Congress

Here’s how Trump could throw a ‘wrench’ into Hill funding negotiations as shutdown looms

Published

10 months ago

August 20, 2025

President Donald Trump’s budget director has talked about attempting the ultimate override of Congress’ funding prerogatives during the final 45 days of the fiscal year — and that time is now.

With six weeks left until Oct. 1, lawmakers are staring down a government shutdown deadline alongside the threat of a “pocket rescission,” a controversial White House tactic to cancel federal cash without the consent of Congress. It’s also a ploy that the government’s top watchdog, along with key lawmakers from both parties, say is illegal.

“The money evaporates at the end of the fiscal year,” White House budget chief Russ Vought said last month in defense of the gambit, adding it has “been used before.”

Lawmakers anticipate Trump will send Congress a formal rescissions request to claw back billions of dollars in federal funding as soon as lawmakers return from recess in September.

Already, the threat of the White House then unilaterally canceling the funding in October — regardless of Congress’ response to the request — is straining negotiations between Democrats and Republicans desperately trying to head off a shutdown with bipartisan negotiations, which Vought is also actively seeking to undermine.

“He is trying to throw a wrench in this by introducing or sending to us a second rescission bill — by trying to do pocket rescissions,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the appropriations panel that funds the military, said of Vought in an interview.

It also would undoubtedly throw Republicans into another politically dicey balancing act of trying not to buck their president while answering to constituents who are feeling the effects of the administration’s mass gutting of widely used government programs.

Congress cleared an initial rescissions package of $9 billion in cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid in July. The White House has stayed publicly mum on what sort of programming it would seek to slash next, but officials have previously signaled the Department of Education will be the target of a second package, which could align with Trump’s controversial goal of eventually eliminating the agency altogether.

As for the size of this upcoming clawbacks request, Republicans have mixed predictions. Last month, Speaker Mike Johnson told members that a second package would be less than the $9 billion, but other GOP lawmakers said they expect to be asked to revoke much more money than that.

Under decades-old budget law, the White House is allowed to send Congress a rescissions request and then withhold the cash for 45 days while lawmakers consider whether to approve, reject or ignore the proposal. If lawmakers don’t pass the rescissions bill, the administration must spend the money as Congress intended. These were the conditions under which the administration transmitted its most recent plan.

Now, with less than 45 days before the current fiscal year comes to a close, top Trump administration officials argue the White House can send another rescissions package and then treat the funding as expired come midnight on Sept. 30 — regardless of congressional action.

And if the White House moves forward with the plan, it could do more than just cause political headaches. It very likely would kick off a high-stakes legal battle over Congress’ funding power and whether a presidential administration must spend all of the money prescribed by law or whether the spending levels are simply “a ceiling,” as Vought has contended.

The Government Accountability Office has said repeatedly that pocket rescissions are against the law and would “cede Congress’s power of the purse by allowing a president to, in effect, change the law by shortening the period of availability for fixed-period funds.”

Vought has taken aim at the watchdog, and Mark Paoletta, the Office of Management and Budget general counsel, piled on this month.

“Trump Derangement Syndrome is on full display” at GAO, Paoletta said on social media, and “wrong on pocket rescissions.”

“Congress is well aware” that the law allows the maneuver, he added, pointing out that lawmakers did not bother heeding GAO’s urging 50 years ago to fix a loophole leaving the legality question open to interpretation.

Yet even some of the Republican lawmakers who are hungry for more chances to kill funding are wary of the Trump administration using the rescissions process to undermine Congress’ funding power under Article I of the Constitution.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who reluctantly voted in support of the rescissions request last month, said he won’t support more clawback packages if the White House doesn’t provide account-by-account details of how the funding would be cut.

“I’m just not going to aid and abet moving appropriations decisions over to the Article II branch,” Tillis said in an interview.

Trump “just happens to be a Republican,” Tillis continued, but “we could regret this, just as Democrats would, if they are tempted to do the same thing. That’s why you’ve got to draw lines here institutionally.”

Concerns about precedent, legality and political appetite are converging on the reality for members of both parties that Republicans can’t afford to alienate Democrats, whose votes they likely need to pass any government funding bill to avoid a shutdown next month.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, when asked about a second rescissions package, stressed he would prefer to handle any more cuts through the regular appropriations process. “My hope would be that that’s the way we deal with a lot of these issues,” he said.

