Free Republic

Former National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NAIAD) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and a dozen other directors of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) appear not to have been legally appointed to their offices, according to a year-long investigation by House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans. Mr. Fauci and the others were to serve five-year terms, beginning not later than Dec. 13, 2021, but repeated requests since March 2022 to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra by the committee for documents verifying the appointments were delayed or ignored, according to GOP committee aides speaking on background. Because...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s Cabinet is nearly complete with the confirmation of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Monday. But the work of building his administration is just beginning, as Biden has hundreds of key presidential appointments to make to fill out the federal government. The process of building out a government, according to Paul Light, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is “nasty, brutish, and not at all short.” Biden has about 1,250 federal positions that require Senate confirmation, ranging from the head of the obscure Railroad Retirement Board to more urgent department positions such as assistant...

The Michigan Senate refused to confirm 13 individuals appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to various state boards and commissions on Wednesday. In a party-line vote, the Senate’s GOP majority defeated the nominations 19-14. On Jan. 13, Republican state Sen. Jim Stamas stated in a press release that Whitmer’s appointments would be rejected until the administration ended COVID lockdowns and permitted the state to reopen. “The governor is continuing punitive lockdowns and jeopardizing lives and livelihoods — while state government has largely been unaffected,” said Stamas, R-Midland. “People have suggested that the governor and her department heads not get paid until...

Today, President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key positions in his Administration:  Judge K. Michael Moore, of Florida, as Chairman of the United States Sentencing Commission.Judge Michael Moore serves as the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a post which he has held since 2014.   Judge Moore was appointed to the Southern District of Florida by President George H. W. Bush in 1992.  Before his appointment to the Federal bench, Judge Moore served as the Director of the United States Marshals Service and as...

An elderly gentleman called today to get an appointment to see a professional. Then, he called back and cancelled, saying they were afraid of going to downtown because of the violence. That is a huge factor that the media nor anyone else I know of is covering. Suddenly, all kinds of professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants, opthamologists, you name it) are losing a large number of appointments due to the FEAR the Democrats, media and their foot soldiers Burn Loot Murder bunch are bringing to the cities. This has to be STOPPED in its tracks.

Today, President Donald J. Trump announced the following appointments for the Executive Office of the President:Dan J. Scavino will serve as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications.  John C. Fleming, M.D., will serve as Assistant to the President for Planning and Implementation.  Kayleigh McEnany will serve as Assistant to the President and Press Secretary.Alyssa Farah will serve as Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Communications. Nicholas F. Luna will serve as Assistant to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations.

Not that we have word of any openings coming up on the Supreme Court in the immediate future, but it always pays to be prepared, right? Particularly when you have several justices in their septuagenarian or even octagenarian years and one of them regularly talks about packing up his RV and touring the country. But given the politically poisonous mood currently gripping both Congress and the nation, would President Trump really want to open that can of worms and introduce a new nominee if someone suddenly retired? Oh, baby… you know he’s champing at the bit. (The Hill) President Trump...

How far will changes at the beleaguered Illinois tollway go and how will that affect day-to-day operations? Illinois House lawmakers voted 100-6 Tuesday to end the terms of nine tollway directors appointed by departing Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner after concerns about "unethical behavior." The state Senate is expected to vote Wednesday, and the tollway directors could be sent packing shortly after Democratic Gov.-elect Pritzker takes office Monday. The agency can continue to run normally without a board in the short term, one expert said. "The tollway will be fine -- at this time of year they're working on long-term planning...

Recently, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Texas struck down the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a ObamaCare) on the grounds that since the law’s “tax” was currently at zero it was now unconstitutional. Fresh from whining about it on Sunday Today, moderator Chuck Todd grilled Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer during Meet the Press because he and other Democrats confirmed the Judge after President George W. Bush nominated him back in 2007. Todd became indignant when he pounced on Schumer with a quote from his former staffer Brian Fallon, who was having a conniption on Twitter because of the ruling: Let...

In less than two years, the Illinois tollway has hired six Republican insiders for high-level jobs that collectively pay nearly $916,000 a year, including a former elected official, political operatives and the relative of a state GOP leader. That troubles some government watchdogs who say they are concerned about favoritism in an agency with a history of patronage. Tollway officials said the agency is staffed with qualified professionals. "More and more the Illinois tollway is becoming the 'Who's Who' of Republican political hires," said Illinois Campaign for Political Reform Chairwoman Susan Garrett, a former Democratic state senator. Tollway spokesman Dan...

