Trump’s executive order creates a new category of federal employees involved in policymaking—Schedule F—for the personnel in agencies that write federal rules and regulations.
The federal government has political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president or agency head as well as career employees who cannot be removed without a lengthy civil service process.
The executive order gives federal agencies more flexibility and oversight over career employees in critical positions that affect policy. The new Schedule F will apply to federal employees serving in confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating positions that don’t change when a presidential transition occurs.
The goal is to ensure that federal employees responsible for making policy decisions are held accountable, administration officials say.
The executive order also will make it easier for agency heads to address poor performance by policymaking employees. That’s intended to address the long-standing complaint—even among federal employees—that poorly performing federal workers aren’t held accountable.
Accountability is a major concern. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey found that only one-third of respondents said proper steps are taken to address poor performers who cannot or will not improve.
Under the executive order, Cabinet secretaries and federal agency chiefs would make a determination which employees have a role in writing policy. The agency heads then would submit the list to the Office of Personnel Management for review.
The new law requires the IRS to show probable cause that smaller transactions were made in order to evade financial reporting requirements.
At a time when Congress has had a tough time agreeing to any major legislation, the Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled House voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation.
“This bipartisan, bicameral bill represents years of hard work and consensus building,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement after its Senate passage. “It’s a big first step toward strengthening taxpayer protections and turning the IRS into the customer service organization it ought to be.”
The new law authorized the IRS internal investigators to communicate with whistleblowers who are, during the processing of their claims, reporting bad behavior within the agency if doing so would be helpful to the investigation. The internal investigators, usually the inspector general, would also notify the whistleblowers on the status of the investigation, under the new law.
The law further extends anti-retaliation provisions to the IRS whistleblowers currently afforded to whistleblowers in other agencies.
It requires the IRS to submit to Congress a plan to make the agency more efficient by modernizing technology, and to enhance cybersecurity to protect taxpayer data.
The law further includes a provision to help prevent identity theft. It also expands to all taxpayers an existing program that previously only allowed victims of tax ID theft to obtain a personal identification number (PIN) that better secures their identity.
The Border Patrol's Laredo sector catches about 120 illegal immigrants a day in urban areas.
Fake families have been a problem at various border check points. Under current law, it’s difficult for authorities to check whether a group is an actual family.
Garza recalls a time he processed a man and woman who crossed the border and said they were husband and wife.
Garza later saw the woman clinging to and laughing with another man. He said to the first man, “I thought that was your wife.”
The man who had professed to be the woman’s husband said the other man had threatened him. Garza had no means to prove otherwise.
The anecdote illustrates how Border Patrol agents often suspect that individuals are pretending to be a family. U.S. policy restricts family members from being detained separately.
Children often pose bigger questions, Ramos said.
“I used to be the juvenile coordinator and family coordinator. I can tell you that a lot of our agents, when they process a family, you get a gut feeling that that’s not a family,” Ramos said. “The problem with that is you just don’t know if that kid was really a family member, was it a borrowed kid, a recycled kid, or was it a stolen kid? You just don’t know. We talk about our immigration laws.”
“I encountered a case where there was a 84-year-old woman with a 3-year-old, claiming to be the mother,” Ramos said. “I said, ‘Ma’am, you’re 84 years old and that’s your daughter?’ She’s like, ‘She’s not really my daughter, she’s my granddaughter. She doesn’t know that. Let’s keep it that way.’”
“How do I know that’s true? How do I know she didn’t steal this little, tender-age girl that has no recollection of who the mom is?”
Attorney General William Barr decides to enforce the text of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Today, around 1 in 10 illegal aliens arriving at the southern border claims credible fear, up from around 1 in 100 prior to 2013, according to the White House.
Fewer than 10% of those whose credible fear claim was deemed sufficient in 2018 ultimately were approved for asylum.
However, the Barr decision doesn’t affect the family units coming to the United States through Mexico, only individuals. A federal court decision prevents minors from being held by the government for more than 20 days.
“[Barr’s decision] will deter some abuse of the asylum process,” Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told The Daily Signal, adding:
It won’t affect the prevention of holding children more than 20 days. The largest amount of asylum abuse comes from family units, about 60%. But, I don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We support anything to discourage asylum abuse.
