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Trump moves to cancel $810 million for refugee NGOs and race-based grants

Trump Uses a Pocket Rescission to Cancel $810 Million for Refugee NGOs and Race-Based Grants

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 25, 2026 · 4 min read
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President Trump has moved to cancel $810 million in spending that Congress had already approved, much of it for programs serving refugees, asylees and other noncitizens and for grants handed out by race. The White House sent the package to House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday, September 25, 2026, just five days before the fiscal year ends, using a little-known tactic called a pocket rescission.

Some early reports rounded the figure up to “nearly $1 billion.” The signed letter itself is precise: “I herewith report 11 rescissions of budget authority, totaling $810 million.” The proposals touch the Departments of Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development and Justice, plus an international assistance account.

Where the money was going

The single biggest item is $567.4 million from the Refugee and Entrant Assistance account at HHS, which funds the Office of Refugee Resettlement. That money was part of $6.3 billion appropriated in fiscal 2024. The administration’s justification argues the account is overfunded because border crossings have collapsed, and it does not mince words about who runs the programs: “These programs, operated by pro-illegal immigration non-profits, provide services to refugees, asylees, and other eligible non-citizens, and put unaccompanied alien children in harm’s way.”

The rest of the list reads like an inventory of everything this administration campaigned against:

  • $10 million of the $50 million appropriated this year for the Minority Business Development Agency, whose grants, the White House says, are directed “to businesses based on race.” The letter notes that a federal court in 2024 found the agency’s presumption of disadvantage based on race or ethnicity unconstitutional.
  • $69.6 million of $70.3 million for international education and foreign language programs, which the administration says funded projects such as dissertations on “Queer and Trans Community Building” in foreign countries.
  • $56.1 million in HUD housing counseling grants, about $25 million for competitive grants in the migrant student education program, and $27.7 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
  • $15 million each from the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service and a FEMA-run alternatives-to-detention pilot that funded services for immigrants, $10 million for a citizenship grant program that DHS had already paused, about $5.1 million aimed at the HHS Office of Minority Health, and $8.7 million for a Treasury “debt-for-nature” program that forgives foreign governments’ debt in exchange for climate investments.

The administration’s stated rationale is the same throughout: the money is either no longer needed because illegal crossings have fallen, or it funds race- and ideology-based programs that the president has ordered ended.

How a pocket rescission works

Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a president can ask Congress to rescind, or cancel, funding it has already appropriated. Congress then has 45 days of continuous session to act. If it does nothing, the money normally has to be spent.

The catch is timing. When the request arrives in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ends September 30, much of the money expires before that 45-day clock runs out. Congress never has to vote, and the funds simply lapse. That is why the maneuver is named after the pocket veto. In this case, the House is also out of session through the November election, according to Fox News and the Daily Caller.

This is the second time Trump has used the tool. On August 28, 2025, he sent Congress a request to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid, including about $3.2 billion allocated to USAID. Fox News reported it was the first pocket rescission in nearly 50 years; the last before it came under President Jimmy Carter, who proposed his well ahead of the deadline.

Is it legal?

That depends on whom you ask, and no court has settled it.

The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s watchdog, has taken the position that pocket rescissions are unlawful. As Time reported, the GAO has written that the administration’s reading of the law would “cede Congress’s power of the purse,” adding: “If Congress wanted a president to have that authority, it would need to change the law.” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has argued the opposite: that the Impoundment Control Act does not bar a president from proposing cancellations late in the fiscal year.

The courts have not resolved the question. When nonprofits challenged the 2025 foreign aid rescission, the Supreme Court stayed a lower-court order that would have forced roughly $4 billion to be spent, allowing the money to stay withheld while the litigation continued. The justices did not rule on whether pocket rescissions are lawful, which means this new package could face its own legal fight.

Expect objections from appropriators in both parties. Congress guards its spending power jealously, and members who negotiated these line items will not enjoy watching them vanish without a vote. But there is a simpler way to look at it. Congress had every opportunity to cut refugee NGO money that the administration says it no longer needs and grants that sort applicants by skin color. It did not. The president found a tool written into a 1974 statute and used it.

If Congress wants to keep funding these programs, it can pass a law that says so. If it wants to stop presidents from doing this, it can change the law, exactly as the GAO itself suggests. What it cannot credibly do is complain that the executive branch acted on spending that Washington could not bring itself to touch.

Congress wouldn’t cut $810 million in refugee NGO money and race-based grants, so the president did it with five days left on the clock.

Sources

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