Trump Swamp: Special Olympics Proposal Isn’t The Only Bad DeVos Headline This Week

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos found herself on the wrong end of a wave of public outrage this week in response to President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, in which the DeVos-led Education Department requested no federal money at all for the Special Olympics.

In a statement Wednesday following a fiery hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, DeVos angrily blamed members of the media who’ve “spun up falsehoods” before admitting that, yes, she proposed gutting government funding for the non-profit organization.

Trump’s budget, like every President’s, is largely a political document. In fact, the Republican senator who would be in a position to cut that funding — Roy Blunt (R-MO), chair of the Senate subcommittee that decides this budget line — forcefully said Wednesday that Congress would not be doing so. DeVos has made the same unfulfilled request three years in a row.

Let’s look at what DeVos has succeeded in doing: As Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) highlighted in the same hearing, she recently rescinded an Obama-era guidance that directed schools to address dramatic disparities in how black and Hispanic students are disciplined. The extremely disproportionate suspension rate of students of color plays a huge role in the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline.”

DeVos was unapologetic: “Every community needs to be able to handle their classrooms and discipline in the way that works for them.”

“Thank God we had Brown v. Board of Education,” Lee responded.

.@RepBarbaraLee: This amounted to providing tools & guidance to make sure students' civil rights are protected. You rescinded that.

DeVOS: Every community needs to be able to handle discipline in a way that works for them.

LEE: Thank God we had Brown v. Board of Education! pic.twitter.com/qHfJcu6Nd6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2019

Alas, there are too many swampy Cabinet members — and former members — to focus on just one.

In similarly outrageous budget requests, for example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proposed cutting his department’s budget by nearly a quarter. One fourth! AP notes: “While the 2020 budget request would reduce spending in areas such as refugee resettlement and global health care programs, it would allocate $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel.”

Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt continues to make headlines more than half a year after his ouster. The Office of Government Ethics has refused to certify one of Pruitt’s final financial disclosures because it was unable to certify whether the $50-a-night condo Pruitt rented on certain nights from a high-powered lobbyist counted as an unlisted gift.

After dragging his feet on FOIA requests, Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt essentially sent 7,000 scheduling-related documents to the House Oversight Committee. It took a while to get everything together, apparently, because instead of maintaining a permanent public schedule like other government-funded Cabinet members, Bernhardt re-edited a single virtual Google document every day, keeping it private and without a reliable hard copy.

Relatedly, Bernhardt’s former clients are celebrating the access his new job gives them. And they have reason to: The watchdog group Documented counted at least 70 meetings that 12 of his ex-clients had with top Interior Department officials.

Finally, it wouldn’t be Trump Swamp without a brief stop at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.: The prime minister of Romania became the first known world leader in a year to pay for a bed at the D.C. Trump property.