"A day in post-Trump Washington" by Jess Bidgood, Liz Goodwin and Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, January 26, 2021
I'm told boring is a good thing, and it must be nice to have no government corruption or executive branch malfeasance to investigate, 'eh?
WASHINGTON — Inside the West Wing, a place that was literally scrubbed down last week, there are empty picture hooks on walls that used to be covered in framed photographs of Donald Trump. There is a new and exhaustive regimen to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the White House complex. There is a responsive press operation and a more diverse administration staff. There are even dogs, but a glimpse inside the halls of government farther down the National Mall on the same day revealed the extent of Trump’s continued influence on Washington and the depth of the division that will make it difficult for Biden to achieve his goals.
The eerie emptiness of morning in downtown Washington, which is pocked with closed restaurants and boarded-up buildings, lays the story of a crushing year — and the economic crisis he has pledged to allay — on Biden’s doorstep.
Lafayette Square, the stately park where federal officers tear-gassed peaceful protesters last summer, is still cordoned off with unclimbable fencing plastered with messages — some for Biden, some for Vice President Kamala Harris, some for Trump — from a nation in pain.
Inside an unmarked brownstone on the park is one of the first, clearest signs of the Biden administration’s break with the past: a COVID-19 testing center where every reporter on their way to the White House has to stop first.
During the Trump administration, only a small group of on-site reporters was tested daily — and those tests took place inside the White House. Now, everyone gets a test — plus a wristband to prove it. Biden’s staffers wear masks even when they are just sitting at their desks, a departure from the Trump administration’s lax mask usage. At one point Monday, a reporter was reminded by a photographer that her cloth mask wouldn’t cut it in a workspace that now requires heavy-duty masking.
You guys miss Trump yet?
At least he allowed you to breathe.
Because COVID has limited the number of reporters now allowed on the grounds, the briefing room has a staid calm that contrasts sharply with the freewheeling atmosphere of the early days of the Trump administration, when reporters and media personalities like Jeanine Pirro squeezed in to shout questions.
If the White House seemed quiet, the Biden administration’s effort to restore America’s global image — and erase Trump’s legacy — was already in full swing.....
I'm told John Kerry, Biden’s international climate envoy, joined a climate summit organized by the Netherlands and Prime Minister Mark Rutte was “so happy to hear John Kerry,” even as demonstrators clashed with the Dutch police in two cities on Sunday and a coronavirus testing facility was burned on Saturday as anger at a nationwide lockdown in the Netherlands grew more violent, and those protesting the pandemic restrictions are a relatively small but vocal coterie of groups and individuals and they have taken aim at Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his policies as well as at established media organizations, and much like the Trump loyalists who stormed the U.S. Capitol, they believe the system needs to be uprooted."
After that, police took to the streets of Dutch towns and cities in force Tuesday night in an attempt to prevent violent rioting that shook the country for three successive nights after a nationwide curfew was introduced to curb the spread of the coronavirus and forced Rutte to resign.
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It's now a love fest down there:
"Biden offers LGBTQ protections, an ideological departure from Trump-era policy" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff, January 25, 2021
President Biden’s orders expanding LGBTQ antidiscrimination protections and allowing transgender people to serve in the military mark a sharp ideological departure from his predecessor and deliver powerful legal and symbolic wins to a community often marginalized by the former president.
“Finally, the sun is shining again on LGBTQ people,” said Arline Isaacson, cochair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.
On Monday, Biden signed an executive order allowing transgender people to serve in the military. President Obama had done the same in 2016 when Biden was vice president; however, Trump began taking steps to reverse the policy soon after it went into effect the following year.
“Trans people belong everywhere,” said Tre’Andre Valentine, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. “This is really about inclusion and belonging.”
Meanwhile, a sweeping executive order Biden signed on his first day in office directs federal agencies to interpret existing laws prohibiting sex discrimination as also covering sexual orientation and gender identity.
Last summer, the Supreme Court came to the same conclusion in an employment case, Bostock v. Clayton County, but specialists said that ruling did not necessarily extend to other areas, such as housing and education.
