Long read but an interesting take on it, these firings have crippled the boards of many of these orgs; Trump is playing 5D chess:
The President’s enemies are beginning to awaken to the formidable possibility that
Trump knows exactly what he is doing and is setting traps for them to fall into. The New York Times covered the story yesterday under the headline, “
Trump’s Firings Could Bring Court Cases That Expand His Power.” (The article even mentioned our beloved Ms. Fong.)
Over the past several days, the President has “abruptly fired dozens of officials,” if not hundreds of them. The Times, at least, is beginning to detect a figure of rationality emerging from the fog of administrative war. It claims to have uncovered
a pattern among Trump’s firings of powerful federal actors who thought they were safe. These included the 17 aforementioned Inspector Generals (including high-heeled rebel Fong), plus cemented-in officials from agencies like the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Note that all four categories include officials appointed by the President and
confirmed by the Senate.
Astonishingly, Trump’s mass firings of top-level commissioners from the NLRB, the Privacy Board, and the EEOC, were thought to be illegal and impossible. But even more historic and astonishing, Trump has fired so many it leaves those agencies without quora. They are dead in the water. These now-paralyzed agencies literally
cannot undermine Trump’s agenda, even if they wanted to, for the practical reason that there simply aren’t enough commissioners left to vote on anything. They’re
frozen.
Strikingly, none of the “abruptly fired” officials have yet sued the federal government—even though Trump is trampling on all sorts of precedents, customs, and statutes. Ms. Fong merely staged a bizarre mini-protest rather than assert her legal rights. All this legal restraint is especially strange considering that in at least one agency, the NLRB, federal law
expressly limits the President’s ability to fire commissioners except in very limited circumstances.
The Times and the fired officials smelled a Trump trap.
“The prospect of getting dragged into court,” an alarmed Times observed, “may be exactly what Mr. Trump’s lawyers are hoping for.” What terrified and dismayed the far-left Times and its progressive allies was the ghastly prospect that “any rulings in the president’s favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power to control the federal government.”
In other words:
Trump is hoping that they’ll sue him.
by Jeff Childers
floppingaces.net
