How’s It Going? – “I don’t think it went well for him,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday (per The Hill). That, despite mostly kit-glove treatment from Republican members for President Trump’s HHS nominee. RFK Jr. appears today before the Senate Health Committee.
Trump Blames DEI for Crash – Less than 15 hours after an American Airlines flight carrying 64 passengers and crew from Wichita, Kansas, collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River as it approached Reagan National Airport, President Trump was ready to call out cause of the tragic accident.
“We don’t know what caused this crash, but we have some pretty strong opinions,” he told reporters in his first appearance in the White House briefing room since his return to office.
“I changed the Obama standards from mediocre at best, to extraordinary,” during his first administration, Trump said, referring to standards for hiring air traffic controllers. After Trump left office in 2021, “Biden changed them back to lower than before.” But among Trump’s myriad executive orders since returning to the White House last week was an EO that would once again raise those standards, he said.
How?
Trump was referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs for all federal agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration “eliminated” by one of his first EOs. Such DEI policies, Trump suggested, allowed the FAA to hire air traffic controllers with hearing, vision and even psychological disabilities.
New administrator … Meanwhile, Trump has named Chris Rocheleau as interim FAA administrator, according to The Wall Street Journal, filling a vacancy opened when Mike Whitaker, who had served in the position for less than a year, stepped down just prior to Trump’s inauguration.
History lesson … The FAA has dealt with air traffic control staffing issues for over 43 years. Barely half a year into his first term, the president for whom Reagan National Airport is named fired air traffic controllers en masse over a dispute with their labor union. Prior to the dispute, air traffic controllers in the US were hired in staggered years. But with the need to hire replacements for 11,345 striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization members all at once in August 1981 came the end of the staggered retirements.
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More Hearings – Two more Trump White House nominees, like RFK Jr., face perhaps the toughest Senate hearings since Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Defense secretary last week. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is nominated to become President Trump’s National Intelligence director, so she appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, while Kash Patel, nominee to become FBI director, answers to the Judiciary Committee.
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Chaos is Working – The Trump White House’s executive order that would have clawed back up to $2 trillion in funding for programs the administration does not like, since rescinded following a federal judge’s temporary suspension issued Tuesday, has set Washington back on its heels. But the Democratic Party appears to be on top of Trump’s unconstitutional executive order, despite all the ensuing chaos.
“It’s called impoundment, and it is illegal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition Thursday. The president cannot single out certain allocations passed by Congress, though it has been tried in the past, she said. But instead of fighting it in court, the Trump administration is trying to stoke confusion.
“His administration has made it clear they don’t think the (impoundment) law should be there,” Murray said. “So instead of fighting it in court, what they’re doing is saying ‘we’re just going to – we don’t believe it’s a good law, so we’re not going to do it.’”
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Menendez Gets 11 Years – Bob Menendez, Democratic senator for New Jersey from 2006 to 2024, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his conviction last year on bribery, fraud and illegal foreign-agent charges, The Wall Street Journal reports. The 71-year-old career politician told a packed New York federal courtroom Wednesday; “I have made more than my share of mistakes and bad decisions, but I believe in my half-century of public service I have done far more good than bad.” --TL
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WEDNESDAY 1/29/25
UPDATE – President Trump has reversed his controversial order that froze federal funding assistance for programs already approved by Congress in a memo released Wednesday, signed by acting Office of Management and Budget Director Matthew Vaeth. The reversal came after behind-the-scenes pushback from congressional Republicans, according to The Hill. (Scroll down to "Frozen funds.")
Trump Offers Federal Employees Buyouts – The Trump White House offered a buyout for nearly all federal employees, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. The art of this deal is that career bureaucrats will get paid through September if they resign now. President Trump is looking to replace non-partisan federal bureaucrats, many with years to decades of experience, with workers who agree with his vision for the country.
Frozen funds … The buyout offer comes hours after Judge Loren AliKhan, a Washington-based federal judge appointed by President Biden, issued an emergency administrative stay to block President Trump’s temporary freeze of about $3 trillion worth of federal funds, grants and loan disbursements that was to take effect at 5 pm Eastern time Tuesday. The judge’s order blocks the freeze until Monday, February 3. The Democracy Fund had filed a lawsuit to stop the executive order.
As with the federal buyouts, the president appears to lack the authority for such moves.
Trump’s federal funding freeze was aimed specifically at DEI programs, “woke gender identity” and the Green New Deal according to The New York Times, though opponents feared it would block state health agencies from Medicaid reimbursement. State officials believed pre-school community health centers, food for low-income families, housing assistance and disaster relief were at-risk, according to the report.
Just prior to Judge AliKhan’s ruling, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller appeared on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper and said the order would not affect any government services, entitlements or individual benefits, but was directed at left-wing chiefs of non-governmental agencies (NGOs) who were funneling such funds into immigration and “child trafficking.”
“Either Donald Trump gets political control over this government and ends waste, abuse and fraud on the American people,” Miller told Tapper, “or, we let bureaucrats autopilot federal spending.”
What does this mean? … Every Republican and Democrat knew going into last November’s presidential election that a second Trump term would mean 1.) A better-organized White House full of cabinet secretaries and aids happy to carry out whatever policies Trump thought reasonable; and 2.) Far greater presidential authority at the expense of the legislative and judiciary branches.
All anyone can remember from the weeks after Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 is his “Muslim ban” of travel into the US by certain foreign nationals.
In The Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire writes that the strategy for a flurry of Trump EOs was determined at an early January gathering at Mar-a-Lago, where incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles suggested staggering the orders out over the first few weeks in office.
A unanimous source who had attended the meeting said Trump responded: “No. I want to sign as many as possible as soon as we show up. Day One.”
Trump was a very green political novice when he became president eight years ago, but he learned a lot about the way the federal government runs from his first administration’s seasoned Washington aides, advisors and cabinet secretaries – the ones who were to keep Trump’s authoritarian tendencies in-check.
Last year, he won his non-consecutive re-election by promising to blow up the federal government, and now with a flailing, leaderless Democratic Party warning of a constitutional crisis, Trump prevails. His political victory is certain even if just a couple of these executive orders survive federal courts.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa