The White House on September 25 transmitted an $810 million rescission package to Congress that includes $24,907,509 from the Education Department’s Special Programs for Migrant Students, a competitive grant program authorized under the Higher Education Act. Congress appropriated approximately $52 million for the program in fiscal year 2026, rejecting the Trump administration’s budget request of zero dollars for the program. The request arrived five days before the end of the fiscal year on September 30, and the House is not scheduled to return until after the November midterm elections. That timing means the 45-day review period the Impoundment Control Act provides would expire after the funds themselves have lapsed, a tactic the Government Accountability Office says is illegal.
What the rescission targets
The rescission package, signed by the president and sent to Speaker Mike Johnson, proposes 11 cuts across the Departments of Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice, as well as international assistance programs. The Education Department portion specifically targets competitive grants within Special Programs for Migrant Students, which the White House characterized as a program that pays for seasonal immigrant workers’ children to attend school in the United States and transition to college. A White House fact sheet claimed the program has funded activities including an LGBT youth summit for migrant students and mental health workshops for Latinx students, and named grant recipient Immigrants Rising as well as support groups such as We Glimmer.
Education Department budget documents show that Special Programs for Migrant Students is authorized under HEA Title IV-A-5. Its FY 2025 appropriation was $52,123,000, down from $66,123,000 in FY 2024. The program’s authorization under the General Education Provisions Act expired on September 30, 2015, though Congress has continued funding it through GEPA extensions. The Trump administration’s FY 2026 budget request proposed eliminating the program entirely, arguing that states and localities, not the federal government, are best suited to determine whether to support the authorized activities.
A separate, larger program for migrant students — the Title I, Part C Migrant Education Program, a formula grant that funnels money to state educational agencies for K-12 children of migratory farmworkers and fishers — is not affected by this rescission. That program had FY 2025 appropriations of $375,626,000. The Trump administration also requested $0 for that program in FY 2026, asserting it has not been proven effective and encourages ineligible non-citizens to access taxpayer dollars.
The pocket rescission dispute
The central legal question is whether the Impoundment Control Act allows the president to withhold funds that expire before Congress can act on a rescission request. The GAO has said no. In a 2018 decision, B-330330, the GAO concluded that the ICA does not permit withholding funds through their expiration date, finding no basis to interpret the law as a mechanism for the president to unilaterally abridge the enacted period of availability of a fixed-period appropriation.
The Congressional Research Service has documented that GAO and the Office of Management and Budget hold opposite legal conclusions on whether Section 1012(b) of the ICA permits pocket rescissions. GAO reads the statute as containing a mandatory directive that funds proposed for rescission must be made available for obligation unless Congress completes action on a rescission bill within 45 days. OMB argues the statute does not expressly prohibit transmitting a rescission message near the end of a fiscal year and does not expressly require making withheld funds available before the 45-day period ends.
In August 2025, the Trump administration deployed what the White House called the first pocket rescission in 50 years, targeting foreign assistance funds. A D.C. district court issued a preliminary injunction on September 3, 2025, requiring the government to obligate approximately $10.5 billion of appropriated foreign aid funding set to expire on September 30. The D.C. Circuit denied a stay, but Chief Justice John Roberts granted an administrative stay on September 9, 2025, allowing the funds to be withheld pending Supreme Court review. That case is the only judicial construction of ICA Section 1012(b) to date, and the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the merits.
What the research evidence says
The GAO’s legal position on pocket rescissions has evolved over time, the agency has said, as it considered new Supreme Court case law and amendments to the ICA. Its most recent decision on the matter, B-330330 from December 2018, concluded the ICA does not permit the withholding of funds through their expiration date. The analysis considered statutory language, legislative history, Supreme Court case law, and the constitutional framework of legislative and executive powers.
The CRS notes that the D.C. district court’s September 2025 preliminary injunction appeared to conclude that Section 1012(b) provides no authority to withhold funds proposed for rescission, stating that unless and until Congress votes to rescind the budget authority, the funds shall be made available for obligation. CRS observes this construction seems to differ from both GAO’s and OMB’s interpretations. With the Supreme Court yet to adjudicate the question on the merits, the legal status of the pocket rescission tactic remains unresolved.
The Education Department’s FY 2026 and FY 2027 budget justifications assert that the Migrant Education Program has not been proven effective and has failed to demonstrate meaningful results. These are administrative claims made in budget request documents, not findings from independent program evaluations.