“This is an incredibly important order from the president that not only will implement what the US Supreme Court has said is the law — which is that you can’t fire gay and transgender employees for who they are — but then ensures that other areas of law comport with that understanding,” said Janson Wu, GLAD executive director. “This is a big deal.”
The Trump administration often fought in court alongside those seeking religious exemptions to antidiscrimination laws. Last summer, Trump’s Department of Justice called on the Supreme Court to let Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia refuse child adoptions to LGBTQ families.
Biden’s order signals that the new Department of Justice will fight alongside legal advocates against discrimination, instead of helping to carve out legal exemptions, Wu said, and it will likely have a far-reaching ripple effect since states — and even individual school districts — take their guidance from the federal government, he noted. One of Trump’s earliest acts as president was ending the Obama-era policy allowing transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.
“Now, under the executive order, we expect them to reinstate that guidance in school,” Wu said. “The reach is deep and the reach is broad.”
That’s exactly what conservatives fear, however, and Biden’s actions immediately drew backlash from opponents. They said the antidiscrimination order would dictate an erasure of boundaries between genders in places where they are appropriate, including shelters and athletic competitions.
YUP!
It's turning women into second class citizens.
“We all agree that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect; however, this is changing federal policy in a way that really undermines both fairness and freedom,” said Massachusetts Family Institute president Andrew Beckwith.
The Family Institute led a 2018 ballot question that aimed to revoke a state law protecting transgender people from discrimination in public places, arguing that without clear gender lines, men could prey upon women and children in bathrooms. Massachusetts voters rejected the argument, and voted 2-1 to uphold the law.
Legal challenges continue on many fronts, however, including charges that women can be disenfranchised by government mandates to accommodate trans women. In Connecticut, cisgender female track athletes filed suit, arguing that an antidiscrimination policy gives unfair physical advantage to transgender female runners.
With his order, Biden declared the government intends to side with those who have historically faced discrimination, rather than those made uncomfortable by inclusion.
“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” the policy states.
His order also notes that LGBTQ discrimination often overlaps with other types of discrimination, and that “transgender Black Americans face unconscionably high levels of workplace discrimination, homelessness, and violence, including fatal violence.”
In a separate executive order promoting equity, Biden listed LGBTQ people among disadvantaged communities who might face systemic barriers to government policies and programs; the order calls for a review of all federal agencies in his administration’s first 200 days, along with proposals for dismantling barriers and promoting equity.
Biden also appointed several LGBTQ officials to high-profile roles in his new administration — including his Transportation secretary nominee, Pete Buttigieg. His pick for assistant Health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, would be the first transgender official confirmed by the US Senate, if approved.
The doctor immediately faced attack from critics who said her gender identity made her unfit for the job.
Beckwith, for instance, said the doctor’s nomination “undermines the credibility” of the new administration because Levine is “in a constant denial of objective biological reality.”
Well, it's complicated, you see?
“If you’re trying to reinstill confidence in our institutions, putting someone in charge of a major medical and health agency who denies basic scientific fact of human biology is going to cause people to question everything that they say,” Beckwith said.
Pointing to the opposition in the volatile political climate, Valentine, of the Transgender Political Coalition, said, “you have to stay ready for anything at this point.”
“With visibility comes more potential for backlash and more potential for transphobia,” Valentine added, but he noted that Levine will bring a unique perspective — along with medical expertise — to the new administration. “That is a thing, I think, to be celebrated.”
Related:
The Chinese and Iranians are going to kick our asses!
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Is that why he is bringing in the migrants?
