Congress
White House floats a new funding trick — and GOP lawmakers grimace
Russ Vought’s relationship with Republican appropriators was already strained. Then he started talking about pursuing the ultimate end-run around their funding power heading into the fall.
The White House budget director has been persistently touting the virtues of “pocket rescissions,” a tactic he has floated as a way to codify the spending cuts Elon Musk made while atop his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, and which the federal government’s top watchdog says is illegal.
On Capitol Hill, leading GOP appropriators see Vought’s comments as another shot against them in an escalating battle with the Trump administration over Congress’ “power of the purse.” And they warn that the budget director’s adversarial posture hinders their relationship with the White House as they work to head off a government shutdown in just over three months.
“Pocket rescissions are illegal, in my judgment,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a brief interview this week, “and contradict the will of Congress and the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate funds.”
To hear Vought tell it, a “pocket rescission” is a legitimate tool at the executive branch’s disposal. In such a scenario, President Donald Trump would issue a formal request to claw back funding, similar to the $9.4 billion package he sent lawmakers this month to cancel congressionally approved funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid.
But in this case, the memo would land on Capitol Hill less than 45 days before the new fiscal year is set to begin Oct. 1. By withholding the cash for that full timeframe — regardless of action by Congress — the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.
The dizzying ploy is another means toward the same goal Trump has been chasing since Inauguration Day: to spend less money than Congress has explicitly mandated in law. But the Government Accountability Office says the maneuver is unlawful, and the GOP lawmakers in charge of divvying up federal funding are wary that Vought is now talking about it in the open.
“I understand we want to use all the arrows in our quiver, and he wants to use all his,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said of Vought in an interview. “But every time you pull out an arrow, you have to be ready for the consequences, right?”
Joyce continued: “It’s going to change the course of conversations and how each side works toward coming to resolution going forward.”
Vought declined last week to elaborate on his intentions, when pressed in person on Capitol Hill about his plans to use the ploy in the coming months. His office also did not return a request for comment. However, the budget director laid out a detailed argument for the maneuver on television earlier in the month — then mentioned it again as he left a meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson and then during a later hearing with House appropriators.
“The very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions, later in the year, to be able to bank some of these savings, without the bill actually being passed,” Vought said on BLN. “It’s a provision that has been rarely used. But it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools.”
Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, recently warned that the gambit is “a bad idea” that “undermines Congress’ authority,” after saying last month that he thinks “it’s illegal” for a president to withhold funding lawmakers approved.
But many top Republican appropriators — while scoffing at Vought’s comments — aren’t willing to engage in rhetorical arguments about the bounds of the president’s spending power.
“Talking is one thing. We’ll see if he actually does it,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the military, said about Vought’s comments.
“He’s got his ideas,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the appropriations panel responsible for funding the departments of Transportation and Housing.
“I’d have some concerns about it,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services — all targets of Trump’s deepest funding cuts.
Tension has been building for months between those Republican appropriators and Vought, who has a history of testing the limits of funding law: When he served in this same role during Trump’s first administration, he froze aid to Ukraine in a move that helped set the stage for the president’s first impeachment trial.
Republican funding leaders are irked that the White House has yet to deliver a full budget request, which appropriators rely upon to write their dozen funding measures. Vought has already left open the door to withholding the new money if the administration doesn’t agree with the spending priorities in the final bills.
They also say the president’s budget director and other Cabinet secretaries have withheld essential information about how they are using federal cash as the Trump administration fights off more than 100 legal challenges around the country. The suits are seeking to overturn the White House’s freezing of billions of dollars Congress already approved for myriad programs and agencies.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) issued a rare rebuke of Vought this spring for taking down the public website showing how agencies are expected to disburse federal dollars.
But the Oklahoma Republican generally avoids any public criticism of the Trump administration and is not sounding off now about Vought’s embrace of pocket rescissions. Cole said this month that he would “look at each individual” request the White House sends to claw back funding, now that the House has passed the $9.4 billion package to nix money for foreign aid and public broadcasting.
That package of funding cuts now sits in the Senate, where some top Republicans are interested in tweaking the plan to protect funding for preventing AIDS around the world and supporting PBS programming in their home states. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested Vought’s public comments about using pocket rescissions could be intended to encourage reluctant senators to clear it.