Democrats hope so too, and they have warned that any Trump administration effort to claw back money already approved by Congress — “pocket” or otherwise — would undermine lawmakers’ ability to work across party lines to avoid a shutdown.

In remarks late last month alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his party’s senior appropriators, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would try to reach a compromise with Republicans despite GOP lawmakers’ approval of the latest $9 billion rescissions package.

But, he added, “Republicans are making it extremely difficult to do that … by talking about rescissions, pocket rescissions, impoundment — which would undo anything that we did in the budgets.”

Congress

Key Democrats urge House to reject kids’ safety proposal

Published

2 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Commerce Committee’s top Democrat Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned House lawmakers against advancing their chamber’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act, arguing it would face intense lobbying from tech companies in the Senate and risk unraveling years of bipartisan work.

“If it is passed by the House it will come to the Senate,” Blumenthal, the bill’s Senate cosponsor, told reporters at a Friday press briefing. The Connecticut Democrat said he is concerned senators will be influenced by the tech industry’s “armies of lawyers and lobbyists” who may “confuse and exploit” misunderstandings about a House bill with the same name as a Senate version but excludes key provisions, such as the “duty of care.” (This concept requires online companies to design social media platforms with an eye for children’s safety.)

“We’re not going to let bad legislation with a good title just get across and think somebody’s done something,” Cantwell said.

The House version of KOSA — which is included in the KIDS Act, a revised bipartisan package that the Energy and Commerce Committee advanced along party lines in March — is scheduled to be considered on the House floor next week under suspension of the rules.

“We need to stop this bill in the House, and we need to prevent the White House from forming an alliance with Big Tech on this issue,” said Blumenthal, who characterized the version of KOSA that House leadership is pushing as a “sham.”

Both Democratic lawmakers also expressed concern that Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) could adopt the House version of KOSA in a kids’ safety package he has yet to publicly release but has pledged to markup by August recess. Cruz said “negotiations are ongoing” earlier this week when asked by Blue Light News whether he would be open to incorporating such changes put forward in the House.

Cruz’s package is expected to include KOSA as well legislation barring companies from using minors’ personal data for targeted advertising, banning kids under age 13 from social media, and providing greater oversight for how children interact with AI chatbots.

Although Blumenthal remains hopeful that Cruz will “stay true to his first vote in favor of KOSA,” which overwhelmingly passed in the Senate last Congress, the Connecticut Democrat said Friday he’s worried Cruz and others may be tempted to “take the bait” and abandon the bill’s basic principles.

Congress

Moderates beware: Mamdani coalition portends a dramatically different Democratic Party in NYC

Published

6 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A coalition powered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani expanded the left’s reach Tuesday, winning younger voters across racial and ethnic lines and once again upending conventional wisdom about elections in New York City.

A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from U.S.-Israel relations.

The results were staggering.

Midterm election cycles in deep-blue New York City tend to be sleepy affairs. Both this year and in 2022, just over 500,000 people cast ballots, less than 20 percent of eligible voters. But turnout within a congressional district spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx increased by roughly 50 percent between 2022 and Tuesday, with more than 66,000 voters heading to the polls.

In another seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, turnout more than doubled from 2022, though state and federal elections were held on different days that year and the seat was not competitive, which would have reduced the number of voters going to the polls.

Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate the mayor’s success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem. Combined with the DSA’s base in relatively wealthy neighborhoods, the result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.

“This was a big wave for DSA and they did a good job capitalizing on it,” said Evan Roth Smith, a pollster with Slingshot Strategies. “The question now is: Was this a wave cycle that will abate, or is it the start of the takeover?”

Much of Mamdani’s base is concentrated in the so-called “commie-corridor,” a series of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront filled with young, educated and affluent voters who’ve propelled several DSA candidates into office. They went gaga over Mamdani’s candidacy and, as Tuesday’s results show, will turn out for candidates he supports.