"President Joe Biden is confronting the political risk that comes with grand ambition. As one of his first acts, Biden offered a sweeping immigration overhaul last week that would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for the estimated 11 million people who are in the United States illegally. It would also codify provisions wiping out some of President Donald Trump’s signature hard-line policies, including trying to end existing, protected legal status for many immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and crackdowns on asylum rules. It’s precisely the type of measure that many Latino activists have longed for, particularly after the tough approach of the Trump era, but it must compete with Biden’s other marquee legislative goals, including a $1.9 trillion plan to combat the coronavirus, an infrastructure package that promotes green energy initiatives and a “public option” to expand health insurance. In the best of circumstances, enacting such a broad range of legislation would be difficult, but in a narrowly divided Congress, it could be impossible, and that has Latinos, the nation’s fastest growing voting bloc, worried that Biden and congressional leaders could cut deals that weaken the finished product too much..... "
I'm further told that if Latinos ultimately feel betrayed, the political consequences for Democrats could be long-lasting, as the 2020 election provided several warning signs that, despite Democratic efforts to build a multiracial coalition, Latino support could be at risk. Biden won the support of 63% of Latino voters compared with Trump’s 35%, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, but Trump narrowed the margin somewhat in some swing states such as Nevada and also got a bump from Latino men, 39% of whom backed him compared with 33% of Latino women, and the Democrats have to do “everything in their power now to get Latinos back.”
Related:
"Republicans chafed openly Thursday over Democrats’ go-it-alone strategy on President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, warning they might come to regret it, even as Democrats formalized plans to move forward on their own. Democrats and White House officials insisted that they want Republicans to vote for the emerging bill. At the same time, arguing the matter is urgent, they announced they would move forward next week with a budget bill that would allow subsequent party-line passage of the sweeping COVID relief package. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said the House and Senate would take the initial budget votes next week, and portrayed the partisan ’'budget reconciliation’' approach as a fallback position that could pressure Republicans to come on board. ’'By the end of the week we will be finished with the budget resolution which will be about reconciliation if we need it,’' Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. ’'We have to be ready. I do think we have more leverage to get cooperation on the other side if they know we have an alternative,’' she said. Advancing legislation via ’'reconciliation’' allows it to pass the Senate with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes normally required for major bills. That could allow the Democrats who control the Senate to pass the legislation with no GOP support, although it would be a struggle because the Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties. Democrats have the majority because Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties. Senate Republicans, including members of a bipartisan group that has been meeting with administration officials about the relief plan, criticized Democrats’ plans to move forward under reconciliation — especially given Biden’s inaugural call for unity. Several Republicans suggested they would be open to a narrower bill focused on money for vaccines and other priorities, but Democrats and White House officials said they were not going that route. Biden’s plan includes a new round of stimulus checks, extended unemployment benefits, and hundreds of billions of dollars for schools, vaccines, and the health care system....."
And what else?
There is an urgency behind the push for relief as he destroys the dollar for the benefit of his globali$t ma$ters.
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Here's to your health:
"Biden could change course in high court health care case" by MARK SHERMAN The Associated Press, January 31, 2021
WASHINGTON — The pending Supreme Court case on the fate of the Affordable Care Act could give the Biden administration its first opportunity to chart a new course in front of the justices.
The health care case, argued a week after the election in November, is one of several matters, along with immigration and a separate case on Medicaid work requirements, where the new administration could take a different position from the Trump administration at the high court.
While a shift would be in line with President Biden’s political preferences, it could prompt consternation at the court. Justices and former officials in Democratic and Republican administrations routinely caution that new administrations should generally be reluctant to change positions before the court.
Still, the health care case is a good candidate for when a rare change of position may be warranted, said Paul Clement, who was solicitor general under President George W. Bush.
The Trump administration called on the justices to strike down the entire Obama-era law under which some 23 million people get health insurance and millions more with preexisting health conditions are protected from discrimination.
Biden was vice president when the law was enacted, famously calling it a “big (expletive) deal” the day Obama signed it into law in 2010.
As president, Biden has called for strengthening the law, and he already has reopened sign-ups for people who might have lost their jobs and the health insurance that goes with them because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the health care case, the court could rule that the now-toothless requirement that people obtain insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional and leave the rest of the law alone. That outcome, rather than taking down the whole law, seemed a likely one based on the justices’ questions and comments in November.
The Justice Department could simply file a new legal brief saying that its views have changed, former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, also an Obama administration veteran, said at the same Georgetown event. A second court hearing is unlikely.
Clement agreed. “I think the justices would welcome it,” he said. “I also think it’s an incredibly strong position,” but Clement cautioned that the new acting solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, will have to pick her spots before the justices, three of whom were appointed by President Trump. “The Biden administration is going to have to realize they’re making arguments to a reasonably conservative court,” he said.
