Washington Post: Anyone Home in Trumpville?

By WaPo Editorial Board:

Of 549 key appointments, the White House has yet to name 515, according to a tracker by The Post and Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. Only 14 have been confirmed, and 20 are waiting. These key positions are among the roughly 1,200 total that require Senate confirmation and about 4,100 overall that the new administration must fill.

The incoming Trump team wasted no time in forcing Obama appointees overseas to hurry home and vacate their positions by Inauguration Day, but the new administration has moved with far less speed to find replacements. The only three ambassadors nominated so far are to China, Israel and the United Kingdom. Not a single assistant secretary of state has been named, much less confirmed.

The business of finding good people and steering them through the labyrinth of approval and security clearance is complex and difficult. But it also seems that the White House chaos is taking a toll. One can only imagine Mr. Tillerson’s frustration when his choice for deputy secretary of state, Elliott Abrams, was torpedoed by Mr. Trump because of an op-ed Mr. Abrams had written earlier. The New York Times reports that a top aide to Ben Carson, nominated to be housing and urban development secretary, was fired and escorted out of the department Feb. 15 after writings critical of Mr. Trump turned up in his vetting. The National Security Council, the nerve center for foreign and defense policy, lost its first Trump-appointed chief, Michael Flynn, after less than four weeks on the job, and when the position was offered to a retired vice admiral, Robert Harward, he reportedly turned it down in part because of the unpredictable behavior of the president. On Monday, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster was named to the post. Congressional Republicans, who have the legislative majority, are saying they are having difficulty finding someone to ask about priorities for the Trump administration.

The Full Story (February 20, 2017)

Washington Post: Amid Russia Scrutiny, Trump Associates Received Informal Ukraine Policy Proposal

By Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman:

The Times reported that Cohen said he left the proposal in a sealed envelope in the office of then-national security adviser Michael T. Flynn while visiting Trump in the White House. The meeting took place days before Flynn’s resignation last week following a report in The Washington Post that he had misled Vice President Pence about his discussions in December of election-related sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Cohen, speaking with The Post on Sunday, acknowledged that the meeting took place and that he had left with the peace proposal in hand.

But Cohen said he did not take the envelope to the White House and did not discuss it with anyone. He called suggestions to the contrary “fake news.”

“I acknowledge that the brief meeting took place, but emphatically deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn,” Cohen said. He said he told the Ukrainian official that he could send the proposal to Flynn by writing him at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The Times stood by its story Sunday.

“Mr. Cohen told The Times in no uncertain terms that he delivered the Ukraine proposal to Michael Flynn’s office at the White House. Mr. Sater told the Times that Mr. Cohen had told him the same thing,” Matt Purdy, a deputy managing editor, said in a statement to The Post.

The Times reported that the proposal discussed at last month’s meeting included a plan to require the withdrawal of Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine. Then Ukrainian voters would decide in a referendum whether Crimea, the territory Russia seized in 2014, would be leased to Russia for a 50-year or a 100-year term. Artemenko said Russian leaders supported his proposal, the Times reported.

In Ukraine, Artemenko belongs to a bloc that opposes the nation’s current president, Petro O. Poroshenko. It is a group whose efforts were previously aided by Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who had advised Ukraine’s previous pro-Vladimir Putin president until his ouster amid public protests in 2014 — a development that sparked the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Manafort told The Post that he had “no role” in Artemenko’s initiative.

The Full Story (February 20, 2017)

See also: Cohen Shifts Into Damage Control by Talking Points Memo

Truth-out: Senate Confirms Austerity Champion Congressman as Influential White House Staffer

By Sam Knight:

Mulvaney's appointment to lead the influential OMB has raised questions about some of President Trump's key campaign promises, given the congressman's well-documented opinions on the welfare state.

Though Trump repeatedly vowed not to cut Medicare or Social Security, in Mulvaney, he has appointed a budget chief who once declared the programs unconstitutional.

During his confirmation hearing, Mulvaney said that he would not be urging the President to argue that the two programs violate the constitution. He nonetheless would not back off past calls to cut benefits paid out by Medicare and Social Security.

