Lawmakers Doubt Congress Can Block Marijuana Rescheduling

As the Drug Enforcement Administration opened a hearing this week that could move all marijuana out of the federal government’s most restrictive drug category, the one tool Congress has to stop the reform looks unlikely to become law. Lawmakers in both parties say a provision tucked into a House spending bill — the lone live attempt to halt federal rescheduling — isn’t expected to survive into a final budget the president would sign.

That read matters because the executive branch has driven the rescheduling effort from the start, and the annual appropriations process is the only place a congressional majority could realistically slow it down. The proceeding began June 29, 2026, at the DEA’s hearing facility in Arlington, Virginia, and will weigh whether marijuana as a whole — including adult-use cannabis — should drop from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act.

The provision Congress is weighing

The measure at issue sits in the House’s annual funding bill for the Justice Department and related agencies, which the chamber’s Appropriations Committee approved in May 2026. It would bar the department and the DEA from spending any of the bill’s money to reschedule marijuana or to remove it from the federal drug schedules. In plain terms, it wouldn’t repeal the reform outright; it would cut off the money officials need to carry it out.

But the rider’s reach is narrow. The Justice Department’s reclassification of medical cannabis took effect immediately when it landed, so it isn’t clear the funding limit could undo protections already in place for state-licensed medical operators and their patients. Its more direct target is the broader rescheduling now under review — the exact question the DEA convened the hearing to answer.

A bipartisan read that the language won’t stick

Lawmakers from both parties said in recent comments that they don’t expect the provision to become law. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is running for Florida governor, said he doesn’t see how supporters push the language through and would not back a measure to block rescheduling, though he stopped short of endorsing adult-use legalization in his own state. Rep. Lou Correa (D-CA) questioned why Congress would unwind a policy that most states and a clear majority of the public already accept.

Even longtime opponents see which way the issue is moving. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), who describes himself as no fan of legalization, acknowledged that reform has momentum and that he doesn’t expect to be on the winning side of the question over the long run. The bipartisan tenor of those comments is itself the signal: the appropriations threat lacks the political weight behind it that enactment would require.

Why the provision faces long odds

History is the clearest reason for the skepticism. The House approved the identical funding restriction during the previous budget cycle, but House and Senate negotiators stripped it out before the spending package became law in January 2026. Earlier versions met the same fate. The language advancing again now would have to survive Senate negotiation and a final conference agreement — the same path that has repeatedly killed it.

Congress’s posture on cannabis is not uniformly hostile, either. For more than a decade, lawmakers have renewed a separate, bipartisan provision in the same funding bill barring the Justice Department from interfering with state medical-marijuana programs — a measure that has consistently survived where the anti-rescheduling language has not.

The timing compounds the problem for supporters. Medical cannabis is already reclassified, the DEA has begun registering medical operators, and the agency is now formally defending broader rescheduling in its own proceeding. Reversing course would mean overriding an executive branch that, under Trump’s December 2025 executive order, was directed to finish the rescheduling process as quickly as the law allows.

What the hearing decides — and what comes next

The DEA is serving as the proponent of the proposed rule, which means the agency that spent decades defending prohibition is now arguing the case for reclassification. The hearing is scheduled to conclude no later than July 15, 2026, after which the presiding judge issues a recommendation the DEA administrator can accept or reject — a step that, historically, has taken far longer than the hearing itself.

For operators, the stakes are concrete. A full move to Schedule III would lift the federal tax penalty that bars cannabis businesses from deducting ordinary expenses and pull adult-use companies — still sitting in Schedule I — into the same federal framework now reshaping the medical market.

The reform also faces hurdles outside Congress. Opponents, including a coalition of Republican attorneys general, have asked a federal appeals court to undo the April order, and only rescheduling opponents were selected to take part in the hearing now underway. On the one front Congress directly controls, though, members of both parties expect the effort to stall.