The area was crucial to Assemblymember Claire Valdez’s crushing 56-38 defeat of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

“The factor that felt most significant to me were all of these New Yorkers who got activated and politicized in the mayor’s race last year who were looking for the next fight,” said Andrew Epstein, a political adviser to Mamdani who worked on Valdez’ campaign. “Those people didn’t go away. And they want to keep going.”

Valdez also won several heavily Latino areas that were expected to break for her opponent.

Reynoso was born in Brooklyn to Dominican parents and just a few years ago was a City Council member representing Bushwick, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Latino families and young hipsters. Valdez was born in Texas, moved to New York City in 2015 and served in the state Assembly for just one term before launching her Mamdani-backed bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat.

She ended up winning areas of Bushwick by even greater margins than the total results — in some election districts winning upwards of 80 percent of the vote.

“You don’t win the district by 35 points if you don’t have broad advantages across age and demographic groups,” said Michael Lange, an election analyst and Mamdani supporter who has tracked several contested races with extreme granularity. “Is she blowing him out of the water with Hispanic voters under 50? I see tons of evidence that the answer is yes.”

The age advantage was the common thread across several other races.

In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, for example, younger Black voters in Harlem were key to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s win over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who had built a small political empire in the district.

While gentrifying, the neighborhood remains a seat of Black political power and is home to younger households who tend to rent. That particular demographic is a strong indicator of why Mamdani won the area in 2025, even as he lost the Black vote overall to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose support was concentrated among older Black homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens.

While Espaillat never healed a rift with the Black community in upper Manhattan opened during his election in 2016, which contributed to his weak performance, Avila Chevalier demonstrated Tuesday that a significant share of voters there were not just supportive of Mamdani the person, but of the broader political movement he’s now leading.

Overall, she edged out Espaillat with Black voters 48-46, according to an analysis from The New York Times, which charted demographic breakdowns for several contested races.

Three winning congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani — including former city Comptroller Brad Lander in Brooklyn, who unseated incumbent Dan Goldman — share several similarities. They won younger, college-educated and wealthier voters by huge margins, in several cases by 30 points or more, and lost lower-income voters to incumbents or candidates affiliated with incumbents — a sign that the movement seeking to boost struggling New Yorkers has not won them over.

While the DSA was able to win three state races without the support of Mamdani — a testament to the organizing prowess of the left that was essential to reactivating the mayor’s coalition — there were limits to the city’s leftward shift.

Rep. Grace Meng won her reelection race, though she only vanquished challenger Chuck Park by 14 points, an uncomfortable margin for an incumbent of her stature. Park, who ran to Meng’s left, was boosted by a huge turnout in Woodside, Queens, a multiethnic neighborhood that went heavily for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race.

Elsewhere in the Bronx, however, incumbents remained strong. Rep. Ritchie Torres handily won reelection with 72 percent of the vote, though it was a low-turnout affair more consistent with an uncompetitive midterm. Nevertheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries touted the results — even as he watched a series of his endorsed candidates fall to the DSA in Brooklyn, his home borough, in a preview of the intraparty battles to come.

“In some higher-income districts, there was an outsized focus on the Middle East. In other districts, for instance, in the South Bronx, Ritchie Torres ran against somebody who was heavily critical of his position on Israel, and he won by fifty points,” Jeffries told MS NOW on Wednesday.

Congress

Divisive Israel vote to be discussed on Sunday House Democrats call

Published

8 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

An anticipated vote on cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel is among the subjects House Democrats are slated to discuss on an unusual teleconference Sunday evening.

Six people granted anonymity to describe private caucus plans confirmed the member call, which has not been publicly announced. Two of them said it would involve an amendment that would block aid to Israel and other appropriations matters.

Democrats are likely to be sharply divided on an amendment drafted by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to a fiscal 2027 spending bill funding the State Department and foreign aid programs. Massie is proposing to end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aide program by $3.3 billion.

House Republicans have not yet announced a vote on that bill, but two other people granted anonymity to describe GOP planning said it is likely to be added to the floor schedule next week. The House Rules Committee voted last week to set up debate on Massie’s amendment.

Senior Democrats want to talk through member concerns and strategy on the Sunday call, according to one of the six people.

The call comes just days after three outspoken critics of U.S. aid to Israel swept hotly contested House primaries in New York City, ousting two incumbents.

Meredith Lee Hill and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.