President Donald Trump canceled nearly $1 billion in unspent federal funding on Friday night, marking the second “pocket” rescission overall in 50 years, each issued by Trump during his second term. Trump’s Friday evening rescission strips back $810 million in funding for several immigration and refugee programs, foreign debt-relief…
Page F3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 26 September 2026
SECOND TIME IN 50 YEARS
Trump saves $810 million canceling health and immigrant aid after spending $7 billion paying people not to work.
As it ran on the front
Call that the ask: this is what canceling looks like when the money hasn't gone out the door yet.
Nine days earlier, on September 16, the Government Accountability Office filed a different number. Federal employees have been paid nearly $7 billion to not work, part of a buyout and paid-leave program the GAO put at $9.5 billion total, $6.7 billion of it DOGE's own line. That money isn't withheld from a program. It's spent, cleared, gone — for zero hours of labor performed.…
…(cont) Set those two filings side by side and the arithmetic runs one direction. $810 million rescinded against $7 billion already paid out for empty desks is a ratio of roughly one to nine. The administration's savings claim is a rounding error next to its own payroll line — a count the GAO already ran, so you don't have to.
There's a third drawer, filed September 23. The Joint Economic Committee tallied $1.8 billion in what it calls vanity spending. Of that total, $927 million is the White House ballroom and the rest of the renovation; the remaining roughly $873 million is everything else on the committee's list.
Read the ledger straight through. $810 million pulled from health, immigrant, and minority-health programs Congress already approved. $7 billion paid for labor that didn't happen. $1.8 billion tracked for presidential self-promotion, more than half of it one room. The rescission is real money and real programs — court representation for unaccompanied children, foreign debt relief, small-business grants — and it is also the smallest figure on this page, outrun nine-to-one by payroll and matched by a single ballroom.
Whether the maneuver itself is lawful is now a question for the courts, the same question a federal judge — a Trump appointee — already answered once this month when the judge ordered a different $7 billion program, Solar for All, restored over the administration's objection. The gap doesn't need a ruling to be visible.
“They tell you there's no money for the clinic or the kid's court date, then they turn around and pay seven billion dollars to people to sit home and do nothing, plus another billion-eight for a ballroom your kid will never set foot in. That's not a budget cut, that's a redirect — the $810 million didn't vanish, it just stopped going to people who need it and kept going to people who don't. You want to know where your tax dollar went this year? An empty desk and a chandelier.”
“Look, a pocket rescission is a legal budget tool the President has every right to use — well, "every right," that's contested, fine, but call it fiscal discipline, Congress was sitting on money that should've gone back to taxpayers months ago. And the buyouts? That's efficiency, that's shrinking government the responsible way — you pay people to leave so the org chart gets smaller. Did I just defend paying nine billion dollars to leave the desks empty? That's not — that's not what I meant.”
The receipts
The Secret Service diverted $1.17 billion in appropriated funds toward the ballroom project Sen. Blumenthal, official release
Lawmakers slam Trump’s ‘unlawful’ move to cut $810 million in federal fundsThe White House said Friday that it planned to cut $810 million in bipartisan, congressionally approved funding, spurring criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
President Trump moved to cancel almost $1 billion in spending that was approved by Congress, marking the second time his administration has employed a rarely used tactic that some lawmakers in both parties have called illegal.
Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday released a report calculating that taxpayer funding for President Donald Trump's vanity projects has soared to more than $1.8 billion. Renovations made to the White House—including the president's luxury ballroom—are the biggest projected expenses, as the analysis cites…
President Trump cancelled almost $1 billion in federal funding Friday using the controversial “pocket rescission" process, which allows him to sidestep congressional approval. Most of the cancellations targeted Health and Human Services (HHS) programs serving undocumented immigrants and unaccompanied children in court, as well as similar…
Secret Service diverted $1.17 billion in appropriated funds toward the ballroom project Sen. Blumenthal, official release
Trump cancels nearly $1B in funding for illegal immigrants and race-focused programs in new ‘pocket’ rescissionPresident Trump on Friday ordered the cancellation of $810 million in congressionally appropriated funding, including large sums meant for illegal immigrants and race-focused programs, in the second "pocket" rescission in 49 years, The Post has learned.
A federal court has rebuffed the Trump administration’s effort to slash a $7 billion program that seeks to provide rooftop solar power in disadvantaged communities. Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee in Rhode Island, vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) move to terminate the Solar For All (SFA) program and claw back the…
The ballroom reached $600 million, with taxpayers on the hook for half USA Today, 16 June 2026
White House orders over $800M in funds rescindedThe White House announced Friday evening that it was rescinding over $800 million in congressionally appropriated funds across a range of government programs.
· Federal employees were paid nearly $7B not to work under DOGE effort: GAO from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· DOGE’s ‘Fork in the road’ buyouts cost government nearly $7 billion: Watchdog from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.