"It seems to me that Rep. Mulvaney is way, way out of touch with what the American people want and what President Trump campaigned on," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said at Mulvaney's confirmation hearing.

Sanders noted he was not only opposed to Mulvaney's appointment on ideological grounds, but that his very nomination highlighted problems with "the integrity and the honesty" of Trump.

The Full Story (February 17, 2017)

Think Progress: Trump Knew Flynn Talked Sanctions With Russia, But Didn’t Tell Pence

By Aaron Rupar:

Citing an unnamed source, Fox reports that “Trump was given a comprehensive summary of the contents of his former-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls with the Russian ambassador prior to Flynn’s resignation.” White House officials haven’t told a consistent story about whether Flynn resigned or was fired.

* * *

Fox’s report indicates Trump knew Flynn was meddling in the Obama administration’s foreign policy but kept him on staff and gave him access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets anyway — without telling Pence.

During a news conference Thursday, Trump characterized Flynn’s departure as a firing. He said he dismissed Flynn not because of what he did, but because he didn’t initially tell Pence the truth about his communications with Russia.

“I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence,” Trump said. But the Fox report indicates Trump also did not tell Pence the truth.

The Full Story (February 17, 2017)

Washington Post: Scott Pruitt, Longtime Adversary of EPA, Confirmed to Lead the Agency

By Brady Dennis:

Scott Pruitt woke up Friday morning as Oklahoma’s attorney general, a post he had used for six years to repeatedly sue the Environmental Protection Agency for its efforts to regulate mercury, smog and other forms of pollution. By day’s end, he had been sworn in as the agency’s new leader, setting off a struggle over what the EPA will become in the Trump era.

Pruitt begins what is likely to be a controversial tenure with a clear set of goals. He has been outspoken in his view, widely shared by Republicans, that the EPA zealously overstepped its legal authority under President Barack Obama, saddling the fossil-fuel industry with unnecessary and onerous regulations.

* * *

“Scott Pruitt as administrator of the EPA likely means a full-scale assault on the protections that Americans have enjoyed for clean air, clean water and a healthy climate,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in an interview. “For environmental groups, it means we’re in for the fight of our lives for the next four years.”

The Full Story (February 17, 2017)

Washington Post: Flynn in FBI Interview Denied Discussing Sanctions With Russian Ambassador

By Sari Horwitz and Adam Entous:

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn denied to FBI agents in an interview last month that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States before President Trump took office, contradicting the contents of intercepted communications collected by intelligence agencies, current and former U.S. officials said.

The Jan. 24 interview potentially puts Flynn in legal jeopardy. Lying to the FBI is a felony offense. But several officials said it is unclear whether prosecutors would attempt to bring a case, in part because Flynn may parse the definition of the word “sanctions.” He also followed his denial to the FBI by saying he couldn’t recall all of the conversation, officials said.

* * *

Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak following Trump’s election and denied for weeks that the December conversation involved sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia in response to its purported meddling in the U.S. election. Flynn’s denial to the FBI was similar to what he had told Trump’s advisers, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Full Story (February 16, 2017)

Washington Post: Andrew Puzder Withdraws Labor Nomination, Throwing White House Into More Turmoil

By Ed O'Keefe and Jonnelle Marte:

Andrew Puzder, President Trump’s labor secretary nominee, withdrew from consideration Wednesday amid growing resistance from Senate Republicans centered primarily on Puzder’s past employment of an undocumented housekeeper.

The collapse of Puzder’s nomination threw the White House into further turmoil just two days after the resignation of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, amid revelations that ­Flynn had spoken repeatedly, and possibly illegally, with the Russian ambassador last year about lifting U.S. sanctions.

Puzder’s fate amplified the deteriorating relationship between the White House and Capitol Hill, where bipartisan support grew Wednesday for expanded investigations into ties between Trump, his presidential campaign and Russian officials.

The White House, including Trump, offered no comment on Puzder’s withdrawal nor any indication of whom the president would nominate in the restaurant executive’s place. Puzder issued a statement saying he was “honored” to have been nominated. “While I won’t be serving in the administration, I fully support the President and his highly qualified team,” he said.