The 1876 electoral showdown was different from those of 1800 and 1824, when no candidate had a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
The Transition Integrity Project presents one scenario in which, after the Republican candidate wins the Electoral College vote, but the Democrat wins the popular vote, states go rogue and send two different sets of votes to the Electoral College.
That’s almost identical to the 1876 clash between Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic standard-bearer Samuel Tilden, which led to a political battle almost up until Inauguration Day, which back then was on March 4, rather than on Jan. 20.
Then as now, there was a Democrat-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate.
For those who recall the 2000 presidential race—Republican George W. Bush versus Democrat Al Gore—in which the Supreme Court settled the dispute between them over Florida’s electoral votes, the assumption might be that a postelection dispute would be settled in court. But the 2000 battle was a historical anomaly, as three other disputed outcomes were decided in Congress.
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In 1876, the country was barely a decade removed from the Civil War and seemed to begin the year with the goodwill of patriotically celebrating the centennial of the Declaration of Independence.
However, growing Northern fatigue with Reconstruction in the South and a string of scandals in the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, a Republican, presented an opportunity for the Democrats to recapture the White House.
On Nov. 7, 1876, Tilden, the governor of New York, won the national popular vote 4,288,546 to 4,034,311 votes for Hayes, the governor of Ohio, and what appeared at first to be a margin of 184 for Tilden to 165 for Hayes in the Electoral College.
Most historians today think it’s difficult to know who really won the popular vote because of the mass voter suppression in the South of freed slaves, as Democrats used lynching and riots to scare blacks away from voting.
Aware of reports of Democrats voting twice and shredding other ballots, Republican Party operative Daniel Sickles telegraphed the Republican governors of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana to say, “With your state sure for Hayes, he is elected. Hold your state.” South Carolina Gov. Daniel Chamberlain was first to respond on a telegraph, “All right. South Carolina is for Hayes. Need more troops.”
Three days after the election, Nov. 10, Grant told Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, commanding federal troops in Florida and Louisiana: “Either party can afford to be disappointed by the result, but the country cannot afford to have the result tainted by suspicion of illegal or false returns.”
Hayes carried Oregon. But, to stir mischief, Oregon’s Democratic governor, La Fayette Grover, named one elector for Tilden after a Republican elector was disqualified. He used a DNC legal opinion as a rational.
The 1876 dispute was different from those of 1800 and 1824, when no candidate had a majority of votes in the Electoral College.
However, in 1876, the question wasn’t what candidate had a majority of the Electoral College vote, but about states providing competing returns, or parallel pictures of who won the states. So, it wasn’t just up to the House.
The Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-run House established a 15-member commission with five House members, five senators, and five U.S. Supreme Court justices. With a Republican edge, the commission decided each disputed state by a 8-7 vote in favor of Hayes.
The result still had to be certified by both houses of Congress, and the Democratic House wasn’t going to give up easily, facing immense pressure from constituents.
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On the night of Feb. 26, 1877, four Southern Democrats—Rep. John Y. Brown, newspaper publisher Henry Watterson of Kentucky, Sen. J.B. Gordon of Georgia, and Rep. W. M. Levy of Louisiana—met with four Ohio Republicans—Reps. James Garfield (a future president) and Charles Foster, Sen. Stanley Matthews, and U.S. Senator-elect John Sherman—at the Wormley House Hotel in Washington to negotiate to stop the House Democrats’ delaying tactics to block the 15-member bipartisan commission’s recommendation before Inauguration Day.
They agreed to end Reconstruction, appointing a Southern Democrat to the Hayes Cabinet, as well as provide federal money for Southern infrastructure projects. Hayes also agreed to serve only one term.
The Justice Department’s internal watchdog is investigating FBI leakers, as legal experts say revelations about gifts in an inspector general’s report this week raise new legal and ethical issues.
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General noted that “dozens” of FBI agents had contact with the news media, and many were taking sports tickets, golf outings, and other gifts from reporters to whom they were leaking unauthorized information about a criminal investigation.
The FBI’s Office of Integrity and Compliance discourages the acceptance by agents of anything of value, said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director.
“Accepting something from someone who clearly expects something back has the whiff of a quid pro quo,” Hosko told The Daily Signal.
“Any agreement for something of value in exchange for information—particularly, information related to an investigation—would constitute a corrupt relationship and warrants the strongest sanction,” he added.
