Keaton Zeimet
On President Trump’s first day in office, his administration ordered billions of dollars in international aid frozen,[1] which would result in a cascading domino effect with several trips to the Supreme Court and a seldom-used executive tool. In an executive order, the Trump Administration froze billions of dollars in international aid to determine if the appropriated funds, “aligned with the foreign policy of the President.”[2] On September 26th, 2025, the Supreme Court paused a lower court order requiring the Trump Administration to spend some of the frozen funding by September 30th, 2025.[3] What is left unanswered in the Supreme Court’s order is the constitutionality of the rarely utilized pocket rescission.[4]
A pocket rescission is when the president sends a request to Congress to rescind appropriated funding toward the end of the fiscal year, which prevents the funding from being utilized before the fiscal deadline.[5] The process for rescinding funding is outlined in the Impoundment Control Act, which gives the president a 45-day period to withhold funding, while Congress considers approving or rejecting the rescission.[6] However, in practice, the executive can submit a request late in the fiscal year and Congress may take no action to respond to the request. Thus, the appropriated funds will lapse at the end of the fiscal year, and the executive is not required to spend those funds.
The Trump Administration, on August 28th, utilized the pocket rescission by sending a request to Congress to rescind $4 billion in appropriated international funding.[7] The request would withhold $4 billion in funding past the fiscal year deadline of September 30th, which would require Congress to act swiftly; otherwise, the funds would lapse past the deadline. After the request, Congress did not take any further action; however, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia initially ordered the expenditure of the appropriated funds, but this order was stayed after the Supreme Court’s September 26th decision.[8] The case remains ongoing, but what is left unanswered is the constitutionality of the pocket rescission.
Presidents draw foreign policy powers from the Vesting Clause of the Constitution, which gives executive power to the President of the United States.[9] Likewise, Congress draws its “power of the purse” from the Appropriations Clause in the Constitution.[10] The use of the pocket rescission to withhold international funding positions itself between these two constitutional powers, raising constitutional questions on separations of powers.
In some respects, the pocket rescission looks like the line-item veto, which gave the President unilateral power to repeal portions of enacted laws.[11] The Supreme Court struck down the line-item veto because it violated the Presentment Clause of the Constitution, which requires a bill to be passed by both the House and Senate and be presented to the President to sign or veto.[12] The pocket rescission is similar to the line-item veto because both executive tools go around the bicameralism of Congress to enact change on existing laws. However, the Supreme Court has not answered how the Presentment Clause implicates pocket rescission, leaving this issue unresolved. If an answer to this question does come in the future, it will surely redefine the balance of power between the Executive and Legislative branches.
[1] See Exec. Order No. 14,169, 90 Fed. Reg. 8619 (Jan. 20, 2025); Press Release, Dep’t of State, Implementing the President’s Executive Order on Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Jan. 26, 2025)
[2] See Exec. Order No. 14,169, 90 Fed. Reg. 8619 (Jan. 20, 2025).
[3] Dep’t of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advoc. Coal., 2025 WL 2771778, at *1 (on application for stay).
[4] See generally id.
[5] U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., What is a “Pocket Rescission” and is It Legal?, GAO WatchBlog (Aug. 6, 2025), https://www.gao.gov/blog/what-pocket-rescission-and-it-legal.
[6] Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, 2 U.S.C. §§ 681-688.
[7] Trump v. Global Health Couns. and Dep’t of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advoc. Coal., 2025 WL 2606732, at *2 (Application for Partial Stay of Injunction)
[8] Dep’t of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advoc. Coal., 2025 WL 2771778, at *1 (on application for stay).
[9] U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1.
[10] U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 7.
[11] Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 419 (1998).
[12] Clinton, 524 U.S. at 448.