Originally published at: Trump Pushes Out Remaining Members of Bipartisan Election Commission Ahead of Midterms - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This article first appeared at ProPublica. President Donald Trump has pushed out the three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, leaving the bipartisan agency in limbo as he rushes to remake how elections are run before this year’s midterms. Trump fired Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks, the Democrats on the commission, multiple sources familiar…
First and Sako Gone but never forgotten!
There is hope
An Encouraging Encounter With Real Americans
Today i want to give you some encouraging news about the state of the heartland. Well, actually New Jersey, but you got a problem with that?
But I did something kind of different yesterday — which has prevented me from producing a usual analytical Substack post — and it was actually a very uplifting experience.
So hi, I’m Paul Krugman. What i did yesterday was participate in jury selection in Mercer County, New Jersey, where i am still a legal resident.
That is something I’ve done before: back in 2020 I spent 16 weeks on a grand jury. It was done remotely, because it was the depths of Covid.
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The Bullshitter is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
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As I understand things, FEC can’t take action without a quorum, meaning 4 commissioners, No more than three can come from one party. But/so, president could submit 3 Rs and one D (in name only) and senate might confirm them all (it would be ugly). Short of that, I don’t know what other trick he can pull, but I’m convinced he’s going to try.
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I don’t know why this isn’t obvious to anyone but the property of independence is inseverable from almost all of these commissions and regulatory bodies. If these appendages of congress were going to have these types of authorities, they must be insulated from political whims and self-serving control. The fact that the supreme court says they can’t have that independence means that they can’t exist AT ALL. This is all hogwash and any rules established by a fraudulent organization like these needs to be struck down and the commissions disbanded.
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The burning question was not answered in either the piece or comments, so I looked it up (the question being, of course, whether Trumpy can just do all this on his own). Under the law, the answer is no (depending on how supine the Senate is at any given moment - right now they are not feeling too tractable).
“The Help America Vote Act specifies that four commissioners are nominated by the President on recommendations from the majority and minority leadership in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. Once confirmed by the full Senate, commissioners may serve two consecutive terms and no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.”
So he may not be able to do it. May.