President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to slash billions more in foreign spending with the White House's latest rescissions package.
Trump notified Congress Thursday night of his proposed rescissions package, which is set to slash nearly $5 billion in foreign aid programs, Blaze News confirmed.
'Russ is now at the helm.'
The latest cuts include $3.2 billion in USAID funding, $322 million from the USAID-State Department Democracy Fund, $521 million of State Department contributions to other international organizations, $393 million in State Department contributions to peacekeeping activities, and another $445 million in peacekeeping aid.
"Since January, we’ve saved the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X.
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"And with a small set of core programs moved over to the State Department, USAID is officially in closeout mode," Rubio added. "Russ is now at the helm to oversee the closeout of an agency that long ago went off the rails. Congrats, Russ."
Trump, alongside Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, got a $9 billion rescissions package passed through Congress back in July, which similarly cut back on foreign aid spending as well as funding for public broadcasting.
The Senate narrowly passed the rescissions package 51-48 after an overnight vote-a-rama on July 17. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine bucked their party and voted against the spending cuts.
The House promptly passed the cuts the following afternoon in a 216-213 vote. Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mike Turner of Ohio voted against the package.
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Congress now has 45 days to pass Trump's rescissions package. Notably, Congress will also be tasked with tackling the budget before the September 30 funding deadline. Despite the urgency, lawmakers have been out of town for August recess and are expected to come back into session starting September 2.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia tossed out the February order of a Biden-appointed district judge on Wednesday and delivered the Trump administration a big win.
President Donald Trump ordered a pause in foreign aid on his first day back in office, eliciting backlash from beneficiaries abroad and vested interests at home.
Trump, convinced that the U.S. "foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values," ordered a 90-day pause in foreign aid, affording his administration an opportunity to review relevant programs "for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy."
'The grantees failed to show they are likely to succeed on the merits.'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio subsequently suspended new funding obligations for the State Department; terminated thousands of grant awards; and shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Grantees of foreign-assistance funds promptly sued to get their hands on nearly $4 billion for global health programs and over $6 billion for AIDS programs that had been appropriated by Congress to be disbursed by the State Department and USAID.
Foreign-born U.S. District Judge Amir Ali helped them in February to keep the gravy train moving.
Ali, a Biden appointee, issued a universal injunction — the kind the U.S. Supreme Court determined on June 27 "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts" — that barred the Trump administration from "suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement of appropriated foreign-assistance funds in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of January 19, 2025."
In a 2-1 decision on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did what the Supreme Court refused to do in March: vacate Ali's order.
The majority on the panel — comprising a George H.W. Bush appointee and a Trump appointee — concluded that "the district court abused its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction because the grantees failed to show they are likely to succeed on the merits."
The majority also determined that "the grantees lack a cause of action to bring their freestanding constitutional claim" and "have no cause of action to undergird their [Administrative Procedure Act] contrary-to-law claim."
'We will continue to successfully protect core Presidential authorities from judicial overreach.'
In her dissenting opinion, Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee and daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, accused her colleagues of reframing the case to help the government.
"The majority concludes that the grantees lack a constitutional cause of action — an issue that the government did not mention in its opening brief and did not fully develop even in its reply brief," wrote Pan.
The Biden-appointed judge wrote that the government instead argued that the grantees lack a statutory cause of action to force President Donald Trump to obligate the funds in question.
Pan also suggested that the majority opinion "misconstrues the separation-of-powers claim brought by the grantees, misapplies precedent, and allows Executive Branch officials to evade judicial review of constitutionally impermissible actions."
Blaze News has reached out to the State Department for comment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the victory, noting, "In a 2-1 ruling, the DC Circuit lifted an injunction ordering President Trump to spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars on wasteful foreign aid projects. We will continue to successfully protect core Presidential authorities from judicial overreach."
"Today’s decision is a significant setback for the rule of law and risks further erosion of basic separation-of-powers principles," stated Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group who represented some of the grantees. "We will seek further review from the court, and our lawsuit will continue regardless as we seek permanent relief from the administration’s unlawful termination of the vast majority of foreign assistance."
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The massive left-wing radical groups that wreak havoc on the country wouldn’t be so successful unless their pockets were full. And unfortunately, the reason their pockets are full is because the American people are unwittingly filling them with their tax dollars.
“You get Congress to allocate a whole bunch blindly, usually through these organizations. An insane allotment to government agencies,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck says, singling out the United States Agency for International Development and Department of State.
“The USAID money that was doled out to foreign recipients in 2023 alone, $4.17 billion,” Glenn explains. “The money is then moved from State and USAID to other trusted organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).”
Once the money is in one of those “trusted organizations," the money then somehow gets to people like George Soros and foundations like Open Society.
“Now, we know how your tax dollars spread a globalist progressive agenda regardless of who’s president. But knowing just this isn’t enough, we have to fill in this blank,” Glenn says, noting that the blank is between how the money flows from a trusted organization like the NED to Soros.
“So who do you audit? The CIA, the State Department, USAID? Well, yes, but if you stop there, the deep state lives on. We have to go deeper,” he continues.
This is where an organization like the Tides Foundation comes in.
“The Tides Foundation is receiving U.S. tax dollars,” Glenn says. “The entire purpose of Tides is to be a progressive left-wing dark money machine. It's money laundering. Legal, but money laundering nonetheless. You cannot trace money. Once it goes in, it goes dark. You can see what’s coming out, but you don’t know who’s giving it.”
“Leftist billionaires, organizations, they all donate to Tides specifically so their money can go dark. So why is the Tides Foundation getting tax dollars?” he asks, before showing that the Tides Foundation is also involved in the Tides Center.
“They’re spreading tax dollars to each other,” he explains, adding, “and then they spit out to places like Soros.”
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As a government-backed, overtly left-wing monopoly, the AMA no longer deserves a privileged role in the country’s health ecosystem.
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to block a lower court order attempting to compel the government to disburse billions of dollars in foreign grants. In his emergency application, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer requested the justices to stay an order from D.C. District Court Judge Amir Ali. That directive […]
The ruling paves the way to limit the number of lawsuits and subsequent injunctions designed to keep Trump from doing his job.
Tax documents reveal how taxpayer funds flowed from the government to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to an organization that helps power a left-wing content machine.
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