A House 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, The New York Times reported. The legislation, which advanced on Wednesday, advanced legislation that would slash funding for the Department of Justice and U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country. It’s “the latest attempt by Republicans to punish federal law enforcement agencies that they claim have been weaponized against conservatives, especially former President Donald J. Trump,” wrote New York Times reporter Catie Edmondson, noting that the efforts are intended to appeal to conservative core supporters ahead of the November election.
Also, 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. At this point, the legislation “has no chance of being taken up by the Democratic-led Senate,” Edmondson writes. The funding cuts also don’t affect the special counsel that charged Mr. Trump: special counsels are funded outside the normal congressional appropriations process, thanks to a 1988 law that established a permanent fund at the Treasury Department to pay for the office’s expenses.