David French claims that what looks like capitulation was anything but.
“By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, [FBI Director Christopher] Wray has created a ‘legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.’
“Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.
“Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the ‘first assistant to the office.’” ~ David French
Hitler, Stalin, Khomeini, and President Kennedy, the Apollo Astronauts and Good Samaritans all made Person of the Year. Before Trump celebrates, he may want to consider which bucket he’s meant to be in. My guess is Time Magazine has thoughts about it.
We South Carolinians who oppose her and the rest of her opportunistic, lickspittle, traitorous ilk (Graham, Scott, Norman, et al) know the A was for ASSHOLE. As she proves again.
JFC, these Senators make me sick. The majority are multi millionaires and don't need the job, and yet they still bend over and grab their ankles and beg daddy Trump to fuck them hard. I'm on a fixed income and would still rather eat dog food than compromise like they are. We're living Nazi Germany all over again. Fucking disgusting.
Bill - I enjoyed the quote from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov! Another one of his is "You are never given an obstacle you cannot overcome." I am prompted to re-work the opening line from Dante's Inferno: "Retain hope, all ye who read the Bulwark"
At its peak from 1970 to 2000, Time's circulation was over 4 million, the largest of the weekly news magazines, when America’s population was 204 million in 1970, 227 million in 1980, 250 million: in 1990, and 282 million in 2000.
As of November 2024, Time has 1.3 million print buyers (subscribers/news stands) and 250,000 digital subscribers in a population of around 336 million.
Time, and its award, is as irrelevant today as Trump’s desire to be continually living in the 1980s culture, when Time's award was somewhat meaningful in American culture.
I tried to watch the video of the NYT DealBook Summit panel discussion that Sarah was on this morning, using the link that Jim Swift provided yesterday. YouTube had the video blocked, saying it was “private”. I was told to login to my Google account to verify that I had permission to watch the video. I logged in and saw that the video was still marked “private”, with a message that I did not have permission to watch it.
Using the audio link, I listened to the entire discussion with my Apple Podcasts app, but was only allowed to watch the edited version of the discussion posted on The Bulwark YouTube channel. Has anyone else had trouble watching the entire video? Did the NYT shut it down and block it with this “private” thing?
Contrast what North Carolina Republicans have just done with Sinema and Manchin's spiteful actions. Republicans play to win. They suck as people and as a party, but they're very good at what they do. Catch up, Democrats.
The message I get is the govt is now going to be a kind reality TV show that this spectacle is what Americans either want or will get, and whatever real decisions are to be made will be made out of spot light by the man himself. And I would guess Americans won't even need to know about it whatever it is but they certainly won't have any say it. Maybe there's another real election at the federal level but it gets less real down the line. But that's their rosy scenario. They might be surprised at the anger resulting from betrayal. I mean if that's what really happens because.. it seems likely given the ideas, all bad that I can see coming from them. What fun. I do wonder who's going to just say no. We'll see.
"He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of ...being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. . . ." The founding father's never thought someone like Trump, who feels no shame, would ever be president. Remember, they also wrote that the Electoral College would override the popular vote if such a person were to sway the voters "thorough little artifices" (lies, in 18th century language).
Trump's enablers claim they're trying to restore America to what the Founders intended - by handing virtually despotic power to someone the Founders would have considered wildly unsuited to the presidency; someone who openly praises iron-fisted dictators.
On the other hand, some Trumpers think the Founders were too infected by "Enlightenment liberalism," and they would rather have a "Christian" monarch - scare quotes because Trumpers obviously think Christian virtues are less important than Christian identitarianism.
While it's reasonable to maintain a capacity for skepticism about the wisdom and integrity of government agencies and officials, I will never comprehend the choice by so many people -- some of them well educated -- to place their highest trust in an obvious sociopath with an aggressively self-centered worldview and a pattern of transparently preposterous mendacity.
People who are smart enough to know better chose to redefine "corruption" as not being in lockstep with a man who is so ethically bankrupt that even Jeffrey Epstein noticed that he lacks a "moral compass." And they claim that he's a warrior against forces of evil.
