Trump's Trials - What to know about the $810 million in spending canceled by President Trump

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

President Trump, for the second year in a row, is refusing to send some of that money to the places that Congress says it has to go, setting off a fresh battle with lawmakers over who controls federal spending. NPR's Eric McDaniel reports.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Trump's terms. I'm Scott Detrow. Every episode, we bring you one story from NPR's recent coverage of the 47th president. With a focus on ways his administration is pushing the boundaries of presidential power. Here's the latest from NPR. This is NPR News. And I'm Juana Summers. The White House is, again, withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in money specifically appropriated by Congress with potentially more on pause. That money's meant for things like refugees.

refug resettlement and controlling diseases like HIV and malaria. The government accountability office says refusing to spend that money is illegal. We are going to spend the next few minutes looking at how this violates the law and then what the consequences are for people abroad who rely on life-saving foreign aid from the U.S. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel kicks us off with the view from Washington. Congress has the power of the purse. Each year they pass legislation to dictate how and where the government must use your tax dollars. the executive branch is supposed to fulfill those instructions. But for the second year in a row, the Trump administration has withheld allocations for programs it disagrees with, using what's known as a pocket rescission.

The administration sat on the money for months and only notified Congress that it wouldn't spend it after it was already too late for lawmakers to respond. That's one of our executive tools that's been used before. It is a fully legal approach. That's White House budget official Russ Votes talking to CNN last year. He also appeared at the time before the Senate Appropriations Committee, where its top Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington, made clear how she felt about the administration's pocket rescission maneuver. Your notion of this pocket rescission defies common sense and, by the way, the plain text of the law. This year, the cuts total more than $810 million.

They target immigration services, programs that serve racial and sexual minorities, and address climate change. The White House calls it historic action to eliminate wasteful and harmful spending. According to the government accountability office, an independent nonpartisan watchdog agency, though, it's illegal. Josh Chaffetz is a law and politics professor at Georgetown University. He wrote the book, Congress's Constitution, legislative authority, and the separation of powers. I tend to think of violations of the power of the person as not just unconstitutional, but actually anti-constitutional. They sort of strike at the foundation of Congress's role in our constitutional order. Lawmakers, including at least one Republican, are mad.

Top GOP Senate appropriator Susan Collins of Maine said that the White House does not get to decide which programs are worth funding. Murray calls it theft from the American people. It's just the latest example of President Trump's abrogation of congressional powers. Chaffitz notes that the power of the purse underpins all the legislature's other powers to. When Congress really doesn't like that the executive branch has gone off and gotten the United States into an armed conflict, it will often, you know, it has in the past often cut off spending as a way of ending that conference. And Trump has conducted military operations in Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Ocean, all without congressional authorizations. And for the most part, Congress, controlled by Republicans, has failed to push back. With the House of Representatives gone until the midterm elections and the Senate in town for just another week, that's unlikely to change. Eric McDaniel, NPR News, Washington. And before we wrap up, a thank you to our NPR Plus supporters who hear each show without sponsored messages and, of course, who help protect independent journalism.

If you are not a supporter yet, you can visit plus.npr.org to find out how you can get a ton of podcast perks across dozens of NPR shows, like bonus episodes, exclusive merchandise, and more. Again, that's plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's term. from NPR.