Free Republic

Mick Mulvaney may be getting sued over his appointment to serve as interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but he certainly is not letting it faze him. The Office of Management and Budget Office director told CFPB staffers Monday to ignore communications from Leandra English, who was named by former CFPB Director Richard Cordray as his replacement. English filed a lawsuit against President Trump’s appointment of Mulvaney as acting head of the agency, saying he does not have the authority due to provisions in the Dodd Frank Act that delineate the line of succession. The administration on the...

President Trump is picking another fight with the Washington swamp by naming his own man as temporary boss of a federal agency conservatives hate. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, has been a total disaster as run by the previous Administrations pick,” he tweeted Saturday. “Financial Institutions have been devastated and unable to properly serve the public. We will bring it back to life!” the tweet said. Leadership of the bureau — the brainchild of liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — was put in play Friday by the resignation of director Richard Cordray. Before he left, Cordray named his...

Many conservatives would scoff at the idea that Attorney Jeff Sessions is President Trump’s most effective cabinet member. They would cite his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation (probably the right call), his refusal to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton (probably the right call), and his failure to remember various obscure meetings with Russians, etc. (unfortunate). But those who pay close attention to policy know that the Sessions Justice Department is advancing important conservative causes and undoing key liberal policies of the last administration. In fact, as the Washington Post puts it, he is reshaping...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released a statement marking Monday Transgender Day of Remembrance. Tillerson’s statement condemned the violence against transgender individuals, saying that they “should not be subjected to violence or discrimination.” “Transgender individuals and their advocates, along with lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex persons, are facing increasing physical attacks and arbitrary arrests in many parts of the world,” Tillerson wrote. “Often these attacks are perpetrated by government officials, undermining the rule of law.” Transgender Day of Remembrance has been commemorated on Nov. 20 for nearly 20 years, and the White House began participating in 2012, according to GLAAD....

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security was praised Wednesday by a slew of officials from former President George W. Bush’s administration who advocated for amnesty and were members of the failed ‘Never Trump’ movement. (snip) In a pre-hearing questionnaire obtained by Breitbart News, Nielsen explained how she would be “ready to work with Congress” on a plan to give amnesty to the nearly 800,000 DACA illegal aliens in the U.S.

In multiple embassies around the world, particularly those staffed entirely by career Foreign Service officers, no portrait of President Trump or Vice-President Pence has been hung. Up until last week, the swamp had an excuse – there was no official portrait and the swamp refused to go to the trouble to find unofficial ones. But it’s not just the entrances to embassies where it seems the 2016 election never happened. All throughout the government, Obama-holdovers who rabidly oppose President Trump and his policies still hold positions of extraordinary power. The swamp is alive and well. Consider the National Security...

<p>Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who will accompany President Trump on his trip to Asia, didn’t exactly get a ringing endorsement from the commander in chief – who said “we’ll see” if the top diplomat serves out the duration term.</p>

President Trump doubled down on his call for the Justice Department to investigate Democrats on Friday after a former Democratic National Committee chair acknowledged the party tipped the scales in Hilary Clinton's favor during last year's primary. Trump told reporters outside the White House that he is “disappointed” in the Justice Department for not investigating Clinton, reiterating that he believes the agency should do something. “I’m really not involved with the Justice Department. I’d like to let it run itself, but honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats," he said. “They should be looking at Podesta and all of...

President Trump made it official on Thursday that embattled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will be out of a job next month. Trump tapped David Kautter, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, to serve as interim IRS commissioner, beginning Nov. 13. Koskinen’s term ends on Nov. 12. He was eligible for reappointment, but Koskinen is fiercely opposed by congressional Republicans. Members of the House Freedom Caucus attempted but failed to impeach Koskinen last year, largely over his handling of the scandal involving former IRS official Lois Lerner. Prior to Koskinen’s tenure, Lerner was accused targeting conservative groups who applied...

President Trump said on Tuesday that his choice for drug czar is dropping out of consideration after reports that the nominee pushed legislation that undermined efforts to combat the opioid epidemic in the United States. In a Twitter post on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump said that Representative Tom Marino “is withdrawing his name” for the White House job of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He said Mr. Marino, a Republican from Pennsylvania, was a “fine man and a great Congressman!” Mr. Trump was asked about the future of Mr. Marino’s post on Monday after a joint...

