President Trump on Friday cancelled almost $1 billion in federal funding without congressional approval using the controversial “pocket rescission” process. Most of the funding was administered by the Department of Health and Human Services for programs serving undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylees, and unaccompanied children in the U.S.
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called Trump’s use of the rescission process “unlawful.”
According to The Hill, Collins called on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) “to spend all of the $1.3 billion appropriated from fiscal 2025 as intended.”
Collins wrote on social media: “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 added, “OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”
Without warning or consultation, Congress just received an $810 million package of pocket rescissions from the Administration. This is the most recent attempt by this Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.
This move…
— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) September 25, 2026
Collins’s critics noted that the senator, who is in a tight election race, voted for Trump’s OMB director, Russell Vought.
Vought, according to her fellow Maine Senator Angus King (I-ME), “explicitly rejects the exclusive power of congress to authorize and appropriate funds for the operation of the government,” and “espouses the discredited and illegal theory that the president has the power to selectively impound funds appropriated by congress, thereby rendering the famous power of the purse a nullity.”
[NOTE: In the White House press release titled, ‘President Trump Takes Historic Action to Eliminate Wasteful and Harmful Spending,’ the administration said: “These funds previously went to pro-illegal immigration programs and Non-Governmental Organizations that provided services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens and put unaccompanied children in harm’s way.”]
The press release notes two such “pro-illegal immigration” organizations with connections to former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama: “Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Inc (DBA Global Refuge), an open-borders NGO run by Michelle Obama’s former policy director,” and “Endeavors Inc., an open-borders NGO run by Barack Obama’s DHS CFO Chip Fulghum.”
The press release also condemns the CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Krish Vignarajah, who served as a senior Advisor at the State Department under Secretaries Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, for “appearing frequently on MSNBC.” (MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, was one of the three media outlets recently banned from the White House by Trump.)