Congress Returns With a Dec. 11 Deadline: DOJ Grant Money, and a Pause on OMB's Grant Rule, Both Run Out That Day

Congress came back to Washington on Monday with a little over a month left in its session and one hard date on the calendar. On December 11, the stopgap that pays for the Justice Department at last year’s rates expires [1, 12]. On the same day, a less noticed section of that law stops holding back the Office of Management and Budget’s rewrite of the rules that govern every federal grant a police department or sheriff’s office signs [1].

Both clocks reach local agencies. The first decides how much COPS and Byrne JAG money exists for fiscal 2027. The second decides the terms it comes with.

What the stopgap does for DOJ, section by section

H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, was signed September 2 [1, 6]. As this column noted on October 13, it is the bill that decides when fiscal 2027 JAG gets a real dollar figure. Section 101 funds the Justice Department “at a rate for operations” set by the fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science law, Public Law 119-74 [1]. That law put $2.4 billion into state and local law enforcement assistance, $964 million of it on the Byrne JAG line, with carve-outs such as $12.5 million for the VALOR officer-safety initiative and $6 million for training on responding to people with mental illness or disabilities [2]. It gave COPS $800 million, including $253,093,613 for hiring, with a cap of $125,000 per officer unless the COPS director grants a waiver [2].

Three limits come with the money:

• No new starts. Section 104 bars using stopgap funds to begin any activity that lacked 2026 funding [1].
• No front-loading. Section 109 says programs that would normally spend fast at the start of a year, “because of distributions of funding to States” or grantees, may not do so, and “no grants shall be awarded” that “would impinge on final funding prerogatives” [1].
• Most limited action. Section 110 tells agencies to take “only the most limited funding action” the law permits [1].

The stopgap continues the 2026 law with two exceptions. One of them, section 521(c)(2), had rescinded $113.2 million in unspent balances from the Assets Forfeiture Fund; the stopgap does not repeat it [1, 2]. One DOJ account gets room to spend faster: the FBI’s salaries and expenses line may be apportioned at the rate needed “to prepare for the 2028 Olympic Games” and for national security systems [1].

The fiscal 2026 law also rescinded $250 million in unspent Office of Justice Programs balances and $25 million from COPS by September 30, 2026 [2]. Those were one-time cuts to old money, not the rate the stopgap continues.

The grant rule riding on the same date

Section 157 is a single paragraph. Through December 11, the rule OMB proposed on May 29 under the title “Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance,” or “a substantially similar rule, shall not be issued or finalized” [1]. If it had been finalized before the stopgap passed, it “shall not have force or take effect” through that date [1]. No final rule had appeared in the Federal Register as of November 9.

The Justice Department is one of the agencies that joined the proposal. DOJ adopts the government-wide grant rules in 2 CFR part 200 through its own part 2800, and the proposal revises that part too [3]. Three changes matter most to law enforcement grantees, as the proposed text reads:

• A political review before award. Agency heads must designate “senior appointees” to conduct a pre-issuance review of all discretionary awards. Among the principles: awards “must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities,” and must not fund “Illegal immigration” or “Any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values” [3].
• Termination for changed priorities. An agency may end an award in whole or part if it no longer serves “program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the national interest as they exist at the time of the termination” [3]. Awards under “a statutory formula,” block grants and disaster recovery grants are generally excluded [3].
• Pass-through policing of subrecipients. A pass-through entity must ensure that subrecipients do not “significantly damage the reputation” of the pass-through, the awarding agency or the federal government, and consult the agency on termination if they do [3]. OMB also proposes that “agency priorities” means federal priorities, not state or local ones [3].

Does this reach my COPS or JAG grant?

It depends on the program. COPS Hiring is competitive, so as proposed it would fall under both the pre-issuance review and the termination clause [3]. Byrne JAG formula awards are generally outside the termination clause [3]. A sheriff’s office that receives JAG through its state administering agency is still a subrecipient, though, and the reputational duty runs from the state to it [3]. The New York State Association of Counties called the formula exclusion “important but narrow,” noting that formula awards stay subject to the new conditions and pass-through obligations, and that “Competitive awards for transportation, economic development, and public safety remain fully exposed” [9].

The proposal also has a cost question for departments. NACo told OMB that the rule treats general government costs, including public safety, as unallowable unless the program authorizes them, and that in a federally funded community policing program it can be hard to say which part of an officer’s salary belongs to the award [8].

Where the sides stand

OMB’s case is stewardship. The preamble says “Federal agencies should not be forced to continue funding projects that do not best serve program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the public interest more broadly,” and that terminations would still need a reasoned explanation, reviewable in the Court of Federal Claims [3].

Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs Senate Appropriations, wrote to OMB on July 6 that the rule would “allow Federal agencies to terminate any discretionary grant” and that such terminations would not get the hearing process used for compliance terminations [4]. When the stopgap text came out, she said it “prevents the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s proposed rule regarding federal financial assistance from taking effect,” citing “its potential to politicize grants” [5].

Six state and local government groups, among them the National League of Cities, NACo and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, had asked Senate leaders on July 31 to put that block in the stopgap. “State and local governments are governments, not contractors,” they wrote, warning that “public safety dollars could flow more slowly” and that the rule drew “nearly half a million comments” [7]. NACo went further, arguing that the pre-issuance review resembles the discretion three federal appeals courts rejected in the Byrne JAG litigation, citing City of Chicago v. Sessions and City of Philadelphia v. Attorney General among others [8].

How the year-end session could go

The full-year numbers are not close. House appropriators’ fiscal 2027 bill provides $77.341 billion overall, $670 million below 2026, with COPS at $762.544 million, 4.7 percent lower, and the Office of Justice Programs at $2.769 billion, 10 percent lower [10]. The full committee approved it 32-28 on May 13; the Senate committee’s June markups, which included Commerce-Justice-Science, were postponed after leaders failed to agree on topline levels [11].

States Newsroom reported that the dozen full-year bills can’t be finished in the session of about five weeks that began Monday, and that another stopgap will likely carry funding into next year, when Democrats lead negotiations with the White House [12]. NPR reported that any extension is almost certain to come as another short-term bill [13].

A clean extension that only changes the date in section 106 would keep JAG and COPS at 2026 rates. It would not, by itself, extend section 157. That section names its own end date, December 11, 2026 [1].

What I’m watching

December 11. The text of whatever stopgap Congress takes up: whether it moves the section 157 date along with the funding date, or leaves the OMB rule free to be finalized [1].

The fiscal 2027 COPS and JAG numbers. Whether the year-end session produces a full-year Commerce-Justice-Science bill or leaves the House’s $762.544 million COPS figure, and whatever the Senate sets against it, to the next Congress [10, 11].