Orders issued by Biden in the first week of his presidency also may affect two cases scheduled for argument next month over controversial Trump administration policies involving immigrants.....
That is regarding the wall along the Mexican border and use of Defense Department funds for it.
Related:
Done by diktat, 'er, executive order and is he so senile that he select a nurse as acting surgeon general?
Also see:
"Craft brewers in Massachusetts can pour a cold one now and celebrate the last-minute approval of compromise legislation on Beacon Hill to help them break free of relationships with their distributors that may be hindering their growth. The measure, enacted in the early morning hours on Wednesday, solidifies a deal struck between the Massachusetts Brewers Guild and the Beer Distributors of Massachusetts in July. The two sides reached a truce after a decade or so of warring over legal changes that would make it easier for brewers to walk away from their distributors. It was a truce that almost didn’t make it into state law....."
You should have heard the roar go up at the Kowloon after Ben Affleck fumbled his coffee and split it on Jennifer Lawrence on the set of her new movie, and I didn't know she was engaged!
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What's next, wife-swapping?
"Biden appointments signal a trade approach that hews to the left" February 8, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced a number of personnel appointments Monday for the Office of the US Trade Representative with close ties to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, in a signal that the new administration is likely to pursue what it calls a “worker-focused” approach to trade.
Biden officials have said they want to seek a trade policy that benefits economically disadvantaged Americans, but it has remained unclear whether the administration would cater more to unions and the left wing of the party, which emphasize strong labor rights and trade rules that protect American workers, or to the moderate Democrats, who typically prefer lower trade barriers and a freer approach to trade.
What do the banks and his globali$t ma$ters want?
The personnel appointments, which were first viewed by The New York Times, are one of the strongest signs yet that the Biden administration is seeking to take a different approach to trade policy than past Democratic administrations, which focused more on promoting American exports and geopolitical influence through striking trade deals. President Biden, by contrast, has said he does not intend to begin negotiating new free-trade agreements until his administration has helped to subdue the coronavirus pandemic and made major investments in American industry and infrastructure.
Instead, his trade staff may focus more on ensuring that US trade rules are adequately enforced and that they promote rather than impede other parts of Biden’s agenda, including fighting climate change and encouraging domestic investment.
The team will also have to decide what to do about the legacy of higher trade barriers and large tariffs on a variety of foreign products, including goods from China, left behind by former president Donald Trump.....
The first thing he is going to do is reinvigorate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, muzzled under Trump, and bring tough industry oversight but first focus on enforcing legal protections for distressed renters, student borrowers and others facing growing debt as companies reevaluate the full range of their political spending:
"Public pension funds overseeing more than $1 trillion are piling pressure on BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to ramp up disclosure of its political activities in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol, and they are asking whether the firm intends to swear off contributions to the 147 congressional Republicans who opposed certifying President Biden’s election. BlackRock’s political action committee contributed $85,000 in campaign cash directly to 15 Republicans who sought to overturn the election results. The firm announced it is pausing its political giving in the wake of the Capitol riot, and the coalition plans to send similar letters to JPMorgan Chase, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group, Bank of New York Mellon, and State Street, said Majority Action executive director Eli Kasargod-Staub. The heightened scrutiny should mark a new era in which pension fund officials exercise ’'enhanced oversight’' over the Wall Street firms managing their retirement funds, Kasargod-Staub said, but he said it ’'remains to be seen’' whether any institutional investors will pull their money from asset managers failing to meet their demands. Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs, a Democrat, said the state won’t make “knee-jerk” decisions about who manages its money and noted ’'divestment takes away our voice,’' but he added Republicans who stoked the Capitol riot by spreading conspiracy theories about the election pose a threat to the rule of law. ’'This is not about corporate giving to Republicans or Democrats. Normal partisan giving is part of the process, and that should be done in a transparent way,’' Frerichs said, ’'but the specific risk we’re trying to assess is support for officials whose actions and rhetoric threaten to destabilize our democracy, undermine our rule of law and our ability to maintain a free-market system. That’s ultimately very bad for investors.’'
