Ohio Capital Journal - President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Office of Management and Budget appeared on a glide path to confirmation following a Wednesday hearing, despite Democrats raising concerns over his policy beliefs and actions in the exact same job during the first administration.
Russ Vought, who ran a conservative think tank for the last four years, repeatedly declined to detail how he would advise Trump on a variety of policy issues during the two-hour hearing — with one notable exception. Vought testified he and Trump believe the president holds the sole authority to withhold funding approved by Congress through something called impoundment, which is currently illegal under a 1970s-era law.
“The president has run on the issue of impoundment and has reminded the country that 200 years of presidents have used this authority,” Vought said during the hearing. “And we’ll be developing our approach to this issue and strategy once his administration is in office.”
The issue could become one of the rare occasions where GOP
and Democratic lawmakers unite against the executive branch in an
attempt to preserve Congress’ power of the purse. The debate would
likely end up at the Supreme Court if Trump does freeze funding once in
office.
Political Wire- "The Trump transition is attempting to remove US attorneys immediately
by replacing them with interim leaders who’d be aligned with the
president-elect’s priorities,“ Bloomberg Law reports. “Transition staffers have been working to identify existing career
prosecutors in many of the nation’s 93 law enforcement districts who
they’d feel confident would support the president-elect’s law
enforcement priorities—including deportations—once elevated as acting US
attorneys, said the attorneys.”
New Statesman, UK - A New Statesman analysis of political appointments announced so far by the Trump administration has found 26 appointees whose personal fortunes exceed $100m; 12 are billionaires. At least two others have spouses who are billionaires; others belong to billionaire families, or have concealed their wealth so it is hard to say how much they have (all we know is it’s a lot). America’s new ambassador to the UK is the investment banker Warren Stephens (estimated net worth $3.4bn); Trump’s commerce secretary is the investment banker Howard Lutnick ($2bn); his education secretary, the former wrestling promoter Linda McMahon ($3.2bn). Nasa will be run by the defence tycoon Jared Isaacman ($1.8bn). Trump’s appointees so far have a combined net worth of around half a trillion dollars. The second Trump administration will be the richest democratically elected government in history.
Occupy Democrats - The American people make their real opinion of Donald Trump known as polling reveals that a paltry 17% are "extremely" or "very" confident that his Justice Department will act in a nonpartisan and fair manner. But it gets even worse... The survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll also discovered that only 32% of respondents are "somewhat" confident that the Justice Department under Trump will run fairly. A whopping 49% had little to no confidence that the nation's top law enforcement department will maintain its neutrality.
IB Times - Former Vice President Mike Pence's conservative advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), is sounding the alarm over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) nomination, citing concerns over his stances on abortion rights. The move is another instance of Pence distancing himself from Trump. "While RFK Jr. has made certain overtures to pro-life leaders... there is little reason for confidence at this time," wrote AAF President Tim Chapman and Chairman of the Board Marc Short in a letter obtained by The Daily Wire.
Robert Reich - Trump wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 15%. This would give...
-The 5 largest drug makers a $3.1B tax cut
-The 5 largest US oil companies a $2.5B tax cut
-The 5 largest grocery stores a $1.7B tax cut
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