SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
russell vought
Trump Bid to Block $4.9 Billion With 'Pocket Rescission' Blasted as 'Authoritarianism 101'
"Congress—and only Congress—passes budgets. Because the president's job is to take care the laws are faithfully executed, he must spend the money as directed," said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar.
Aug 30, 2025
Democracy defenders and members of Congress are condemning US President Donald Trump's effort to use a "pocket rescission" process to block $4.9 billion in foreign aid as authoritarian and illegal.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Friday shared on social media Trump's letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) about the move. According to a White House fact sheet linked in a subsequent post, much of the money was headed for the US Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which Trump has gutted.
As The Associated Press explained:
The 1974 Impoundment Control Act gives the president the authority to propose canceling funds approved by Congress. Congress can within 45 days vote on pulling back the funds or sustaining them, but by proposing the rescission so close to September 30 the White House argues that the money won’t be spent and the funding lapses.
What was essentially the last pocket rescission occurred in 1977 by Democratic then-President Jimmy Carter, and the Trump administration argues it's a legally permissible tool despite some murkiness as Carter had initially proposed the clawback well ahead of the 45-day deadline.
Shortly after the OMB social media posts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that OMB Director Russ Vought was helping shutter USAID, writing on the platform X: "Since January, we've saved the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. And with a small set of core programs moved over to the State Department, USAID is officially in closeout mode. Russ is now at the helm to oversee the closeout of an agency that long ago went off the rails. Congrats, Russ."
Meanwhile, Rubio's former congressional colleagues and others are sounding the alarm over the administration's effort.
"America is staring down next month's government funding deadline on September 30," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "It's clear neither Trump nor congressional Republicans have any plan to avoid a painful and entirely unnecessary shutdown. With Trump's illegal 'pocket rescission': They seem eager to inflict further pain on the American people, raising their healthcare costs, compromising essential services, and further damaging our national security."
Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) also put pressure on GOP lawmakers, saying that "this is wrong—and illegal. Not only is Trump gutting $5 billion in foreign aid that saves lives and advances America's interests, but he's doing so using an unlawful 'pocket recission' method that undermines Congress' power of the purse. I urge my Republican colleagues to say hell no."
While most Republicans on Capitol Hill have backed Trump's endeavors to claw back funding previously appropriated by Congress, GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted against his $9 billion rescission package earlier this year.
Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, also spoke out against Trump's new move, noting in a Friday statement that under the US Constitution, Congress has "the power of the purse," and the Government Accountability Office "has concluded that this type of rescission is unlawful and not permitted by the Impoundment Control Act."
Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional scholar, similarly stressed that "Congress—and only Congress—passes budgets. Because the president's job is to take care the laws are faithfully executed, he must spend the money as directed. Trump's 'pocket recissions' are lawless and absurd. If a president opposes legislative spending decisions, he can veto them, subject to override, but once passed, he must execute on them."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, declared in a Friday statement that with the pocket rescission move, the Trump administration "demonstrated yet again its contempt for Congress' power of the purse and the Constitution's separation of powers."
"With this Constitution-mocking action, the administration is bringing us closer to a shutdown on September 30, and it doesn't seem to care," Gilbert said. "We call on Congress to push back, pass and abide by appropriations packages, and fight the administration’s illegal impoundments that harm regular Americans."
"This is not just a constitutional crisis, it's a matter of global justice," she added. "The congressionally appropriated funds that the Trump administration illegally aims to cancel support economic development programs to empower the world's most vulnerable and impoverished, and address some of the ravage of catastrophic climate change in developing nations."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Racist Trump Rebuked for Demanding Smithsonian Stop Focusing on 'How Bad Slavery Was'
The White House said it would expand its review of museums' historical content to other institutions after it holds the Smithsonian "accountable."
Aug 20, 2025
A week after the White House announced it was examining the Smithsonian museums' exhibits to ensure they align with President Donald Trump's own "interpretation of American history," the president on Tuesday said the publicly funded museum system is "out of control" and contains materials that are overly negative about one of the most significant aspects of U.S. history: chattel slavery and its legacy.
"Everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future," said the president on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Trump's comments came days after Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, sent a letter to the Smithsonian—which includes 21 museums, 14 educational centers, and a zoo—ordering officials at eight of its museums to turn over information about exhibits that are being planned to commemorate the United States' 250th anniversary next year.
The officials were given 120 days to adjust the "tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals" to match the administration's view of history—which, judging from Trump's comments, doesn't include the history of how Black Americans were impacted by enslavement, despite the fact that Republicans at the party's 2020 national convention claimed credit for abolishing the practice.
"Anyone who thinks there’s ANYTHING GOOD about enslaving human beings has no business running ANY country… much less the world's most influential democracy," said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) in response to Trump's comments.
The White House also pushed the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History this month to remove references to the president's two impeachment trials—once for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political opponents and once for inciting his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
"Anyone who thinks there's ANYTHING GOOD about enslaving human beings has no business running ANY country… much less the world's most influential democracy."
In May, NBC News reported that after Trump issued his executive order demanding the Smithsonian take down exhibits that he claimed "divide Americans based on race," officials removed at least 32 artifacts from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, including a hymn book owned by Harriet Tubman, a former slave who later fought for the abolishment of the institution.
