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Notes -
What do you guys think of the Matt Gaetz pick specifically? This seems to be a high-variance pick from a high-variance administration. Attorney General is IMO the most important cabinet position for domestic policy. As we all learned in high school, the executive branch enforces the laws. The Department of Justice is the agency tasked with boots-on-the-ground execution of that constitutional mandate. If nothing else, the Gaetz pick puts the fear of god back into a lot of people in Washington.
Well, I wasn't familiar with Gaetz before this, so I'm mostly going off the reactions of others to his appointment. There's two things I find interesting.
The first also holds for many of Trump's other appointments, it's just the most stark in the case of Gaetz and Justice. And that's the take that he'll be useless as AG because he's not an insider, he's going to try (and fail) to tell people at Justice to do things they don't want to do, and that he'll get nothing done as they refuse to obey him, since they'll only "obey" an insider who only "orders" them to do things they already want to do. Pretty much admitting to what I keep saying (as does Yarvin): that, regardless of what it says on some musty old bit of paper, the Permanent Bureaucracy doesn't actually answer to their appointed "heads," nor the elected politicians that appoint them; that they set their own policies, and maintain them regardless of how the votes go, and that Our Democracy™ is mostly a sham. (Again, my only hope for the second Trump term is that the utter uselessness of even a Republican "trifecta" finally convinces enough right-wing Americans that no amount of voting can halt the leftward slide, and thus the only things to do are either give up, accept defeat, and lie down to rot; or else grab their friends, grab their guns, and march on DC to put bullets into Swamp Creature heads.)
Second, that Thomas G. Moukawsher at Newsweek and the Dreaded Jim have both compared Gaetz to Caligula's horse Incitatus, albeit with opposite valences of approval, and very different predictions of outcome:
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I want to know if he can feasibly be forced in. Senate Republicans don’t seem keen on confirming him, and I hear there are some constitutional powers (should have written this down) Trump can leverage to force recess appointments - will he do it? Why didn’t he do it last time?
Noel Canning's punt will come back to haunt us: Congress must be in a recess of 'sufficient length' to be a real delay, not just the three-day break of Noel Canning... but while booting the conservative-lead requirement that such appointments be to fill a space that became vacant during the recess. So Congress has since gotten into the habit of pro-forma 'sessions' that did nothing but reset the clock, hence why October and August look like this.
In theory, the President has some powers to force Congress to adjourn, in Article II, Section 3:
But afaik this has never been used, a strict read of the text would only allow it to apply where Congress was actively unable to agree on a date of end of session, and because there are no requirements for how Congress can choose to assemble (being having to meet on the first Monday in December) I don't think it would actually work otherwise.
In practice, if Trump tries for force recess appointments, it's extremely likely that the Senate fight further on everything else, so it's a costly decision to make to even try.
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Gossip on the Hill is that Republican Senators feel they can push back on one of Gaetz or RFK and get away with it (but not both). I suspect it'll be Gaetz.
I wonder if Gaetz is a maximally unacceptable figure put forth to make the still-controversial real appointment more palatable.
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Most coverage focuses on his alleged sex scandal. Which is lurid, but has the dual problems of being having run too long while, when described in detail (some ludicrous), just isn't damning enough. About the best that can be said there is that Gaetz lacks Kavanaugh's charisma: even if someone tries something really stupid like trying to bring a Mann Act prosecution against him, everyone's just not gonna care.
The other side is that he's actively uncharismatic enough that I could see him having a tougher time getting confirmed than RFK. Gaetz is hated, and he's an easy man to hate.
More critically, my impression's that he hasn't shown the competence or leadership skills necessary to do much more than take a few retirements out at the belt. My opinion of the DoJ is low enough that 'wrecking ball' might well be an improvement over BATNA, but I'm skeptical that it's the only or best option available. We know what happens when Gaetz demands someone do something and they refuse, and it didn't work out great for Gaetz last time, and it's gonna be every single day at the DoJ. Maybe he wakes up once shoved into the role -- if the conspiracy theory is right and that sex scandal above was being assisted by the DoJ, he'd have a lot of reason! -- but my bet is no. He might be vengeful enough to do a Nunes, but it takes more than a grudge.
Gaetz is gonna have some radicals in his staff that are much more competent, I’m pretty sure.
It doesn't matter how "competent" they are, the Justice Department will simply ignore them, along with Gaetz, and keep on as they are now. None of Trump's appointments will have any actual power over the agencies, whose personnel will prove impossible to fire. The only way the "Deep State" is getting removed is in body bags:
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