So are lockdowns, but that doesn't seem to matter to the $tock market. and who knows, you might get lucky.
I gue$$ Republican Representative Jim Jordan, a fiery Donald Trump supporter, won’t be running for Senate, though.
"After record turnout, Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote" by Michael Wines New York Times, January 30, 2021
WASHINGTON — In Georgia, Arizona and other states won by President Biden, some leading Republicans stood up in November to make what in any other year would be an unremarkable statement: The race is over, and we lost, fair and square, but that was then. Now, in statehouses nationwide, Republicans who echoed former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims of rampant fraud are proposing to make it harder to vote next time — ostensibly to convince the very voters who believed them that elections can be trusted again, and even some colleagues who defended the legitimacy of the November vote are joining them.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, state legislators have filed 106 bills to tighten election rules, generally making it harder to cast a ballot — triple the number at this time last year. In short, Republicans who for more than a decade have used wildly inflated allegations of voter fraud to justify making it harder to vote are now doing so again, this time seizing on Trump’s thoroughly debunked charges of a stolen election to push back at Democratic-leaning voters who flocked to mail-in ballots last year.
The proposals underscore the continuing power of Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the November election, even as some of his administration’s top election experts call the vote the most secure in history, and they reflect long-standing Republican efforts to push back against efforts to expand the ability to vote.
Democrats have their own agenda: 406 bills in 35 states, according to the Brennan Center, that run the gamut from giving former felons the vote to automatically registering visitors to motor vehicle bureaus and other state offices, and Democrats in the Senate will soon unveil a large proposal to undergird much of the election process with what they call pro-democracy reforms, with lowering barriers to voting as the centerpiece. Nearly identical legislation has been filed in the House.
Oh, the Demorats have 4x as many bills to codify fraud and forever end free elections, yet the New York Times spoils it the other way.
“There’s going to be a rush in the next year to legislate certain types of election reforms,” said Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor and co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project. “The jury is still out on whether the lesson from this election will be that we need to make voting as convenient as possible, or whether there will be a serious retrenchment that makes voting less accessible.”
In truth, who controls a given legislature will largely decide what chances a bill has.
In the 23 states wholly run by Republicans, Democratic bills expanding ballot access are largely dead on arrival. The same is true of Republican proposals to restrict ballot access in the 15 states completely controlled by Democrats, but in some states where legislators’ control and interests align, the changes could be consequential.
Except voting now means nothing after what we saw in 2020.
Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who led legal battles against restrictive voting rules last year, said the reason for the state’s voting law crackdown was transparent. “These were elections that withstood the scrutiny of two recounts, an audit and a whole lot of attention in the political arena and the courts,” he said. “The only reason they’re doing this is to make voting harder because they didn’t like the results, and that’s shameful.”
The Clinton slime ball is a key part of this nightmare.
A proposal by Republicans in the state Senate to eliminate no-excuse absentee ballots — one-quarter of the 5 million votes cast in November — has drawn opposition even before it has been filed. But Republicans broadly support a bill to require submitting a photocopied identification card such as a driver’s license with both applications for absentee ballots and the ballots themselves. Raffensperger has said he supports that measure and another to make it easier to challenge a voter’s legitimacy at the polls.
Brian Robinson, a Republican political consultant in Atlanta, said, “The overall purpose of these reforms is to restore faith in our election systems. That’s not to say that it was a giant failure; that’s to say that faith has been diminished.”
He allowed that Trump’s false charges of fraud “drives a lot of the loss of faith among Republicans,” but he also took aim at Democrats, noting that the Democrat who lost the 2018 governor’s race, Stacey Abrams, also had refused to concede, saying voter suppression had caused an “erosion of our democracy.”
“Both sides have dipped their toes in those waters,” he said, but it is clear that Republicans are now dipping much more than their toes. Democrats and some voting rights advocates say the Republican agenda on voting is less about lost trust than lost elections. A Republican election official in suburban Atlanta said as much this month, arguing for tougher voting laws that reduce turnout after Democratic candidates won both of the state’s Senate seats in runoffs. “They don’t have to change all of them,” said Alice O’Lenick, who heads the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections, “but they have got to change the major parts of them so we at least have a shot at winning.”
In Washington, a Democratic agenda can be seen in the latest version of a far-ranging elections and voting bill that passed the House last year but died in the Republican-controlled Senate. This time, the Democrat-controlled Senate will file its own version, with committee hearings expected in February.
Its voting provisions include allowing automatic and same-day voter registration, 15 days of early voting, no-excuse voting by mail, and online voter registration as well as the restoration of voting rights nationwide to felons who complete their sentences. In one fell swoop, it would set minimum standards for U.S. federal elections that would erase a host of procedural barriers to casting a ballot. It also would require the states to appoint independent and nonpartisan commissions to draw political boundaries, eliminating the profusion of gerrymanders that the Supreme Court said in 2019 were beyond its authority to control.
Few expect much chance of passage in a deeply divided Senate, but the Democratic leaders in both houses have made it the first bill of the new congressional session — a statement that, symbolically, at least, it is the first priority of the new Democratic majority.....
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Unfortunately, the bureaucracy might undermine much like it did Tru.... ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!
Sorry, readers, I thought I could type it out with a straight face but.....
"Biden may be stuck with some Trumpists" by Lisa Rein and Anne Gearan The Washington Post, January 24, 2021
WASHINGTON — President Biden is trying to shake a Trump hangover in the federal government by acting to remove some holdovers and install his own appointees, but a quiet push to salt federal agencies with Trump loyalists is complicating the new president’s effort to turn the page.
You mean quiet purge, right?
The Biden team, showing a willingness to cut tenures short, moved quickly last week to dump several high-profile, Senate-confirmed Trump appointees whose terms extended beyond Inauguration Day — in some cases by several years.
They include the surgeon general, the National Labor Relations Board’s powerful general counsel, and the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the US Agency for Global Media, but other, lower-profile Trump loyalists, some of whom helped carry out his administration's most controversial policies, are scattered throughout Biden's government in permanent, senior positions, and identifying them, let alone dislodging them, could be difficult for the new leadership.
If only Trump had done that. He would still be president.
The Jan. 16 appointment of Michael Ellis, a former GOP operative who served in the Trump White House, as the National Security Agency's top lawyer caused such a furor that he was placed on paid leave within hours of taking office, and in the former president’s final months and weeks, dozens of other political appointees had their status similarly converted to permanent civil service roles that will allow them to stay in government for years to come. These new career officials are protected from partisan removal unless the new administration discovers that they got their jobs illegally — without competition and because of their political affiliation.
As Biden tries to reset the government to match his priorities, Democrats fear the Trump holdovers, who served in partisan roles, could undermine the new administration as they move into the civil service, which is supposed to operate free of partisanship.
Taste of your own medicine don't go down to good, huh?
The practice of shifting employees from appointee to career status, informally called burrowing, occurs at the end of every presidency — and it is controversial. Trump aides and their GOP allies in Congress, for example, threatened at the start of Trump’s term to remove any Obama-era political appointees who had been replanted in the civil service, and dozens were, records show, but the just-departed president is on track to exceed the number of Democrats the Obama administration rewarded with permanent roles. In his final year, President Obama moved 29 political appointees into career jobs. As of November, Trump had installed almost that many, 26, in the first 10 months of 2020, according to data provided to Congress by the Office of Personnel Management.
Every administration deserves a fresh start, no?
Nine more requests await review by personnel officials. More are expected. Congress has not received data covering December and the first 20 days of January, when outgoing administrations tend to move quickly to reward appointees who want to stay in government.
Burrowing is frowned upon by good-government groups — and by members of the party that is out of power — even when it is carried out legally, which means the appointee competed for the position and was the top candidate on the basis of merit and work experience, with no nod to political affiliation or loyalty.
The hiring of a political appointee for a career job must be scrutinized by the federal personnel office for five years after the person left the partisan job.
