President Donald Trump has launched a sweeping bid to cancel nearly $5 billion in foreign aid and peacekeeping funds, reviving a budgetary maneuver not used in almost half a century. The so-called “pocket rescission,” a tactic that allows funds to expire at the close of the fiscal year, was announced Thursday night after a federal court ruling freed the money from legal challenge, according to The New York Post.
The plan strikes $3.2 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development, $322 million from the USAID–State Department Democracy Fund, $521 million in State Department contributions to international bodies, and $838 million in peacekeeping allocations. The White House spotlighted what it calls wasteful projects: $24.6 million for “climate resilience” in Honduras, $2.7 million for South Africa’s Democracy Works Foundation, $3.9 million for LGBT democracy programs in the Balkans, and $1.5 million to market Ukrainian women’s artwork.
The peacekeeping cuts would hit U.N. missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, though U.S. funding for the Multinational Force and Observers along the Egyptian–Israeli border would remain intact.
At the heart of the maneuver is a legal gray zone. The Government Accountability Office has long held that pocket rescissions violate the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which restricts a president’s power to withhold congressionally appropriated funds and requires a 45-day review period.
But Office of Management and Budget officials point to history. “Carter sent several rescission proposals to Congress in July of 1977. Funds from two of those proposals lapsed on September 30, 1977,” OMB counsel Mark Paoletta wrote in a 2018 letter, noting GAO did not object.
Critics say the move undercuts Congress’s constitutional power of the purse and risks destabilizing global aid. The GAO has not yet said whether it will challenge Trump’s latest rescission, though any action could revive debate over the scope of its authority.
The gambit comes on the heels of a separate rescission package last month that slashed $1 billion from NPR and PBS and $8 billion from USAID.
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