A fight over who actually controls federal spending escalated this week as seven states sued the Trump administration over its use of a controversial budget tactic known as a "pocket rescission," just days after the Government Accountability Office concluded the move was unlawful.

The dispute traces back to September 25, when President Trump sent Congress a special message proposing to cancel $810 million in previously appropriated funds across 11 accounts at seven federal agencies, including the Departments of Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice. The catch: the request was submitted with only days left before the funding was set to expire at the end of the fiscal year — and with the House already out of session until after the midterms, leaving Congress no real chance to object under the 45-day review window required by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

GAO's decision was blunt. "The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind," the watchdog wrote, adding that withholding funds this way "subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress's constitutional power of the purse." White House budget director Russ Vought dismissed the finding as partisan.

Bipartisan Pushback on Capitol Hill

The reaction in Congress has not split neatly along party lines. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said lawmakers were already drafting language to block future pocket rescissions in the next funding bill, while Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., compared it to a line-item veto Trump doesn't legally have. Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray, the panel's top Democrat, went further, calling it "theft from the American people, plain and simple" and accusing Vought of telling Congress "your votes don't count."

"JUST BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT DOESN'T LIKE A PROGRAM DOESN'T MEAN HE CAN DEFUND IT."

That was California Attorney General Rob Bonta's framing of the lawsuit filed October 1 in federal court in the Northern District of California, joined by Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon. The complaint targets cuts hitting refugee and asylum services (more than half a billion dollars alone), migrant child-welfare grants through Southwest Key Programs, homeless and housing-counseling grants, minority health and business programs, and international education initiatives. The states argue the cancellation violates the separation of powers, the Appropriations Clause, the Presentment Clause and the Impoundment Control Act itself.

The administration has leaned on a precedent from last year, when the Supreme Court allowed a similar pocket rescission of roughly $4.9 billion in foreign aid to stand — though the justices were careful to note that ruling was not a final word on the legal merits. That caveat is now the battleground: both sides expect this new fight over a much broader slice of domestic programs to test, once again, how far a president can go in simply running out the clock on Congress.