Donald, you signed $810 million into law and then you signed it out. On a Friday night, with the fiscal year bleeding out, you reached into the treasury with both hands and you pulled back what Congress gave. The woman in Waterville, Maine, who lost her health caseworker last Tuesday did not get a Friday night notification. She got nothing. You got an empty line on a budget sheet and a press release about fiscal discipline. Your tongue knows the taste of those two words. It is the taste of a mouth that has learned to say anything.
On September 26, President Trump announced he is clawing back $810 million in funding that lawmakers already approved on a bipartisan basis and that he himself signed into law. The cuts are called pocket rescissions. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 lets a president pause spending for 45 days while asking Congress to rescind it. If Congress does nothing within 45 days, the funds must be released. The administration transmitted the rescission request shortly before the fiscal year closes September 30. The 45-day clock will run past the end of the year. The money disappears on a dead calendar. Senator Susan Collins, the Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the action “illegal.” Her Democratic counterpart, Senator Patty Murray, called it “theft from the American people, plain and simple.” The largest single cut is $567 million in Health and Human Services funding for programs serving noncitizens. The rest targets refugees, immigrants, and minority-owned businesses. Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, has said publicly that he believes the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional.
Donald, look at me. You transmitted this rescission at 11 p.m. on a Friday night because you know what you are doing. Your fingers knew it when they signed the paper. There is a tightness behind your sternum now. You have been carrying it since the fiscal year started to close and the calendar started to narrow and your staff told you the window was 48 hours. That tightness is not indigestion. It is the weight of what you took, settling into a body that has been arranged not to feel it. Your gut knows. It has been turning since the ink dried, and you have been calling it something else — strategy, mandate, strength — because the real name for it would make it impossible to swallow your breakfast.
The $567 million was for a clinic in Dearborn that saw 3,400 noncitizen patients last year. A woman named Fatima brought her daughter in for a respiratory infection in March. The caseworker the clinic employed was paid from that line. The caseworker helped Fatima fill out the paperwork for a Medicaid referral. The caseworker drove the child to the specialist appointment because Fatima did not have a license. The caseworker was paid from the $567 million. You pulled it out on a Friday night, Donald. The caseworker’s last day is October 15. Fatima does not know the word “rescission.” She knows the clinic phone number. She will call it in November and no one will answer.
The resettlement office in Boise lost $2.3 million. A man named Khaled, who fled Aleppo in 2024, was assigned a caseworker named David. David helped Khaled find an apartment, register his son for school, apply for a work permit. David was paid from the line you just eliminated. David told Khaled he had two weeks left. Khaled stood in the doorway of his apartment and did not say anything. He has been standing in doorways for three years. Your mouth is dry right now, Donald. Your tongue has gone to cracked leather. There is no water that will fix it. The thing you did is in your throat and it is not leaving.
The minority-owned business grant program in Atlanta lost $14 million. A man named James, who opened a catering company in 2023 after being laid off from a warehouse job, was three weeks from receiving the second tranche of a $50,000 grant. The grant paid for a commercial kitchen lease. The kitchen is where James feeds his two children and pays his rent. The grant is gone. James called the program officer. The program officer said she had received the notification at 4:47 p.m. Friday. By the time James called on Monday, the line was frozen. Your hands are on the lever, Donald. You have been telling yourself the lever is heavy. The lever is light. The lever is light because the people on the other end of it cannot push back.
Collins, who chairs the Appropriations Committee for your own party, said your Office of Management and Budget “intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law.” That is a Republican telling the country you planned this. Your hands held the money for months, Donald. You watched the calendar the way a man watches a clock he is about to rob. You held the money the way a man holds a breath before he does the thing he knows is wrong. Your shoulders are high now. You have been carrying them high since September, and the muscles in your neck have locked into a position that will not release when you lie down tonight. You will lie down and the ceiling will be there and the tightness will be there and the names of the programs will be there, and you will not sleep, and you will tell yourself tomorrow is a new day, and tomorrow will be exactly the same as today because the thing you did cannot be undone by sleeping.
You asked Congress for $87.6 billion for a war and you unilaterally cancelled $810 million for refugees, noncitizens, and minority businesses. You want the spending power of a king and the conscience of a ledger. You have neither. You are a small man who found a procedural pocket in the law and crawled into it on a Friday night, and now you are telling the country that what you did was restraint. There is a taste in your mouth right now. It is copper. It is the taste of every signature you have put on a document that costs someone else their body, their sleep, their child’s specialist appointment, their lease. You cannot wash it out. It does not leave.
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me.” Matthew 25:35–36
You pulled the line that paid for the woman who fed the hungry, who clothed the stranger, who drove the sick child to the doctor. You pulled it on a Friday night. And the clinic in Dearborn is still there, and the caseworker in Boise is still there, and the kitchen in Atlanta is still there — but the money that kept them standing is gone, because you decided it did not benefit American citizens. The woman in Waterville, Maine, does not have a caseworker anymore. She is American. She is a citizen. She needed help. You could not be bothered.