Trump, in Abrupt Pivot, Says Funding for Special Olympics Will Continue

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Thursday that the federal government would continue to fund the Special Olympics, reversing his administration’s decision to cut the allocated money, which his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, had been defending on Capitol Hill only hours earlier.

“The Special Olympics will be funded. I just told my people,” Mr. Trump said to reporters before leaving for a campaign-style rally in Michigan. The president said he had long supported the organization.

His statement was an abrupt pivot from the stance offered by others in his administration. Ms. DeVos defended the trims in a Senate budget hearing not long before the president undercut her position.

The Special Olympics is one of thousands of line-item programs that were proposed to be cut or zeroed out in the president’s fiscal 2020 budget — and that Congress had no intention of cutting. Most presidential budgets are routinely declared dead on arrival by members of Congress, the branch of government that appropriates money. But Mr. Trump’s budgets have been ignored more than most.

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