We are seeing an abusive relationship between Trump and his supporters. In abusive relationships, the abused believes that her partner’s behavior is minor, and can be eliminated by him. This is a false narrative, but the partner keeps believing it because to not believe means that she has to do something, which she neither can or wants to do. The abuser does not want to change because abusing his partner is what he needs to do. This may be simplistic, and I know that women abuse men. I have witnessed many in my family in abusive relationships, an spent two years volunteering with a group that was trying to break this cycle. Trump’s supporters want him to change and stop lying. He won’t. They can’t leave because they would have to admit they were wrong for so long.
Or more money. And for those who won’t get the more money. It’s punishment of the other. And for a few the message from them is ‘I’m going down and I’m going to take you with me.
By stepping down, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a “legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.”
Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the “first assistant to the office.”
In this case, that means the position would default to Paul Abbate, who has been the deputy director of the F.B.I. since 2021, unless Trump chooses someone else, and that “someone else” cannot be Patel, at least not right away.
The bottom line is that the Senate has to do its job. Wray is foreclosing a presidential appointment under the Vacancies Reform Act, and — as I wrote in a column last month — the Supreme Court has most likely foreclosed the use of a recess appointment to bypass the Senate.
Yes, it is worthwhile to read Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 76, The Appointing Power of the Executive. I have read it and re-read it many times. My recent notes in the margins reflect the reality we face now that Trump has been re-elected president. For example, you quote this passage, "It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature." The paragraph continues: "The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other." My notes in the margins next to these passages say, "Not for Trump! C'mon! Are you kidding?!" I was going to address Federalist 76 in a Substack post I wanted to write on the appointment process, and I realized after reading it again that none of Hamilton's ideas/theories/perspectives apply in America post November 5, 2024. Yes, there are grounds for despair. This is our reality now. We have much work to do if we wish to save our democratic republic for our posterity.
David French claims that what looks like capitulation was anything but.
“By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, [FBI Director Christopher] Wray has created a ‘legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.’
“Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.
“Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the ‘first assistant to the office.’” ~ David French
Has anyone from the Bulwark looked at Sarah Isgur's idea of why this is actually a good thing? Something about 90 days procedure blah blah blah....
Hitler, Stalin, Khomeini, and President Kennedy, the Apollo Astronauts and Good Samaritans all made Person of the Year. Before Trump celebrates, he may want to consider which bucket he’s meant to be in. My guess is Time Magazine has thoughts about it.
Remember Mace's scarlet A?
We South Carolinians who oppose her and the rest of her opportunistic, lickspittle, traitorous ilk (Graham, Scott, Norman, et al) know the A was for ASSHOLE. As she proves again.
David — Too many Americans feel they are just one lucky Lottery ticket away from being billionaires themselves to make war on the Uberrich.
It's clear that Wray is a Republican before he is an American.
JFC, these Senators make me sick. The majority are multi millionaires and don't need the job, and yet they still bend over and grab their ankles and beg daddy Trump to fuck them hard. I'm on a fixed income and would still rather eat dog food than compromise like they are. We're living Nazi Germany all over again. Fucking disgusting.
Bill - I enjoyed the quote from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov! Another one of his is "You are never given an obstacle you cannot overcome." I am prompted to re-work the opening line from Dante's Inferno: "Retain hope, all ye who read the Bulwark"
RE: Man of the Year Award
At its peak from 1970 to 2000, Time's circulation was over 4 million, the largest of the weekly news magazines, when America’s population was 204 million in 1970, 227 million in 1980, 250 million: in 1990, and 282 million in 2000.
As of November 2024, Time has 1.3 million print buyers (subscribers/news stands) and 250,000 digital subscribers in a population of around 336 million.
Time, and its award, is as irrelevant today as Trump’s desire to be continually living in the 1980s culture, when Time's award was somewhat meaningful in American culture.
I tried to watch the video of the NYT DealBook Summit panel discussion that Sarah was on this morning, using the link that Jim Swift provided yesterday. YouTube had the video blocked, saying it was “private”. I was told to login to my Google account to verify that I had permission to watch the video. I logged in and saw that the video was still marked “private”, with a message that I did not have permission to watch it.
