Speaker Johnson Calls For Defunding Federal Law Enforcement Agencies That Have ‘Turned… Against the American People’

Republicans often campaign on their commitment to supporting law enforcement, but during a press conference on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared that he will push for cuts to several federal law enforcement agencies.

Johnson spoke on several points including the border, crime, and the State of the Union, and he bemoaned the policies of President Joe Biden. Not unpredictable since Johnson is a Republican and Biden is a Democrat. However, in the same speech he lamented crime rates — even though crime rates are down — seconds before announcing that he’d push for cuts to agencies that exist to fight crime and enforce laws, claiming that they have “overreach[ed]” and even “turned, in some ways, against the American people”:

We have advanced and we also advanced, as you’ve seen the summary, cuts to some of the agencies that we believe are really overreaching and have been turned, in some ways, against the American people. We’re going to cut 3 percent from [the Department of Justice], 7 percent from the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms], 6 percent from the FBI, and 10 percent from the EPA. And that’s just a start.

Then he made it clear what his real priorities were as Speaker:

We have a lot more priorities and things that we need to advance. But the reality is, as we all recognize, is that we have to grow the House majority, take back the Senate for the Republican Party, and win the White House.

Watch the video above via C-SPAN.