A top Trump campaign supporter, Puzder had attracted widespread criticism regarding his business record and personal background. He was set to testify Thursday at a confirmation hearing that had been delayed for weeks to allow for the completion of an ethics review of his vast personal wealth.


But it was Puzder’s hiring of an undocumented worker for domestic work — as well as his support for more liberalized immigration policies — that pushed several Senate Republicans away, they said.

The Full Story (February 15, 2017)

Talking Points Memo: Trump And The White House Aren’t On The Same Page On Flynn’s Ouster

By Esme Cribb:

On Wednesday, Trump launched a broadside against one of his favorite targets: the media.

He called Flynn “a wonderful man” during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blamed the press for treating Flynn “so badly.”

“I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it the fake media, in many cases, and I think it is really a sad thing he was treated so badly,” the President said. “I think that it is very, very unfair what’s happened to General Flynn.”

Trump’s comments stood in stark contrast to his spokesman’s explanation for Flynn’s departure. On Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump asked Flynn to resign “based on a trust issue” rather than any media treatment.

“The President was very concerned that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others,” Spicer said. “The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the President to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.”

The Full Story (February 15, 2017)

Talking Points Memo: Flynn Doesn’t Matter. This Is About Trump.

By Josh Marshall:

Step back for a second and look at this. While certainties are hard to come by, it seems clear that Russia broke into computer networks and selectively released private emails to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump. When President Obama took a series of actions to punish the Russian government for this interference, President-Elect Trump’s top foreign policy advisor made a series of calls to the Russian government’s representative in the United States to ask him to have his government refrain from retaliation and suggested that the punishments could be lifted once the new government was sworn in. Then he lied about the calls both publicly and apparently within the White House. What has gotten lost in this discussion is that these questionable calls were aimed at blunting the punishment meted out for the election interference that helped Donald Trump become President. This is mind-boggling.

Consider another point.

Through the course of the campaign, transition and presidency, three top Trump advisors and staffers have had to resign because of issues tied to Russia. Paul Manafort, Carter Page and now Michael Flynn. Page might arguably be termed a secondary figure. Manafort ran Trump’s campaign and Flynn was his top foreign policy advisor for a year. The one common denominator between all these events, all these men is one person: Donald Trump.

As I said above, this has all been happening before our eyes, the train of inexplicable actions, the unaccountable ties and monetary connections, the willful, almost inexplicable need to make the case for Vladimir Putin even when the President knows the suspicion he’s under. When I was writing my first post on this topic more than 6 months ago, I had the uncanny feeling of finding what I was writing impossible to believe as I wrote it. And yet, I would go through the list of unexplained occurrences and actions, clear business and political connections, sycophantic support and more and realize there was too much evidence to ignore. It was fantastical and yet in plain sight.

The Full Story (February 15, 2017)

[Special] New York Times: Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

By Michael S. Schmidt:

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.

Such documents, Mr. Chaffetz wrote, would “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede” the F.B.I.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. It was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, replying only: “I agree he is a good guy.”

The Full Story (May 16, 2017)

Washington Post: Justice Department Warned White House That Flynn Could be Vulnerable to Russian Blackmail, Officials Say

By Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Philip Rucker:

The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that ­Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the ­Russian diplomat, had told Vice ­President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the ­information.

Flynn resigned Monday night in the wake of revelations about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn’s resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that “we’ve been working on this for weeks.”

The current and former officials said that although they believed that Pence was misled about the contents of Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador, they couldn’t rule out that Flynn was acting with the knowledge of others in the transition.

The Full Story (February 13, 2017)

Think Progress: Michael Flynn is Still National Security Adviser. Why?

By Ned Resnikoff:

As of Monday, February 13, Michael Flynn is still President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser.

Flynn remains in this position even though the Washington Post revealed on February 9 that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with a Russian diplomat prior to Trump’s inauguration — something Flynn, other administration officials, and even Vice President Mike Pence have all personally denied.

