Discover the latest political analysis? Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, remained under scrutiny over reports that he rented a condominium from the wife of a top Washington lobbyist. He paid $50 a night to stay in the Capitol Hill unit. At least five officials were reassigned or demoted, or requested new jobs, in the past year after they raised concerns about Mr. Pruitt’s spending and management, which included unusually large spending on office furniture and first-class travel, as well as requests for a bulletproof vehicle and an expanded 20-person protective detail. Mr. Pruitt was already facing questions about his first-class travel at taxpayer expense over the past year.
Just as remarkable as the deal itself is the bipartisan applause that greeted it in the United States. No one needs reminding that domestic politics is polarized and paranoid. Each party is convinced that the other one will extinguish democracy at the first opportunity. The past three presidencies have been jarringly discontinuous in style, temperament, and policy. But the same Democrats who sometimes appear eager to remove Donald Trump from office by any means necessary treated this foreign-policy accomplishment with equanimity and acquiescence. “It is good to see others in the Middle East recognizing Israel and even welcoming it as a partner,” Joe Biden said in a statement, adding that “a Biden-Harris administration will build on these steps.” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware told Jewish Insider that the agreement is “a very positive thing.”
US Foreign politics and Brexit 2020 latest : Last week, with the introduction of the Internal Markets Bill, the rubber hit the road. By the British government’s own admission, the bill violates the Withdrawal Agreement signed onto with the EU, albeit only in “a very specific and limited way,” in the words of Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis. Specifically, it violates Article IV, which establishes the Agreement’s supremacy over U.K. law. The British government has taken this measure because they want their own ministers to decide what goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain should be subject to EU customs checks. In other words, the government is reasserting its sovereignty over Northern Ireland now that the U.K. is safely out of the EU by deliberately violating international law.
In every instance we adhered to the process explicitly laid out in the Constitution: The president has the constitutional duty to nominate; the Senate has the constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. It is written plainly in the Constitution that both presidents and senators swear an oath to uphold and defend. Is Biden saying that McConnell should ignore his sacred constitutional duty? Biden knew then, as he knows now, that there’s no constitutional duty, nor is there any precedent, either prohibiting or requiring Republicans to fill a vacancy. Nor is there any prohibition (as nearly every Democrat has already argued) against “rushing” such a nomination. Three Supreme Court justices have been confirmed with less than 45 days — including Ginsburg, who was nominated by a Democrat and confirmed by a Democrat-majority Senate. As my colleague Dan McLaughlin points out in meticulous historical detail, every real norm points to the Republicans’ filling the vacancy. See extra info on https://zetpress.com/.