The White House told NBC News Tuesday that Trump plans to hold the Smithsonian "accountable" and "then go from there," expanding his review of museums to other institutions.
In his post at Truth Social Tuesday, Trump said his attorneys will "go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made"—a reference to the pressure the White House has placed on universities including Columbia and Harvard to suppress academic freedom and curb free speech.
The administration has pushed some schools to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives while coercing hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement payments.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told The New York Times Tuesday that it was "the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America."
"It's what led to our Civil War and is a defining aspect of our national history," said Brinkley. "And the Smithsonian deals in a robust way with what slavery was, but it also deals with human rights and civil rights in equal abundance."
Cornell William Brooks, a professor at Harvard, warned that "the SAME propaganda that said slavery wasn't so bad allowed people to feel so good about lynchings they mailed thousands of postcards" showing people who were lynched at public gatherings.
"My enslaved ancestors were kidnapped to South Carolina and subsequently beaten, raped, and humiliated," said Brooks. "'Brightness' is IN the history. Read the slavery narratives, talk to some Black people, OR just visit our powerful Smithsonian museums."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Christian Nationalism for Lunch? Thanks, But No Thanks
A new U.S. Office of Personnel Management memo allowing workplace proselytizing is not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
Aug 13, 2025
Imagine you’re a federal civil service employee, reading today’s paper while having a sandwich during your lunch break in the cafeteria. Another federal employee, maybe a coworker or maybe not, sits down beside you and politely begins to tell you why his faith is correct and why yours, actually, isn’t. Sounds annoying, possibly enraging, and presumably inappropriate if not prohibited? Think again.
According to a July 28, 2025 memorandum to the heads of all federal departments and agencies from Scott Kupor, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), employees “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views,” including “why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” is perfectly okay and even protected religious expression, so long as it falls short of harassment.
As a former federal attorney who worked for the U.S. Labor Department for 39 years, including eight years as a senior executive who ran a regional office, I find this policy disconcerting at best. From the standpoint of office mission effectiveness, maintaining positive and respectful peer-to-peer relationships is crucial. It’s one thing for coworkers, during breaks, to have candid and even heated discussions about sitcoms, musical tastes, or even politics. It’s quite another to laud one’s own spiritual belief and disparage, if not outright insult, another’s. Not a great recipe for harmonious and productive coworker relations.
This right to attempt to convince others that their religious convictions are misguided extends not only to peer coworkers, but to supervisors too. In other words, as you’re enjoying your sandwich in the cafeteria, your supervisor could sit down next to you and explain why your deeply held beliefs happen to be wrong. Not quite so easy to tell them it’s none of their damn business.
The prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims.
But there’s another aspect of this policy that casts an even darker shadow. All this arises in an administration fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s vow to “bring back Christianity,” and populated or supported by self-described Christian nationalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Russell Vought, once again head of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.
Christian nationalism means different things to different people, but has a number of core beliefs. A major 2024 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute included five statements designed to measure support for Christian nationalism. The list included:
- God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
- The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
- Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
- If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
- U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
The study found that 30% of Americans can be classified as Christian nationalism “adherents” or “sympathizers” (those who fully or mostly agree with the five statements), compared to two-thirds of Americans found to be “skeptics” or “rejecters” (that is, they mostly or fully disagree with the statements). Nevertheless, according to preelection reporting by Politico, “Vought and his ideological brethren would not shy from using their administration positions to promote Christian doctrine and imbue public policy with it.”
According to Christian nationalism expert and history professor Kristin Du Mez, “This is not a pluralist vision for all of America coming together or a vision for compromise… It is a vision for seizing power and using that power to usher in a ‘Christian America.’” She believes that if the Christian nationalist movement gets what it wants, “There will be no meaningful religious liberty. There will be essentially a two-tier society between the quote unquote, real Americans—those who buy into this, or pretend to—and then the rest of Americans.”
Is this latest OPM memo part of a veiled effort to advance a Christian nationalist vision for our country? Consider that the prospect of federal supervisors advising their subordinates that their religious convictions aren’t the “correct” ones becomes dramatically more troubling if supervisors’ tenure is subject to the president’s whims—including, potentially, loyalty to a Vought-endorsed Christian-nationalist-inspired belief system. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which would have enabled mass dismissals of those deemed unsuitable. A similar effort is underway this time around. Will espousing Christian nationalism be one of the unstated litmus tests to get, or keep, a supervisory job?
Whether there’s a Christian nationalist agenda lurking behind the OPM memo or not, a better policy for government workers would suggest, if not require, that unless asked, they—and particularly supervisors—keep their judgments of others’ personal belief systems to themselves.
But since the July 28 memo says otherwise, federal employees, please note: As you’re minding your own business munching a tuna salad sandwich at lunch, you might find your supervisor offering a spiritual lesson that wasn’t on the menu. If it works for you, fine. But if it doesn’t go down well, do send it back, with a polite but firm “no thank you.” Assert your freedom of religion, or your freedom not to be religious, while you still have it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular