Here are Trump's picks for his new chief of staff now:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... staff-soon
Four candidates are now favored to succeed Kelly when he leaves at the end of the year: outgoing House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, according to multiple reports.
Of course, Trump is now saying that he didn't want Ayers in the first place. But if that isn't a lie (doubtful), then he simply threw out Kelly as his chief of staff without having a new one already planned. Dysfunctional doesn't even begin to describe this administration.
Edit: the messageboard rumor mill says that Mulvaney and Lighthizer are putting out signals that they don't want the job. So it looks like the candidate list might be down to the two worst possibilities, Meadows and Whitaker - or to some person not yet mentioned who's willing to jump into this mess of an administration. I can't imagine there are many intelligent people these days who are willing to do that.
Needless to say, people are having fun making predictions that include Sarah Palin, various Russians, Fox news personalities, Manafort (pardon him then hire him), Ted Nugent (a buddy of Trump), Kris Kobach...
No one seems to have mentioned the Saudi prince yet.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4203 ... -arms-race
President Trump's ultimatum to Russia over a landmark arms control treaty could potentially kill the pact and set the stage for more land-based cruise missiles and nuclear warheads in Europe, experts and Democrat lawmakers warn.
...“We’re going to increase the risk that a crisis could go nuclear,” said Jon Wolfsthal, the National Security Council senior director for arms control and nonproliferation under former President Obama.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4204 ... 0b-reports
President Trump is reportedly calling for the Pentagon to raise its budget request for next year to $750 billion, significantly more than he previously wanted and $12 billion more than top military officials have been pushing for.
Trump in a tweet last week appeared to call the Department of Defense's (DOD) current budget of $716 billion "crazy," and he has been pushing for a 5-percent cut to its budget as he seeks to trim spending across the federal agencies.
But Trump reportedly changed his mind after a Tuesday meeting at the White House involving Defense Secretary James Mattis and the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.), Politico first reported.
IMO, this is another case where some people are better at manipulating Trump than others. A normal president would seek input from experts and try to balance the competing budget needs. Trump just seems to go with whoever can flatter him the best or play on his emotions and (often poorly informed) perceptions of the world.
The GOP defense of Trump has evolved from him not committing any crimes to "what does it matter."
https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-tal ... aw-its-not
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said Sunday that if President Trump violated campaign finance law during his 2016 campaign, it's not "anywhere near impeachable." "Is this a campaign finance violation? Which would obviously, I don't think be anywhere near impeachable. That's what we want to find out at the end of the Mueller thing," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Kinzinger's comments came after federal prosecutors in New York said Friday that Trump directed his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 campaign to make illegal payments to two women claiming they had affairs with Trump.
They're clearly trying to convince people that this was just some little technical issue. But Trump and Cohen deliberately did things they knew were illegal and did their best to hide them.
There's no way in hell the current GOP would have gotten rid of Nixon. And Nixon was at least competent and intelligent, not an ignorant, narcissistic ass who spends his time golfing, watching Fox news, tweeting stupid things, defending dictators, and re-tweeting misinformation from far right agitators.
Edit:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4206 ... s-chairman
A Defense Department spokesman on Monday said that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford will serve the remainder of his term despite President Trump announcing his successor 10 months ahead of his end date.
“At this point, all indications are that General Dunford will serve his full term,” Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters at the Pentagon.
I'll be curious if he does. Trump's timing in ousting Kelly at practically the same time he announced Dunford's replacement doesn't seem like a coincidence.
And Trump has essentially admitted that he asked Cohen to pay off embarrassing sexual encounters in an incoherent tweet, while claiming it was "done correctly by a lawyer" and displaying complete ignorance of the rules regarding campaign contributions. Seriously, does Trump has two functioning brain cells? No wonder he accidentally revealed classified information to the Russians during the first meeting in the White House. Putin and others must just love talking to him.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ction-done
“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2018
....which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!
https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2 ... ds-process
In an order quietly signed right before Thanksgiving, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reassigned the responsibility of overseeing Freedom of Information Act requests from a career staffer to the Interior Department’s solicitor — a political appointee who oversees the department’s legal work.
President Trump has not nominated someone to the solicitor post, which requires Senate confirmation. Instead Dan Jorjani, a former Koch Foundation strategist, has impermissibly been serving as the “acting” solicitor for the past two years. Secretarial Order 3371, signed Nov. 20, gives Jorjani the role of chief FOIA officer.
Jorjani has appeared before in other news:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-07-26/ ... mails-show
As deputy director of the National Park Service, Michael Reynolds played a key role in developing a sweeping new vision for managing national parks. The new policy, enacted in the final weeks of the Obama administration, elevated the role that science played in decision-making and emphasized that parks should take precautionary steps to protect natural and historic treasures.
But eight months later, as the first acting director of the Park Service under President Donald Trump, Reynolds rescinded this policy, known as Director’s Order 100. Newly released documents suggest that top Interior Department officials intervened, ordering Reynolds to rescind it.
...Jarvis, who signed Director’s Order 100, said he thinks the Trump administration objected to the policy because it stressed that parks follow the “precautionary principle,” preventing actions or activities that plausibly threaten park resources and human heath, even when there is uncertainty. It also acknowledged the significant impact that climate change has on parks and directed them to incorporate climate change science in management decisions.
The emails show that Daniel Jorjani, Interior’s principal deputy solicitor, played a key role in reversing the order. Jorjani is a Trump appointee who was an attorney from 2010 to 2016 for foundations funded by the Koch brothers, fossil-fuel billionaires who support the spread of free-market principles throughout government.
Rescinding the policy also helps industries that want to use national parks for profit like jet skis and drone operators.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -democrats
Democratic senators are demanding information about what they call the Koch brothers’ “infiltration” of the Trump administration, charging that Koch-linked personnel have secured key federal jobs and are determining US environmental and public health policy.
...Résumés obtained through public records requests by the Guardian and Documented, a government watchdog group, show the close links between high-ranking federal staffers and the Koch network.
“I think right now it’s the most powerful political force in the United States,” Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said in an interview. “If you don’t believe that deregulation is good and that pollution ought not to be checked and that billionaires ought to be able to pull strings secretly in government, this ought to be a pretty high priority.”
The Democrats have identified nine Koch-affiliated staff at the Department of the Interior...They include the principal deputy solicitor, Daniel Jorjani,...
Jorjani is one of the influential staffers mentioned in this article, which mostly focuses on Katharine MacGregor, who oversees the BLM. It gives a picture of the political staffers reshaping government agencies behind the scenes:
https://psmag.com/environment/a-top-doi ... -of-mining
A Top DOI Official Had at Least Six Meetings With the Mining Industry. She Then Helped Cancel a Study on the Public-Health Effects of Mining.
Executive branch figureheads like Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, and President Donald Trump himself get almost all of the press coverage, but when it comes to the machinations of the American government they are just a portion of the story. Beneath and behind these attention-grabbing politicians is an array of appointees who labor outside the spotlight and wield great power. These are the "people working far from the cameras and the West Wing," "the next-level-down guys," as a recent article in The New Yorker describes them. They are the assistant secretaries, the deputies, the senior advisers, the solicitors, and other political operatives carrying out the Trump administration's agenda. They are the men and women remaking the executive branch in the image of the president's right-wing political movement, and very few people know their names...