President Donald Trump on Thursday walked back his own education secretary's proposal to cut funding for the Special Olympics, asserting he had personally intervened to make sure the sports organization continues to receive federal dollars.
The flip-flop came amid bipartisan backlash over Secretary Betsy DeVos's plan to terminate the $17.6 million grant the Special Olympics organization receives annually.
"The Special Olympics will be funded," Trump told reporters outside the White House before departing for a political rally in Michigan. "I just told my people I want to fund the Special Olympics. I have overridden my people."
DeVos welcomed Trump's change of heart.
"I am pleased and grateful the president and I see eye-to-eye on this issue and that he has decided to fund our Special Olympics grant," DeVos said in a statement. "This is funding I have fought for behind the scenes over the last several years."
DeVos' statement posed a departure from her comments a day earlier favoring a Special Olympics budget bloodletting.
"I love its work, and I have personally supported its mission," DeVos said Wednesday of the sports organization, which benefits children and adults with intellectual and physical disabilities. "But given our current budget realities, the federal government cannot fund every worthy program, particularly ones that enjoy robust support from private donations."
The secretary also trashed "shameful" and "counterproductive" journalists and members of Congress for scrutinizing her proposed cuts.
The now-reversed Special Olympics slashing was part of Trump's 2020 budget blueprint, which seeks to drastically reduce funding for all federal departments and agencies except the military.
Democrats have near-unanimously made clear they will not pass the budget in the shape it has been rolled out by the White House.
DeVos went before congressional budget committees this week and claimed she's actually a huge fan of the Special Olympics.
"I love Special Olympics myself," she testified.
Democrats weren't buying it.
Freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ripped into DeVos by listing off a number of other controversial education budget cuts that DeVos has proposed and enacted.
"Betsy DeVos 'loves' the Special Olympics so much, she wants to cut federal funding for it," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "She 'loves' students so much, she changed rules to make campus sexual assault victims more vulnerable. And she 'loves' teachers so much she wants to cut student loan forgiveness, too."
