US President Donald Trump moved on Friday to unilaterally withhold more than $800 million in spending that Congress has approved. The package targets immigration, race and education programs, the White House said.

The administration said the move covers 11 funding pools worth $810 million. The largest cut, $567 million, ends Health and Human Services grants for refugee and asylum services. Other cuts hit migrant education, housing counseling and minority business.

The White House said Trump would use all possible tools to cut “wasteful and harmful government spending that does not benefit American citizens.” His budget office called it “the most harmful government spending.”

Officials used a pocket rescission, a rarely used budget maneuver, to bypass Congress. Congress normally gets 45 days to review proposed cuts. But the fiscal year ends on September 30, leaving lawmakers no time to act.

Senator Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the step “illegal” and an attempt to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.” The Government Accountability Office agrees the tactic is illegal. Trump used it in 2025 to withhold $4.9 billion in foreign aid, and the Supreme Court declined to block that move while litigation continued.