Using the audio link, I listened to the entire discussion with my Apple Podcasts app, but was only allowed to watch the edited version of the discussion posted on The Bulwark YouTube channel. Has anyone else had trouble watching the entire video? Did the NYT shut it down and block it with this “private” thing?
Contrast what North Carolina Republicans have just done with Sinema and Manchin's spiteful actions. Republicans play to win. They suck as people and as a party, but they're very good at what they do. Catch up, Democrats.
The message I get is the govt is now going to be a kind reality TV show that this spectacle is what Americans either want or will get, and whatever real decisions are to be made will be made out of spot light by the man himself. And I would guess Americans won't even need to know about it whatever it is but they certainly won't have any say it. Maybe there's another real election at the federal level but it gets less real down the line. But that's their rosy scenario. They might be surprised at the anger resulting from betrayal. I mean if that's what really happens because.. it seems likely given the ideas, all bad that I can see coming from them. What fun. I do wonder who's going to just say no. We'll see.
"He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of ...being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure. . . ." The founding father's never thought someone like Trump, who feels no shame, would ever be president. Remember, they also wrote that the Electoral College would override the popular vote if such a person were to sway the voters "thorough little artifices" (lies, in 18th century language).
Trump's enablers claim they're trying to restore America to what the Founders intended - by handing virtually despotic power to someone the Founders would have considered wildly unsuited to the presidency; someone who openly praises iron-fisted dictators.
On the other hand, some Trumpers think the Founders were too infected by "Enlightenment liberalism," and they would rather have a "Christian" monarch - scare quotes because Trumpers obviously think Christian virtues are less important than Christian identitarianism.
While it's reasonable to maintain a capacity for skepticism about the wisdom and integrity of government agencies and officials, I will never comprehend the choice by so many people -- some of them well educated -- to place their highest trust in an obvious sociopath with an aggressively self-centered worldview and a pattern of transparently preposterous mendacity.
People who are smart enough to know better chose to redefine "corruption" as not being in lockstep with a man who is so ethically bankrupt that even Jeffrey Epstein noticed that he lacks a "moral compass." And they claim that he's a warrior against forces of evil.
One word for it is "Orwellian."
We are seeing an abusive relationship between Trump and his supporters. In abusive relationships, the abused believes that her partner’s behavior is minor, and can be eliminated by him. This is a false narrative, but the partner keeps believing it because to not believe means that she has to do something, which she neither can or wants to do. The abuser does not want to change because abusing his partner is what he needs to do. This may be simplistic, and I know that women abuse men. I have witnessed many in my family in abusive relationships, an spent two years volunteering with a group that was trying to break this cycle. Trump’s supporters want him to change and stop lying. He won’t. They can’t leave because they would have to admit they were wrong for so long.
Or more money. And for those who won’t get the more money. It’s punishment of the other. And for a few the message from them is ‘I’m going down and I’m going to take you with me.
From David French in today's NY Times, FWIW:
By stepping down, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a “legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.”
Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the “first assistant to the office.”
In this case, that means the position would default to Paul Abbate, who has been the deputy director of the F.B.I. since 2021, unless Trump chooses someone else, and that “someone else” cannot be Patel, at least not right away.
The bottom line is that the Senate has to do its job. Wray is foreclosing a presidential appointment under the Vacancies Reform Act, and — as I wrote in a column last month — the Supreme Court has most likely foreclosed the use of a recess appointment to bypass the Senate.
Yes, it is worthwhile to read Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 76, The Appointing Power of the Executive. I have read it and re-read it many times. My recent notes in the margins reflect the reality we face now that Trump has been re-elected president. For example, you quote this passage, "It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature." The paragraph continues: "The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other." My notes in the margins next to these passages say, "Not for Trump! C'mon! Are you kidding?!" I was going to address Federalist 76 in a Substack post I wanted to write on the appointment process, and I realized after reading it again that none of Hamilton's ideas/theories/perspectives apply in America post November 5, 2024. Yes, there are grounds for despair. This is our reality now. We have much work to do if we wish to save our democratic republic for our posterity.