President Trump, after days of controversy, said Thursday he will overrule his own administration and order up funding for the Special Olympics after all.
Mr. Trump said he will backfill the money in his budget plans, after a flap over proposed cuts cast a harsh glare on his education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
“The Special Olympics will be funded, I just told my people,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a rally in Michigan.
“I have overridden my people,” he said. “We’re funding the Special Olympics.”
The Special Olympics, founded in 1968, allows people with intellectual disabilities to receive year-round training and compete in Olympic-type sports.
It is a cherished institution, and Congress ultimately decides whether it receives federal money. Yet Mr. Trump’s education budget had called for a zeroing out the government’s roughly $17 million annual contribution.
Mrs. DeVos was forced to defend the cut before Congress this week, saying budgets require government officials to “make some difficult decisions.”
She also released an unusual statement in which she reaffirmed her fondness for the games, saying she has personally supported its mission.
She issued a second statement late Thursday, after Mr. Trump said he swooped in to save the day. It suggested, though not explicitly, that the cuts were not her idea in the first place.
“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,” she said. “This is funding I have fought for behind-the-scenes over the last several years.”
Mr. Trump’s U-turn on the games marked the second time in a week that he overrode one of his Cabinet members in public.
On Friday, he said he was canceling recently announced sanctions on North Korea, even though Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin carefully vets such decisions. The White House cited Mr. Trump’s fondness for North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un.
It was not clear which sanctions he was referring to, however, and the White House never adequately explained whether Mr. Trump meant the blacklisting of Chinese shippers, who had helped North Korea evade sanctions, or future sanctions that hadn’t been formally announced.
While that episode was overshadowed by the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report over the weekend, the Special Olympics dustup took a personal toll on Mrs. DeVos.
Pundits, Twitter users and top Democrats excoriated the secretary over the cuts, calling them unfathomable.
“Betsy DeVos is the worst education secretary in living memory,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, tweeted. “We need opportunities for all of our kids — not just some of them.”
Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican and leading appropriator, said Congress would not bless the proposed cut.
The education secretary twisted in the wind for more than 24 hours, only for Mr. Trump to announce Thursday he was changing course.
“I think [the games are] incredible and I just authorized funding,” he said. “I heard about it this morning.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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