As my colleague Emine Yücel reported yesterday, President Trump’s plan for a rescissions package — which many presidents have successfully used since the 1970s to send unspent funding back to Congress — is a constitutionally backwards attempt to force down legislators’ throats the sweeping cuts to federal programs that Trump has already made, without Congress’ approval, in his first 100 days in office.
It feeds into a broader theme that we’ve been covering since Trump first returned to the White House with a trifecta: Republicans’ willingness to cede their own authority to the executive branch.
That’s taken a few different forms in recent months, including the strong-arming Trump has done to force hardliners and vulnerable members of the Republican conference to get on board with his one “big, beautiful” budget bill. While Republicans wrestled with whether to pass another clean CR to keep the government open in March, Trump assured holdouts that none of the stuff in the stopgap bill would actually matter because DOGE would continue ignoring Congress’ authority and continue its work of slashing congressionally approved federal funds, anyway. When right-wing House Freedom Caucus members expressed agita that the trillions in federal spending cuts outlined in Republicans’ budget blueprint didn’t go far enough, Trump reportedly demanded they vote for the measure first and sort out the details later. (The bullying was helped along by an assurance from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to the same group that they could oust him as speaker if they were at all unsatisfied with where things landed in the Senate budget reconciliation process that would be used to pass the bill.)
It fits the larger pattern. Trump has demonstrated his ability — even before he came back to office — to force the Republican conference into doing whatever he needs it to do. That’s not totally different from the dynamics of his first term. But this time, it’s more sinister, Trump’s control of the party is more firmly cemented, and the members are more spineless, acquiescing as Trump demands they hand over their ability to serve as a check on the executive branch.
This pattern has also taken the form of the planned rescission package — the White House force feeding its lawless DOGE cuts to Congress — and the White House asking members to give up their ability to end an emergency declaration enacted by the President, thus ceding their control over tariffs. (The declaration was an early concession House Republicans made to prevent Democrats from forcing them to take a vote on Trump’s early tariffs on U.S. allies.)
Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, Trump announced his plans to turn his attention back to the passage of his budget bill, which is structured such that it is a near certainty that it will involve cuts to Medicaid (perhaps by taking a bite out of the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act), no matter how Republicans try to spin it.
“The next period of time, I think, my biggest focus will be on Congress, the deal that we’re working on,” Trump said.
That lines up with new reporting from NOTUS, which reveals the White House is considering holding off on sending its rescissions package to Congress after all, suggesting Trump may want to focus on coercing the party into swallowing the Medicaid cuts first. The White House was reportedly planning to send over the rescission package this week, but may now wait until after Republicans have gotten through some of the reconciliation process. Per NOTUS:
The administration was expected to send Congress its rescission request on Monday, but now the process has been slowed down and could be delayed for weeks. House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole and two sources said the White House is debating whether to send the package while Congress is in the middle of dealing with reconciliation.
GAO vs. Trump’s Funding Freezes
The head of the Government Accountability Office, U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, told senators Tuesday morning that his office is currently conducting 39 separate investigations into President Trump’s DOGE funding freezes.
“We’re trying to get the information from the agencies about what their legal position is for not expending the money,” Dodaro said during a Senate hearing about his agency’s budget.
He explained that the Office of Management and Budget “has not been responsive” to GAO’s questions around the freezing of billions of dollars in congressionally approved federal funding. GAO is empowered by law to be a watchdog and investigate whether the executive branch, including federal agencies, is illegally impounding money, as we recently noted here.
The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have, of course, been unilaterally making huge cuts to previously appropriated federal funding since January. As outlined above, their lawless rampage through the federal government has been receiving so much backlash that the Trump administration is expected to send in a rescission package to Capitol Hill — in an attempt to legitimize and formalize at least some of the billions of dollars the administration has already clawed back.
Dodaro also urged Congress to include language in the appropriations bill that would require federal agencies to respond to GAO requests in a timely manner in order to help them do their job as the watchdog over the Impoundment Control Act.
“We can only be as efficient as we can get the information from the agencies,” Dodaro told Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-WA).
— Emine Yücel
A Performative Rescissions Package
Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee have created an accessible tracker that shows the federal funds — all approved by Congress and signed into law — that are being unilaterally slashed by the Trump administration.
The data indicates at least $430 billion in federal funding are currently being withheld by the executive branch.
It highlights how performative the reportedly $9.3 billion recession package Trump is expected to send over to Congress actually is. That’s barely 2% of all the funds being withheld, by Democrats’ count.
— Emine Yücel
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A ‘p*ssed’ Trump called Jeff Bezos after learning Amazon considered breaking out a tariff charge
Cat.
Because I can.
I think Josh is right and the man is in trouble. He knows it, which makes him a more dangerous animal. Will he shoot someome on Fifth Avenue? Only time will tell.
Off topic: in light of calls to boycott Amazon today, it occurred to my that boycotts are exactly the same strategy as tarrifs, and it’s a loser strategy. It amounts to causing yourself personal pain in the hopes that it might hurt someone else as well.
Republican Party to asylum seekers: Drop dead.
From the article: "In a 116-page reconciliation amendment from Chairman Jim Jordan, Republicans have proposed a whopping $1,000 fee for asylum-seekers—the first of its kind in U.S. history…
“The amendment also proposed a fee of $550 for those applying for employment authorization under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The permits would elapse every six months, making it extremely expensive to work in the U.S. as an immigrant.”
Only rich heterosexual conservative-Christian Norwegian big-business owners or trust-fund babies need apply. Also, Mr. Trump hates eating fruits and vegetables so your agricultural labor is no longer needed.
Perhaps, for efficiency’s sake, RFK, Jr.'s HHS should focus on bringing back rickets, scurvy and pellagra.