Now the White House is no longer denying it. In fact, after the Post published its report, an administration source told the press that Pence had “based his comments on his conversation with Gen. Flynn.”

* * *

Nonetheless, Michael Flynn remains the National Security Adviser. The president has yet to even issue a public defense or condemnation of his chief national security aide. Multiple news outlets published articles Monday about Flynn’s “tenuous” position and the “growing pressure” he faces, but thus far he remains an employee of the Trump administration.

The Full Story (February 13, 2017)

Washington Post: Senate Confirms Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary

By Max Ehrenfreund:

The Senate confirmed Steven T. Mnuchin as treasury secretary Monday evening, putting an end to a contentious and protracted debate while adding another former banker to President Trump's roster of advisers.

Mnuchin ran a bank, OneWest, that foreclosed on tens of thousands of Americans amid the financial crisis, and Democrats had argued that he would not represent the financial interests of ordinary Americans in office. Mnuchin and his allies said OneWest's foreclosures were largely in accordance with federal guidelines.

As treasury secretary, Mnuchin will be responsible for managing the nation's day-to-day finances and will have to carry out a broad order from his new boss to review the rules imposed on the financial sector through the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Also, he'll oversee a report to Congress on whether foreign countries are manipulating their currencies, due in April.

Beyond these immediate tasks, Mnuchin will confront broader questions, assuming an influential position in a new administration that has not clearly signaled how the president will approach the economy. The agenda that Republican lawmakers and several of Trump's advisers favor — tax relief, deregulation and limited economic intervention by the federal government — is in some respects at odds with Trump's populist and protectionist rhetoric, especially on whether the government will impose new barriers to global trade.

Mnuchin, a Hollywood financier and a former partner at Goldman Sachs, will join several other former bankers with senior positions in Trump's administration, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn. The White House's reliance on Wall Street in staffing the administration has drawn criticism from Democrats.

“For someone who pledged to drain the swamp and advocate for working people, President Trump’s nomination of Mr. Mnuchin to be Secretary of the Treasury amounts to another broken promise,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the former vice-presidential candidate, said in a statement. “His complicity in the 2008 financial crisis raises serious doubts.”

The Full Story (February 13, 2017)

Washington Post: As Flynn Falls Under Growing Pressure Over Russia Contacts, Trump Remains Silent

By Philip Rucker, Adam Entous and Ed O'Keefe:

Over the weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., the president privately voiced frustration with Flynn and the political baggage he is hanging on the White House, according to two people familiar with his comments.

Spicer denied that Trump criticized Flynn to anyone at the club and called assertions to the contrary “fake news.”

People close to Flynn said he feels confident in his position despite the swirling controversy. He flew to Florida this weekend with the president along with other National Security Council officials to engage with his Japanese counterparts during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit.

Furthermore, people in Trump’s orbit cautioned that the president was unlikely to fire Flynn because doing so would amount to an admission of guilt and misjudgment in the face of media scrutiny and would also demonstrate chaos early in his presidency.

The Full Story (February 12, 2017)

CBS: Michael Flynn Might Have Violated Law When He had Call about Russian Sanctions

CBS/Associated Press with Jeff Pegues, Pat Milton and Steven Portnoy:

Investigators believe that President Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia in a phone call with a Russian official, law enforcement sources told CBS News on Friday.

Multiple sources told CBS News’ Jeff Pegues and Pat Milton that the conversation occurred before Mr. Trump took office and, if true, could be a violation of protocol and could be viewed as a violation of the law.

A law enforcement source who has been briefed on the issue told Milton that the discussion dealt with the relationship going forward with Russia including the sanctions. Any discussions about sanctions by a private citizen, the source said, may create conflict and confusion around U.S. national security interests.

The sources told CBS News that investigators learned of the discussions through continuing and ongoing electronic surveillance of Russian officials as well as known and suspected intelligence operatives in the U.S.

The Full Story (February 10, 2017)

Talking Points Memo: What About the Other Calls?