“Maybe that’s the way to let members know: Vote for the ones he sends up,” Johnson said, noting that he would be “totally supportive” of Vought using the tactic this fall.
Another Senate fiscal hawk, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he believes the law “does allow for pocket rescissions.”
“I think the president should have more power not to spend money,” Paul told reporters last week. “So if we have a way to reduce spending, by all means, we should use it.”
No court has ruled on the president’s power to cancel funding by sending Congress a request and then running out the clock at the end of the fiscal year. But GAO has twice weighed in.
In 2018, the watchdog found that the law “does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration.” Vought, though, likes to cite an older GAO conclusion from 1975: It determined that Congress was unable to reject then-President Gerald Ford’s requests to claw back funding “in time to prevent the budget authority from lapsing.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Congress
WHCD shooting fuels new efforts in Congress to get Trump his ballroom
President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress want to quickly authorize completion of the White House ballroom after the Saturday shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But it’s not going to be simple.
Trump’s ambitious ballroom project was put on hold earlier this year after a federal judge said Congress needed to explicitly approve it. Responses from lawmakers were relatively muted at that time. Then over the weekend, Trump and several members of the presidential line of succession were sitting down to their salads at a Washington hotel when a gunman tried to storm past a security checkpoint.
Now, what was once regarded by many lawmakers as a nice-to-have is being viewed as a necessary venue for future events and celebrations. Multiple Hill Republicans have made public promises to try to approve the ballroom’s construction as soon as this week despite there being no clear path to getting a bill quickly to Trump’s desk.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.S.C) said he has been hearing from Trump directly about the ballroom and wants Senate Majority Leader John Thune to “expedite” consideration of his new bill with GOP Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Eric Schmitt of Missouri that would provide up to $400 million for the project.
Schmitt told reporters that while the ongoing legal battle isn’t over and that he believes Trump has the authority to build the ballroom on his own, Saturday’s shooting “renews the focus” on finding ways to finish the project without delays or complications.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is expected to try Tuesday to pass his bill that would authorize construction of the ballroom. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) is also expected to go to the Senate floor this week to try and pass his own bill.
Yet Republicans are facing multiple hurdles, the most serious of which is that senators don’t have support to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are furious the ballroom is being built on the rubble of the East Wing that Trump bulldozed without consulting with lawmakers or planning and preservation review boards.
That’s giving way to talk among some Republicans about trying to jam it into the party-line immigration enforcement bill Trump wants on his desk by June 1 — a maneuver that might not work or could, at the very least, complicate the GOP’s ability to meet its deadline as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown drags on.
Trump himself urged the House to approve the budget blueprint as-is that the Senate advanced last week, which would tee up a bill through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol activities — part of a two-step plan to reopen DHS after bipartisan negotiations fell through.
Even House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington, who has called for expanding the pending reconciliation bill, is warning against making changes.
He said Monday the package will be “completely focused” on ICE and Border Patrol funding. And he warned that if Republicans start adding things now, it would open the door to adding items from a much larger conservative wish list.
“Listen, if we were going to add stuff to this, I’ve got a list and it’s going to start with fiscal reforms on preventing more fraud, and then you’ve got a host of other reforms on health care and housing affordability,” Arrington said.
Three Senate aides said Monday that a ballroom-related provision would not comply with the chamber’s rules for inclusion in the measure under the budget reconciliation process, anyway. Further complicating matters is that Republicans aren’t united behind one specific ballroom proposal, with Paul noting he would support putting a nominal amount of funding in but not hundreds of millions of dollars like Graham is envisioning.
Thune kept his options open Monday, telling reporters his conference would see what was “achievable.” But he acknowledged that the budget blueprint his chamber drafted did not task all of the relevant committees with oversight of the ballroom project to draft the reconciliation bill itself.
“I don’t know,” Thune said when pressed if it could be included in the immigration enforcement package.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) also urged his colleagues to tread carefully on the reconciliation plan.
“If we change it, then we put it in jeopardy. So I would prefer not to put it in jeopardy,” he said to reporters Monday evening. “I understand that there’s a desire to move forward with some of the construction over there, but let’s get a win under our belt.”
