Even though he has a paper-thin majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) recently unveiled his plans to make steep cuts to federal agencies as Congress debates the next government funding package.
In a video posted to X/Twitter by Meidastouch producer @Acyn, Johnson announced the House majority's proposed "cuts to agencies that are really overreaching," including "3% from DOJ, 7% from the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms], 6% from the FBI, 10% from the EPA, and that's just the start." The speaker said Republicans were specifically targeting "the agencies that we believe are really overreaching, and have been turned in some ways against the American people."
Of course, the agencies Johnson mentioned in the video are an assortment of federal law enforcement agencies, prompting many on social media to point out that cutting the budgets of agencies tasked with enforcing federal laws effectively amounted to "defunding the police" — something Republicans have consistently accused Democrats of doing since the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising.
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"The @HouseGOP is defunding the police," tweeted former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), tagging House Republicans' official X account. Liberal commentator Brian Tyler Cohen piled on, writing that a "shorter" version of what Johnson is calling for is simply to "defund the police." Progressive influencer John Collins tweeted that "nothing says 'law and order' like defunding it." Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance observed that with Johnson's proposal, the GOP "is no longer the party of law enforcement."
"Why is the 'party of law & order' bragging about defunding law enforcement?" Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich asked his followers.
Some commentators pointed out that Democrats never actually called to defund the police, despite Republicans' assertions. Even though many Democrats called on fundamental reforms to policing in the wake of the 2020 killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said in 2022 that "public safety is our responsibility," and that defunding the police "is not the position of the Democratic Party."
"So after wrongly claiming Dems 'defunded the police,' GOP is proudly running for re-election on 'We MAGAs defunded the police,'" tweeted SiriusXM host and Illinois Democratic congressional candidate Qasim Rashid. "If this was to allocate more resources for food & housing that'd be great—but in reality its to weaken attempts to investigate open GOP corruption."
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Aside from simply observing that Republicans were proposing cuts to federal law enforcement New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat — who studies far-right movements around the globe — noted that the GOP's budget symbolized "autocratic priorities."
"[P]rotect Leader & enablers from investigation and prosecution (DOJ, FBI); allow plunder of the environment (EPA); facilitate arming of extremists for political violence (ATF)," Ben-Ghiat tweeted.
Melanie D'Arrigo, who is the executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, described the House GOP budget by saying that "Republicans are making cuts to the agencies currently investigating Republicans and Republican donors."
Johnson's plans to gut federal agencies was blasted by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois) as an empty-handed effort, tweeting "Johnson got virtually nothing he was pushing for in this bill. The culture war riders are dropped, the most excessive cuts are gone. But it is telling that the parts he’s celebrating are the defunding of the police. Equal protection under the law scares the @HouseGOP."
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