to help people, and it is high time that Republicans join us in this fight,” she said.

In addition to immigrant services, the White House announced it was canceling $70 million for what it called “woke” international education programs, $28 million in grants for health and human services research programs, and $9 million in debt relief for foreign countries that finance climate change policies. An additional $10 million was withheld from a minority business development program.