Energy Secretary Rick Perry has a vision for developing fully mobile, hot tub-sized nuclear power plants that could become the latest piece in the Energy Department's innovation and grid resiliency push. Perry brought up the idea while addressing a National Clean Energy Week conference late last month. He used it as an example of what the Trump administration means when it talks about energy "innovation" as part of its energy dominance agenda. Perry called them "small modular reactors." But the version of the technology he described would function more like a nuclear battery than a conventional, water-cooled nuclear power plant....

The leader of the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system unexpectedly stepped down from her position effective Saturday, leaving three top VA positions unfilled by permanent undersecretaries. Dr. Poonam Alaigh, the acting undersecretary for health since May, sent a message to VA employees last week informing them she was resigning for family reasons. “I have made the difficult decision to step down,” Alaigh wrote. “I want you to know that it has been my greatest honor to serve [VA Secretary David Shulkin], each one of you and all of our veterans. As I prepare to now leave Washington, I...

Make no mistake: Bobby Jindal is far and away the best choice to replace Tom Price as secretary of Health and Human Services. Dan McLaughlin at NRO and Steve Berman at The Resurgent both made the case earlier this week for why President Trump would be wise to pick Jindal, whose health-care policy chops and general seriousness about good governance are undisputed. Berman notes that, among all the other candidates floated recently by Axios and Politico, “Jindal is the best qualified person to run HHS, to craft health care policy, to shepherd legislation through Congress, and to speak intelligently on...

Tillerson is a subtle, dignified man working in an administration that does not particularly welcome individuals bragging about their accomplishments. Perhaps that is why the administration’s detractors have found him so easy to attack. But the fact is that Tillerson has conducted a significant amount of critical outreach and diplomatic maneuvering — particularly within Asia. Tillerson has traveled to the region three times, and already twice to China. Senior leaders and Cabinet members have backed these efforts as well, with the likes of Vice President Pence, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others reassuring allies in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere...

In a blog post titled “Red Tape Rollback: Trump Least-Regulatory President Since Reagan,” author Clyde Wayne Crews outlines three main ways that Trump is cutting the red tape. First, Trump issued an executive order in January, requiring agencies to cut two rules for every new regulation adopted. He also said that net new regulatory costs were to be zero. Trump also issued a Reorganization Executive Order that requires the Office of Management and Budget to submit a plan aimed at reducing the size of federal agencies. By Sept. 30, the Federal Register tallied 45,678 pages, down 32% from a year...

WASHINGTON — Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said Tuesday he is refusing to advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominees to the Pentagon until he is satisfied the administration is communicating its plans for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Outside a tense committee hearing on Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, McCain told Defense News that because the administration has not been open with Congress, “we’ve been holding nominations … from the Pentagon to fill in those Pentagon jobs.” The disclosure came little more than a month after Trump...

Just over the wire on Fox Business. Will post more when it hits the news.

His "Price" was too high. Tom Price, secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, is leaving the Trump administration amid a furor over his taking more than two dozen costly private plane trips instead of less-expensive commercial flights. The White House said in a statement that President Donald Trump intends to tap Don Wright to serve as acting secretary. Wright currently serves as deputy assistant secretary for Health and director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Price's announced departure Friday from the administration came a day after he said he would reimburse taxpayers for just...

President Trump said he’s “not happy” with Tom Price, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, over his use of costly private charter flights and wouldn’t rule out firing him. Asked by reporters during an impromptu news conference Wednesday on the South Lawn whether he would fire Price, Trump replied, “We’ll see.” “I was looking into it and I will look into it. I will tell you personally, I’m not happy about it,” Trump said as he prepared to leave the White House to tout his tax reform plan in Indiana. “I am not happy about it....

Good news for college men: You’re welcome again on campus. On Friday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ripped up the Obama administration’s one-sided rules on how colleges and universities handle accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. The rules, imposed in 2011, were so stacked against the accused — usually young men — that dozens of innocent male students were branded as rapists, kicked out of school and robbed of future job opportunities. Those with sufficient money and fortitude managed to get their names cleared in real courts of law — where rules of evidence, due process and reasonable standards of proof...