Attention to the Unseen

The Associated Press reports: [In 2014, when the justices unanimously ruled that Democratic President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were illegal, Justice Antonin] Scalia, an icon of the right, applied his originalist approach to the Constitution to conclude that there was little doubt what the framers were trying to do. The whole point of the constitutional provision on recess appointments, adopted in 1787 in the era of horse and buggy, was that the Senate could…

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The Independent reports: A bipartisan bill to boost transparency and make sure incoming presidents stick to an ethics plan was so uncontroversial that it passed the Senate by a voice vote in 2020. Donald Trump then signed it into law. But now, after blowing past deadlines to adhere to the law after winning the White House a second time, Trump appears to have excluded himself from those same ethical guidelines. Trump missed two months of deadlines before finally signing off…

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By Molly Redden This story was originally published by ProPublica Donald Trump is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike. “We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said…

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Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: The six-page filing that special counsel Jack Smith submitted Monday is surely one of the strangest requests a federal prosecutor has ever had to make. Smith moved to dismiss charges against Donald Trump for election subversion, asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to toss out the case due to an “unprecedented circumstance”: The defendant has, of course, been reelected president. In the filing, he assures the judge (and the public) that the government “stands fully…

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Julian Borger writes: The arrest warrants issued by the international criminal court (ICC) represent an earthquake on the world’s legal landscape: the first time a western ally from a modern democracy has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity by a global judicial body. Inside Israel, the warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, will not have an immediate impact. In the short term they are likely to rally support around the prime minister…

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NBC News reports: President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that his new pick for attorney general is Pam Bondi. Bondi previously served as Florida’s attorney general. The announcement came just hours after former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew from consideration. “For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and…

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ABC News reports: President Donald Trump’s picks to lead the next administration are talking about abolishing entire agencies and firing tens of thousands of federal workers at a time. But can his administration actually do all that? Experts believe Trump can get much further on upending the government system this go-around compared to his first term — in part because the typical checks and balances are expected to lean in his favor. Next year, the House and Senate are on…

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Reuters reports: Members of the over 2 million-strong U.S. civilian federal workforce are looking to an unlikely source to protect it from Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s promise to slash government employees and cut costs: the incoming Republican-controlled Congress. Federal employee unions are lining up lawyers and preparing public campaigns to try to stave off any mass firings, but they’re hoping Republican Congress members will join Democrats in defending their importance to local economies, health and safety, union members and…

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Liz Dye writes: Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is a giant middle finger to anyone who believes in the rule of law. But his nominees for other key Justice Department positions may be both more consequential and potentially more dangerous for democracy. That’s partly because Gaetz is a lazy fool who never tried a federal criminal case and is functionally a “liberal tears” meme made flesh. It’s not that he’s too stupid to be dangerous —…

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Mark Joseph Stern writes: The 2024 election marked a painful setback for Democratic hopes of rebalancing the federal judiciary: When Donald Trump reenters the White House in January, he will have a pliant Republican Senate majority eager to confirm his hard-right judges. But federal courts don’t tell the whole story: Across the country, voters also elected liberal justices to their state Supreme Courts, which function as a key backstop for civil rights and democracy as federal courts lurch rightward. Progressives…

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Karl Bode writes: Surprising exactly nobody, Donald Trump has appointed Brendan Carr to lead the nation’s top telecom and media regulator. As we noted last week, there’s zero daylight between Carr’s policies and the policies of unpopular telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast. Carr is as close to the dictionary definition of “regulatory capture” as you’re going to get (with a few additional wrinkles we’ll get to down below). You might recall that Trump’s team promised it would “blacklist” any participants in Project 2025,…

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David Nir writes: [A] never-invoked provision of the Constitution found in Article 2, Section 3, … says that “in Case of Disagreement between” the Senate and House “with Respect to the Time of Adjournment,” the president “may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” To our nation’s founders, this rule represented a considerable narrowing of executive power, since it applies to only a single issue: disputes between the two houses over adjournment. Alexander Hamilton, for instance, noted…

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