WASHINGTON 

US President Donald Trump has moved to cancel $4.9 billion in foreign aid funding in a process known as a pocket rescission, the White House said Friday as lawmakers from both parties sounded the alarm.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Trump issued the letter notifying House Speaker Mike Johnson of his decision to cut 15 programs funded by Congress on Thursday night.

"The proposed rescissions affect programs of the Department of State as well as the United States Agency for International Development and International Assistance Programs," Trump wrote in his letter, a copy of which the agency posted on American social media platform X.

The US Constitution grants Congress the power to fund the government, but Trump has taken unprecedented actions to eat away at the authorities since he assumed office, gutting federal programs and cutting thousands of jobs across the government.

Under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, the president is required to report to Congress on any congressionally-allocated funding that he is choosing not to disperse in a process known as a pocket rescission.

Congress is then allowed to vote on overturning the action, but with both chambers controlled by Trump's fellow Republicans and with just 32 days until the end of the fiscal year, the funding is all but certain to lapse.

The practice is exceptionally rare, in part because it disincentivizes lawmakers to negotiate on further funding.

Congress each year has to pass legislation to fund the government or risk a crippling government shutdown whose effects ripple across American society and the global economy.

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee sharply denounced Trump's action, calling it illegal.

"No lawmaker should accept this absurd, illegal ploy to steal their constitutional power to determine how taxpayer dollars get spent," said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray in a statement.

"Russ Vought would like us all to believe that making this rescissions request just weeks away from the end of the fiscal year provides some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for this administration to simply not spend investments Congress has made; it emphatically does not. Legal experts have made clear this scheme is illegal, and so have my Republican colleagues," she added, referring to Trump's head of OMB.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, echoed Murray, and said Trump's action "is an apparent attempt to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval."

"Article I of the Constitution makes clear that Congress has the responsibility for the power of the purse. Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law," she added.