House G.O.P. Pushes Deep Cuts to Federal Law Enforcement
House Republicans on Wednesday advanced legislation that would slash funding for the Department of Justice and U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country, the latest attempt by the G.O.P. to punish federal law enforcement agencies that they claim have been weaponized against conservatives, especially former President Donald J. Trump.
The spending bill, approved along party lines by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, would cut funding for salaries and other expenses at the Justice Department by 20 percent, and for U.S. attorneys’ offices by 11 percent.
It comes as the Department of Justice is prosecuting two federal cases against the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, one related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the other concerning his retention of classified materials.
It is also an early example of how House Republicans are again trying to inject the annual government spending bills with partisan policy mandates aimed at amplifying political grievances and culture war issues. A similar process played out last year, but the most conservative measures were ultimately jettisoned in bipartisan negotiations with Senate Democrats and the White House.
The policies being advanced this year are similarly dead on arrival. But in the interim, ahead of a September funding deadline and the November elections, House G.O.P. leaders are again loading the spending bills with hard-right measures in an effort to delight their ultraconservative core supporters and placate the most conservative members of their conference.
In the next few days, with lawmakers scheduled to consider spending bills to fund the Pentagon, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security, Republicans plan to force votes on proposals including reducing to $1 the salaries of Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, and cut off pay entirely for Antony Blinken, the secretary of state; cut funding for Mr. Mayorkas’s office by $10 million; and prohibit U.S. funding for Ukraine, including the use of taxpayer money to greenlight arms sales to Kyiv.
