After weeks of consternation, several days of unrelated theatrics and one very late night, House Republicans officially rescinded $9 billion of congressionally appropriated funds just after midnight on Friday morning in yet another legislative victory for the Trump administration.
With just under a day to spare before a Friday at midnight deadline, House Republicans voted mostly along party lines to approve the legislation, 216-213, with two Republicans joining every Democrat in voting against the measure. Reps. Mike Turner and Brian Fitzpatrick were the only Republicans to vote against the bill.
In a fashion befitting the chaotic legislative sprint, House Republicans actually used a unique process to pass the bill, adopting a rule that had self-executing language that would “deem” the rescission bill as passed upon adoption of the rule, while also setting up a potential future vote on a nonbinding resolution to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to release documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.
The congressional feud over compelling the release of documents related to the Epstein investigation unexpectedly hung over the latest round of the rescissions debate. Democrats have been trying to force votes on Epstein documents, and some Republicans on the Rules Committee — and within the GOP conference more broadly — have wanted to impel the Trump administration to release more documents.
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Republicans weren’t able to advance the rule out of the panel before agreeing to a resolution that would urge, though not legally require, the Trump administration to release Epstein-related documents.
That conversation became all the more pressing Thursday night after The Wall Street Journal released its bombshell report on Trump’s alleged birthday message to Epstein in 2003, when he wished that “every day be another wonderful secret” for the financier who would later be charged with sex trafficking minors.
While Republicans had plenty of reasons to try to expedite the rescissions debate, the decision to “deem” the bill as passed — and effectively save a step in having to vote on the actual legislation — may have been borne out of a desire to save Republicans from another vote series, when reporters could pepper members with questions about the Trump–Epstein situation.
Led by the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern, Democrats further sought to tie the DOGE cuts package to Epstein. During committee debate, Democrats forced Republicans on the Rules panel to consider an amendment that would have made more documents available to the public. Ultimately, all Democrats on the committee voted “yes,” and every Republican voted “no,” leaving the amendment to fail.
“This place deserves better, this country deserves better and the victims most of all deserve the truth,” McGovern shouted during a floor speech minutes before the final vote. “Release the Epstein files. Release the Epstein files. Release the files.”
As far as the bill itself, the rescission package would roll back nearly $8 billion from an assortment of international programs, foreign aid and more than $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — two areas that have been heavily targeted during President Donald Trump’s second term — with the majority of the cuts coming out of international aid programs like the U.S. Agency for International Development.
For it to advance in the Senate earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had to agree to amend the bill and remove the cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was also a major concern for moderate House Republicans. The HIV–AIDS prevention program passed into law in 2003, and multiple lawmakers still in office voted to create PEPFAR while serving in Congress. Several Republicans expressed discomfort gutting the program.
Although the removal of the PEPFAR cuts made moderates more comfortable with the legislation, the package still faced a bumpy road to its ultimate passage.
In the Senate, Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins pointed out that the rescission bill was historically light on details. Instead of laying out what programs the bill would cut, the legislation simply says how much it will cut from certain pieces of past legislation.
While some moderates in the House were reticent to codify unpopular DOGE cuts, they got onboard with the measure in June and again on Friday.
And while the Epstein issue distracted from the bill’s final passage, it still passed before the July 18 midnight deadline. And congressional Republicans delivered the Trump administration its coveted congressional authority to gut funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and public broadcasting.
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