By Josh Marshall:

Trump and Flynn received repeated security briefings during the final months of the campaign. Reports indicate that they received at least broad accounts of Russian hacking targeting Hillary Clinton. Seemingly during this period Flynn was also conducting backchannel communications with Russia’s ambassador to the US. (What the Times said specifically was that they dated back prior to the US election on November 8th. Conceivably, given the vagueness of the sentence, they started on November 6th. But the Times sources certainly seem to be suggesting something that began considerably earlier.)

Did the subject of the hacking come up in those conversations with Kislyak?

Another question comes up. There were numerous instance during the campaign in which discredited and clearly false Russian propaganda ended up in statements or interviews from top Trump campaign leaders, including but not limited to Flynn. A number came from Manafort too.

At the time I thought it was most likely that they picked these up through alt-right Twitter streams and Breitbart, both of which were ready channels for Russian propaganda from sources like RT and Sputniknews. If that was what you were immersed in you’d likely hear these fake stories reported as news. I still think that’s the most likely explanation. But perhaps it’s not the only one.

When we look at the big picture, these pre-election back channel communications seem considerably more significant than the post-election ones.

The Full Story (February 10, 2017)

Washington Post: Jared Kushner Proves to be a Shadow Diplomat on U.S.-Mexico Talks

By Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Joshua Partlow:

Although Kushner, 36, has no traditional foreign policy experience, he has become the primary point of contact for presidents, ministers and ambassadors from more than two dozen countries, helping lay the groundwork for agreements, according to U.S. and foreign officials with knowledge of the contacts. He has had extensive talks with many of these diplomats, including in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, the officials said.

Kushner’s back-channel communications with Mexico — the full extent of which has not been previously reported — reveal him to be almost a shadow secretary of state, operating outside the boundaries of the State Department or the National Security Council.

Videgaray had come to the White House on Jan. 25 for a full day of private meetings, but it was Kushner who gave him a heads-up that Trump would deliver a speech that afternoon at the Department of Homeland Security where he would sign an executive order on his signature border wall.

And it was Kushner who led Videgaray into the Oval Office for an unscheduled audience with the president, where together they made their case to Trump for a more measured discussion of Mexico.

The president agreed.

The Full Story (February 9, 2017)

Washington Post: National Security Adviser Flynn Discussed Sanctions with Russian Ambassador, Despite Denials, Officials Say

By Greg Miller, Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima:

National security adviser Michael Flynn privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were interpreted by some senior U.S. officials as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.

Flynn on Wednesday denied that he had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. Asked in an interview whether he had ever done so, he twice said, “No.”

On Thursday, Flynn, through his spokesman, backed away from the denial. The spokesman said Flynn “indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

Officials said this week that the FBI is continuing to examine Flynn’s communications with Kislyak. Several officials emphasized that while sanctions were discussed, they did not see evidence that Flynn had an intent to convey an explicit promise to take action after the inauguration.

The Full Story (February 9, 2017)

New York Times: Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office

By Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo:

Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

The Full Story (February 9, 2017)

L.A. Times: Betsy DeVos Squeaks Through as Education Secretary After Pence Casts First-Ever Tie-Breaking Vote

By Joy Resmovits:

Phone calls jammed congressional switchboards. Two Republican senators defected. Democrats held a last-ditch, 24-hour Senate debate in hope of shaking loose one additional vote.

But the effort was not enough to prevent Betsy DeVos from becoming U.S. secretary of Education.

DeVos squeaked through the confirmation process Tuesday with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Mike Pence and the participation of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose confirmation vote for attorney general was scheduled after DeVos’ so he could vote for her.

It was the first time a vice president’s tie-breaking vote was needed to confirm a presidential Cabinet appointment.

DeVos, a Michigan-based Republican activist, former state party chairwoman and fundraiser, spent her career campaigning for school vouchers, which send tax money to families to help them pay for private and often religious schools. As the wife of the billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, she contributed millions of dollars to candidates who supported vouchers, including several of the senators who voted to confirm her.

She is the first secretary of Education since the department was created in 1979 to have neither attended nor sent her children to public school, the Education Week Research Center found.

The Full Story (February 7, 2017)