WASHINGTON—President Trump is expected to nominate a former operations officer who played a critical role in the 2011 raid targeting Osama bin Laden to head of the U.S. Special Operations Command as part of a series of military promotions in coming months, according to U.S. officials. The changes, which include commanders for the Middle East and Europe, will mark the administration’s largest imprint on military leadership thus far. The personnel moves stand to affect top officers overseeing conflicts in the Middle East, U.S. policy to counter Russia, the detention center on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as stealth operations globally.

It’s safe to say that the left is in full-blown panic mode over the Supreme Court vacancy and have already begun viciously targeting possible Trump pick and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett over her conservative values, her Catholic faith, and, most of all, her gender.  A Tuesday afternoon CNN Newsroom segment illustrated that with guest and Daily Beast contributing editor Erin Gloria Ryan asserting that, if President Trump selects a woman, they “should be known as the Aunt Lydia of the Supreme Court” in reference to a villain from liberal dystopian show The Handmaid’s Tale. In addition,...

Senate Republicans, frustrated by delaying tactics imposed by Democrats on President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, are on the verge of altering the Senate rules in order to speed up the process. GOP lawmakers told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that momentum is building for a change in the Senate rules that would shorten the time frame allowed for lawmakers to debate each nominee. One proposal by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would reinstate a temporary rules change made by Democrats in 2013 that reduced debate time from 30 hours to eight hours for most executive branch nominations and from 30...

Liberal journalists are worried about Neil Gorsuch. The October 16 issue of Time magazine fretted of the newly-minted conservative Supreme Court justice: “Does Justice Neil Gorsuch talk too much?" Writer Tessa Berenson touted liberal critics complaining about Gorsuch “ruffling some feathers.” It didn’t take long for the newest member to make his presence known on the Court. Gorsuch, a conservative judge nominated by President Trump and confirmed in April, had been sitting in his first oral argument last spring for just 10 minutes before he asked his first question. Over the next hour, he asked 21 more, posing more questions...

The Obama era of leftist courts is ending before our eyes. President Trump will be appointing twice as many judges as Obama. He may have the opportunity to appoint half of the federal judiciary. This is huge. Only one circuit court had a majority of Democrat judges when Obama was elected. By the time he left, he had packed nine of the thirteen circuit courts with his leftist activists. Obama inherited 54 openings for these appointments. Harry Reid "went nuclear' and cut Republican senators out of the approval process. Trump is now the beneficiary. He has compiled a magnificent list...

President Donald Trump will begin to leave his mark on the lower courts of the federal judiciary with 10 nominees named Monday, many of them judges still in their 40s. Shortly after 7:30 p.m. Monday, the White House formally announced Trump’s nomination of five judges to federal appellate courts and another five judges to lower federal courts. “They all appear to be bright, young, capable conservatives who promise to be outstanding judges; some are already judges,” John Malcolm, a legal scholar who oversees the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal earlier in the day.

Rebuilding and widening the mammoth Central Tri-State Tollway (I-294) is complicated enough given it's the system's most-used road, with up to 185,000 cars and trucks clogging it daily.Throw in a tangle of towns where officials either hate or love the project, plus churn on the tollway board, and the planned redo gets even gnarlier. The Illinois tollway intends to fix the road between 95th Street in the South Suburbs and Balmoral Avenue in Rosemont. There's no final design or budget yet, but a decision is expected soon.Improvements likely could include extra lanes and new interchanges -- exciting news for anyone...

While NBC News is usually in lock step with the agenda and talking points of the Democratic Party, on Monday, even the liberal analysts on the Today show were forced to acknowledge that Senate Democrats had “painted themselves in a corner” with their partisan push to filibuster Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Leading off a discussion on the topic with MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber and NBC political analyst Nicolle Wallace, co-host Savannah Guthrie asked: “What are the stakes here?” Melber replied: “The stakes are high. The Republicans are willing to do everything they need to do, including potentially...

With the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation vote for Judge Neil Gorsuch just days away and the possibly of Republicans nuking the filibuster looming, NBC’s Chuck Todd seemed as though he was in a near panic on Sunday’s Meet The Press. Besides his declarations of the GOP continuing the Senate’s decent down the “slippery slope” of removing the filibuster, Todd pestered Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the Senate to hold a vote for former President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. “There is clearly a debate and a fight about how Supreme Court justices are confirmed, how it was handled,”...

After expressing his disappointment earlier in the day that Democrats had been unable to “lay a glove” on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch during Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing, in MSNBC's 3 p.m. ET hour, anchor Brian Williams tried to assuage his fellow liberals by speculating that the conservative judge might shift left while on the high court. Talking to George Washington University Law School professor Jeffrey Rosen, Williams, known for his active fantasy life, imagined this left-wing dream scenario: “...a question we keep asking, perhaps just to keep things interesting, what is the chance that this nominee could be a...