On the evening of Friday, September 25, the White House sent Speaker Mike Johnson a letter proposing to cancel $810 million that Congress had already appropriated. The money is spread across 11 accounts in seven departments and agencies, and every dollar of it expires this week on Wednesday, September 30, the last day of fiscal year 2026.
That timing is the whole story. Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a President can ask Congress to rescind funding and hold the money back for up to 45 days of continuous session while Congress decides. If Congress does nothing, the money has to be released. But when the request arrives five days before the money expires, there is nothing left to release. The funds lapse while they are frozen, and Congress never gets a vote. That is a pocket rescission, and this is the second one in two years, after none for nearly half a century.
What the White House asked to cancel
The letter, sent under section 1012 of the Impoundment Control Act, lists 11 proposals. Here they are, largest first, with the fiscal year each pot of money was originally provided and the reason the administration gives.
- Refugee and Entrant Assistance, Health and Human Services: $567.4 million of the $6.3 billion provided in FY2024 for the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The letter says the account is "overfunded due to the Administration's successful border policies" because refugee and asylum arrivals have dropped.
- International Education and Foreign Language, Domestic Programs, Department of Education: $69.6 million of $70.3 million provided in FY2026. These grants and fellowships bring foreign students and faculty to U.S. institutions and fund language study.
- Housing Counseling Assistance, Housing and Urban Development: $56.1 million of $58 million provided in FY2025 for grants to groups that counsel homebuyers and renters.
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Health and Human Services: $27.7 million of $345 million provided in FY2026.
- Special Programs for Migrant Students, Department of Education: $24.9 million of the $52 million provided in FY2026 for competitive grants that help the children of seasonal farm workers finish school and go to college.
- Alternatives to Detention Case Management Pilot Program, FEMA: $15 million, the full FY2025 amount, for grants to nonprofits serving immigrants under ICE supervision.
- Community Relations Service, Department of Justice: $15 million of $20 million provided in FY2026. The letter says the Justice Department already eliminated the office.
- Citizenship and Integration Grants, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: $10 million, the full FY2025 amount, for groups that help lawful permanent residents prepare for citizenship. The letter notes the FY2026 homeland security bill did not fund the program again.
- Minority Business Development Agency, Department of Commerce: $10 million of $50 million provided in FY2026.
- Tropical Forest and Coral Reef Conservation debt relief, Treasury international programs: $8.7 million of $20 million provided in FY2023 for debt for nature swaps with foreign governments.
- Office of the Secretary, Health and Human Services: $5.1 million of $625 million provided in FY2026, aimed at the Office of Minority Health.
The line items add up to $809.5 million, which the letter rounds to $810 million. Some coverage, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, described it as nearly $1 billion. The official figure is $810 million.
Two things the list tells you
One program is most of the package. The refugee resettlement cut is $567 million, about 70 percent of the total.
Much of it is money Congress approved this year. Six of the 11 items, worth about $152 million, come from the FY2026 bills Congress enacted for this fiscal year. Three more come from FY2025, one from FY2024, and one from FY2023. The older money is still on the table because it was provided for more than one year, and it all expires on the same date: September 30, 2026.
Why five days matters
The 45 day clock in the Impoundment Control Act does not even count ordinary calendar days. It counts days of continuous session, and any stretch when either chamber is out for more than three days does not count. The House is not scheduled to return until after the November 3 election. Even if the request had been sent weeks earlier, the clock would still have outlasted the money.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, called it "a clear violation of the law" and argued the problem started long before Friday. "This move shows that OMB intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law," she said, adding, "Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress's appropriations powers." She said she would "work with my colleagues to address these illegal actions," according to NBC News.
The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, called it "theft from the American people" and said, "Russ Vought's message to Congress is that your votes don't count, and your laws are optional." She called on Republicans "who said they would never let this happen to stand up and join us to stop this."
Is it legal?
The honest answer is that nobody has settled it.
The Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan watchdog, says no. In GAO's reading, the Impoundment Control Act lets a President delay spending while Congress considers a request, but it does not let a President hold money until it expires, because that would let the executive branch shorten a spending law on its own.
The administration reads the same section the other way: the law allows a 45 day hold and makes no exception for money that expires during it. OMB Director Russell Vought has also argued that the Impoundment Control Act's limits on the President are themselves unconstitutional.
The courts have not answered the core question. Last year the administration used the same tool for the first time in almost 50 years. On August 28, 2025, it sent Congress a request to cancel about $4.9 billion in foreign aid. A federal district judge ordered the money spent, and on September 26, 2025 the Supreme Court paused that order in an emergency ruling, over the dissents of Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson. The money expired four days later. The Court's order turned on whether the groups that sued were allowed to enforce the law, not on whether a pocket rescission is legal. But the practical lesson was clear: once the money expires, there is nothing left to fight over.
Before 2025, the only pocket rescissions were a handful of small ones in the 1970s, under Presidents Ford and Carter.
It is worth separating this from the ordinary kind of rescission. In the summer of 2025 the administration asked Congress to cancel $9.4 billion, and Congress voted: the Rescissions Act of 2025, signed July 24, 2025, cancelled about $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting money after the House passed it 216 to 213 and the Senate 51 to 48. That one went through Congress. This one goes around it.
Does this touch earmarks?
No. None of the 11 items is a community project. The letter names specific programs, and none of them is an earmark.
Two of the accounts it reaches do also carry earmarks. FEMA's Federal Assistance account funds 188 enacted FY2026 projects worth $254.8 million, mostly emergency operations centers and disaster mitigation, and the Education Department's Higher Education account funds 155 enacted FY2026 projects worth $210.4 million. But the rescission takes only the FY2025 immigrant case management money from the FEMA account and only the international education programs from the higher education account. The projects members requested by name are not on the list.
You can look up every enacted project in your state, with the account it sits in, on the state pages, or browse the homeland security and Labor-HHS-Education projects by account.
What happens next
The money expires Wednesday. Unless a court orders it spent before then, which last year's Supreme Court order makes unlikely, the cancellation takes effect by default.
The real fight moves to the next spending deadline. The government is running on a stopgap through December 11, and the FY2027 bills are still unfinished. Appropriators in both parties now have a second example of money they approved disappearing without a vote, and their options are legislative: rewrite the Impoundment Control Act so the 45 day hold ends when the money does, write mandatory spending language into the bills, give more programs money that lasts more than one year, or attach conditions to the next stopgap. Each of those makes the bills harder to negotiate, in a lame duck session after a midterm election, which is exactly when Congress has the least time to write careful law.
The status of every FY2027 bill, the stopgap, and the December 11 deadline is tracked on the tracker and updated daily.