“Trump 'Gleefully Eviscerating' Efforts to Help Families With 'Illegal' Pocket Rescission”, 26 September 2026 (Photo via Common Dreams — the original report)
As it ran on the front
Late Friday the White House canceled congressionally approved money without a vote, itemizing the targets in its own release: programs it labeled pro-illegal-immigration, a Justice Department subagency it called nefarious, a climate program it accused of propagating "America Last" alarmism, and a diversity office it renamed discrimination. By Saturday the Supreme Court had let the cancellation stand, the second use of this maneuver in fifty years.
Three weeks earlier, on September 3, a federal judge blocked a different Trump administration attempt to route California's clean-car emissions rules around Congress. That back door stayed shut. This one opened.…
…(cont) The price tag has not stayed still since. The Daily Caller filed the total at $810 million. Three days later, writing about the same cancellation, the same outlet's wire copy filed the number as "nearly $1 billion." No correction ran between the two figures. Both remained published, three days and roughly $900 million apart.
Elected Democrats blasted the move Friday night. So did the Senate's own top Republican appropriator, standing in the same sentence as the Democrats, against a White House that shares their party's letterhead. House Budget Committee ranking member Brendan Boyle supplied the word for the record: Trump, he said, "knows he can't get these cuts through Congress, so he is illegally making them through the back door." The release contains "wasteful." It contains "harmful." It contains "nefarious," reserved for the Justice Department subagency, and "America Last," reserved for the climate program. It does not contain "illegal." It did not need to. Boyle put it there instead, and the Senate's ranking Republican appropriator stood close enough to be counted alongside him.
The Supreme Court did not price the rescission. It only declined to stop it. Somewhere between $810 million and $1.8 billion, a specific number of dollars stopped being available for the programs the release named, and the number itself remains the one thing this story cannot get two outlets — or one outlet, three days apart — to agree on twice.
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“Ten days ago it was $1.8 billion, now it's 'nearly a billion' from the same outfit that wrote both numbers. When the friendliest press on your side can't hold a figure steady for a week, that's not sloppy math, that's a White House that never wanted anybody counting in the first place. Boyle said the word out loud — illegal — and the Court let the money go anyway.”
“The release says wasteful, harmful — those are budget words, not legal words, so I don't see the issue here. Look, one Republican appropriator joining a press statement isn't a party position, it's one member's opinion, and — did I just call my own side's numbers guy a rogue actor? That's not what I meant. The Court let it stand, that's the only ruling that counts, end of story.”
Elected Democrats—and even the Senate's top Republican appropriator—blasted President Donald Trump late Friday for rescinding nearly $1 billion in congressionally approved spending that the White House deemed "wasteful and harmful" through a legally contested process. In a statement announcing what was targeted, the administration…
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