Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump on Friday moved to revoke $70 million in international education funds already appropriated by Congress, using a move the U.S. Government Accountability Office has determined to be illegal.
- Via a pocket rescission request, Trump and the Office of Management and Budget put a total of $810 million in federal funding on hold, just days before the end of the current fiscal year.
- The highly contested move is part of a massive funding clawback against programs and research disfavored by the Trump administration. A majority of those funds are earmarked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Dive Insight:
The White House provided few details about the education programs that would be affected by the $70 million cut. Its press release said only that the funding had been earmarked for "woke international education" grants and fellowships that allowed U.S. institutions to bring in foreign students and faculty "to study or teach language, conduct research, and provide professional and curriculum development."
In an analysis published Tuesday, the American Action Forum, a conservative policy think tank, identified the Education Department's International Education and Foreign Language initiative as the affected programming.
The White House referred questions to OMB on Tuesday. Neither OMB nor the U.S. Department of Education responded to press requests.
The bulk of Trump's pocket rescission focused on HHS funding, some of which is awarded to research universities. The White House gave two examples — the University of California and George Washington University.
UC, a recurring target for the Trump administration's funding cancellations, is set to receive $500,000 to study healthcare outcomes for transgender patients and create related training materials for healthcare organizations. The White House contended this grant is an example of an "outright harmful and blatantly ideological" project, while also saying it was duplicative of research being conducted by HHS.
Under the rescission, GW would lose $2.1 million in funding for a year-long fellowship program dedicated to advancing health equity. That grant had been distributed by the HHS' Office of Minority Health, another scapegoat of Trump.
Typically, the president can pause congressional funding for 45 days and ask legislators to review it or withdraw approval. However, since Trump's request comes within days of the end of the government’s fiscal year, Congress doesn't have a chance to act on it, and the funding is functionally revoked.
Jordan Haring, director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has not weighed in directly on the legality of the move. Without that guidance, she said Trump's request raises two main questions: "whether Congress must approve a spending cut for it to take effect, or whether the timing of a presidential request can produce the same result."
In a Friday press release, the White House said a series of "long-neglected Presidential authorities" under the Impoundment Control Act allowed Trump to make the move. But independent federal entities, including the GAO and the Congressional Research Service, have cast doubt on the legality of pocket rescissions or fully declared them unconstitutional.
Last week's announcement likely evoked deja vu for lawmakers, as Trump pulled a similar gambit at the end of fiscal 2025. Last August, he successfully used a pocket rescission to cancel billions in funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and other federal international aid efforts. Prior to that, the move hadn't been used by the executive branch in decades.
Democratic lawmakers have since sought to prevent presidents from using the maneuver to cancel funding but were unable to include such legislation in Congress' most recent funding package.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin on Monday condemned his Republican counterparts in both chambers for not supporting the endeavor at the time.
"My colleagues on the other side of the aisle might express some concern now about the items that have been cut by the Administration," he said in a statement. "But where were they this summer when they had a chance to fix it?”
The latest pocket rescission has drawn backlash from at least one Republican lawmaker.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins on Friday said the move by OMB is "a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers" and just the latest attempt by the agency to control the legislative branch's power of the purse.