Such conversions also can violate civil service laws, as occurred during the George W. Bush administration, when a young Justice Department lawyer from the Republican National Committee, Monica Goodling, was found to have broken the law by using politics to guide hiring decisions for a range of critical jobs.
Goodling was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony, and was reprimanded by the Virginia Bar. She acknowledged during a House hearing that she "crossed the line" and broke civil service hiring rules.
“There’s a great irony here,” said Representative Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who leads a House oversight panel on federal government operations, referring to Trump’s efforts to place his appointees in government. “The crowd that didn’t believe in government and called its agencies the deep state now wants to work for them.”
It's the flip $ide of the $ame coin!
Connolly has asked the Government Accountability Office, Congress's research arm, to tally all of Trump's conversions over four years.
Many of the new hires were not announced by their agencies, which may have presented a challenge for Biden's transition teams to discover them.
“The incoming Biden-Harris administration is keenly aware of last minute efforts by the outgoing administration to convert political appointees into civil service positions,” a transition official said in a statement.
Trump partisans work in Biden’s government at a range of agencies, including the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Many are serving in senior executive roles, the highest echelon of career leaders. They work as assistant US attorneys, general counsel, intelligence leaders, immigration judges.....
Related:
"The new director of national intelligence has begun reshaping the office, installing a new official to lead President Joe Biden’s daily briefings by tapping a veteran of the last Bush administration, according to current and former government officials. With the arrival of Biden in the White House, Morgan Muir, a longtime CIA analyst, has taken over the briefing job, replacing Beth Sanner, President Donald Trump’s briefer, officials said. Muir is an experienced briefer. He served as one of President George W. Bush’s briefers for a period of three years that started well after both the Sept. 11 attacks and the intelligence failures that occurred in the run-up to the Iraq War, according to former officials. It is unusual, and perhaps unprecedented, for a CIA analyst to return for a second tour as the presidential briefer, but the intelligence community tries to match the briefer to the president. Given Biden’s deep knowledge of foreign policy, finding the right briefer for him presents a challenge that the intelligence agencies have not faced since George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, became president in 1989. Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, has been attending the briefings with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, although she has allowed Muir to conduct them. Muir, said former colleagues, will be adept at anticipating Biden’s questions during the briefings. If the intelligence agencies do not quickly establish the daily brief as relevant to a new president, they can find their time being pared back on the schedule. “He is the best analyst in the intelligence community,” said Michael Morell, who preceded Muir as a presidential briefer in the George W. Bush administration. “He’s the best briefer in the intelligence community.”
I'm further told that former intelligence officials said that the decision by Haines to tap an agency veteran who had experience with a Republican president sent an important signal about how she would fulfill her pledge to run the department in an apolitical way for one of the most difficult posts in government, according to the New York Times.
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A look back:
"Former president Donald Trump has opened an office to “advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda” of his administration, according to a statement released Monday night. The ex-president’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, created a new e-mail distribution system via one of his private companies for Trump’s statements because the 2020 campaign’s e-mail infrastructure has been suspended by the vendor it had been using, Campaign Monitor, according to two people familiar with the matter. A slew of technology platforms excised Trump accounts or subgroups, including those on Twitter, Facebook, Shopify, Twitch, and Instagram, after the Jan. 6 riot by pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol. The statement from the office of Donald J. Trump was issued less than an hour before House Democrats crossed the US Capitol to deliver an article of impeachment against the former president to the Senate. That sets in motion Trump’s second impeachment trial. He is accused of inciting the mob that broke into the Capitol as Congress was about to certify the results of the election he lost to Joe Biden. One of Parscale’s companies, Nucleus, built an e-mail distribution system meant to circumvent outside vendors. Aides want to prevent media companies from silencing Trump in the future, one of the people said. Also on Monday, a Trump adviser said he had no plans to break from the Republican Party to pursue a third party....."
Pascale was dismissed during the campaign, allegedly for a nervous breakdown, so WTF?
Of course, they left him in the lurch and will be $tripping him of his pension because the toad doesn't need it and his reputation has already been destroyed. He will be lucky to escape prison or execution when this is all done, so you better arm yourself with more than hope and law books before they jab you.
Time for a nap!?!