Graham, who chairs the Budget Committee, didn’t close the door to trying to tackle the ballroom through the party-line process but appeared to be frustrated about the prospect that it could come to that.
“I’d like to do it as a freestanding bill with an offset,” Graham said at a news conference Monday. “Let’s give it a chance, and if we fail, we’ll have to go to Plan B.”
Yet so far, with the exception of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), no Senate Democrat is biting.
“If Republicans truly want to improve security, they should join Democrats in funding the Secret Service, not Donald Trump’s luxury ballroom,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Congress
Florida Republicans make peace with proposed new House map
Some House Republicans spent weeks warning against a drastic redraw of Florida’s congressional map.
Now that it’s out — with Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting as many as four Democratic seats for a GOP takeover — they’re mostly keeping any criticism to themselves.
“I think they did a pretty good job,” said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who said he was one of the Florida Republicans whose district changed “quite a bit.”
“But I think they could touch it up a little bit, too,” he added.
Rep. Scott Franklin said he is set to represent his third constituency in four terms. He still lives within the confines of the 18th district, he said, though it is much smaller in area.
“Mine gets significantly less red than it was,” Franklin said. “But it’s still a conservative performing seat.”
DeSantis’ map still has to be approved by the Florida legislature, and it’s almost certain to face challenges in court. But many of the states’ 20 Republicans are already making peace with new districts that will be at least slightly more competitive.
Many warned that redrawing the existing GOP-favored map to pick up more than one or two Democratic seats could dangerously dilute the Republican vote. And at least one, Jacksonville-area Rep. John Rutherford, said targeting four “could be a bit much.”
Down the Atlantic coast, the reviews were more positive. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar’s Miami-area district remains largely untouched under the new maps, while her neighbor Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart could see his safe Republican seat only slightly diluted.
“Not bad, right? I’m used to those lines, so I’m happy,” Salazar said. “And I was one of the people that could have been highly damaged.”
She declined to comment on whether she expects the new map to net the four seats the GOP is craving: “God knows what’s going to happen.”
Several of the Florida Democrats who are now in danger expressed more concern. They now face running in unfriendly districts or switching districts and possibly running against a current colleague.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a South Florida Democrat, said he plans on running again and that he believes DeSantis’ effort will backfire by creating more tossup districts. Rep. Darren Soto called the map a violation of state and federal law but said he plans to run in his current Orlando-area district nonetheless.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a veteran Democrat representing a district south of Fort Lauderdale called the new map “a completely unconstitutional partisan gerrymander” and said she was waiting to review detailed data on her redrawn district.
“But the main thing is that this is illegal, and we’re going to sue,” she said.
Congress
Charles to argue for a strong US-UK partnership in address to Congress
King Charles will use his speech to Congress to help repair the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain that has been under strain over the Iran war.
The king plans to focus on reconciliation and renewal in a speech Tuesday before the House and Senate that is expected to run about 20 minutes, according to royal aides.
Charles will celebrate “one of the greatest alliances in history,” which has been tested as President Donald Trump complains about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reluctance, along with other NATO allies, to provide assistance to the U.S.-led attacks on Iran, the aides said.
He will reference the shared national security interests of the U.S. and the U.K., including NATO, the Middle East, Ukraine and the trilateral AUKUS pact with Australia.
Starmer’s handling of some of those issues has provoked criticism from Trump, who derisively referred to the prime minister as “not Winston Churchill” after the U.K. initially didn’t allow the U.S. to use its bases to bomb Iran at the beginning of the war.
When asked earlier in this month about his relationship with Starmer and the state of the U.S.-U.K. partnership, Trump told ITV News it was “not good at all.”
Charles is expected to acknowledge that tension by noting that the two nations have not always seen eye to eye, but that “time and again, our two countries have always found ways to come back together,” according to royal aides.
In his address, Charles also plans to tout the need to respect the rule of law and democratic traditions, and argue for the importance of trade and technology deals — a message that may go over less well with the administration.
Royal aides said the king’s remarks will also include a brief message of sympathy for Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Dan Bloom contributed to this report.
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