That unlocked something for me. Also there seemed to be access to him. So, I just thought maybe we can get in and get something interesting. One of the main ideas that drew me in was the potential of reasonable discourse in American politics, and whether you can bring people together, rather than drive them apart as a political strategy. He seemed to be someone who could cut across these sharp lines in American political life. I thought maybe I wanted to continue exploring this idea. With all that he was confronting and dealing with in this campaign, and all the people that he had to answer to and satisfy in different ways, that he would have the bandwidth for this project, and I think that I really expected that to be much more difficult.
He was pretty patient with our process, and open, and Chasten, too. We expect our politicians to be extremely guarded. Pete is guarded and I think there are parts of himself that he needs to protect. I felt this was a radical transparency. Is that built-in storyline a relief as a director?
You would think it would be easier to edit, but we got so lost. Campaign narratives are useful: you win, or you lose — there is never a draw. That is helpful but it can also be a trap because in a campaign narrative you get so focused on the politics. We eventually located more of a story where it deserved to be, which is in the relationship. So, a lot of the campaign narrative, which is important and drives the story, got pushed a little further back and some of it got taken away.
We cut for a year because we just needed the perspective of getting through the election, to see what mattered. What's Coming to Disney Plus in November Everything Coming to Netflix in November For the latest news, follow us on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram.
Band have since apologised in a post on social media. The Queen was not present at the annual event because she has a sprained back. Actor played Peter Parker in two films between and Internet television network Netflix has taken a commanding lead in the streaming video market and investors have bid up the company's stock as a result. But is Netflix stock a buy right now? Finally, non-confirmed political officials like Matthew Whitaker are rare as acting cabinet secretaries.
From other research I am conducting, they appear much more common in lower-level positions covered by the Vacancies Act. The Vacancies Act covers hundreds more positions than the fifteen cabinet secretaries. The Environmental Protection Agency is rare among federal agencies in publicly posting service dates for all its leaders confirmed, recess, acting in three top Senate-confirmed positions—the administrator, deputy administrator, and general counsel.
For all three positions, there have been more acting than confirmed officials. There have also been periods in the two lower-level positions when no one held the title, even in an acting capacity. Table 5 breaks down the types of acting officials in these three positions, by Senate-confirmed officials, non-confirmed political officials, and non-confirmed senior careerists.
Most of the careerists who stepped up as interim general counsel were the first assistant to the job, the principal deputy general counsel—which is not a political position. As with acting cabinet secretaries, non-Senate confirmed political officials are less common than senior careerists in important acting roles in the EPA. Table 6 provides the total days of tenure for confirmed and acting officials in these three positions, broken down by administration, and rounded to the nearest five-day mark.
If these three positions are representative of the administrative state, acting officials play a critical role in modern governance. Acting officials rarely garner adulation. Changes in acting officials in this administration have generated particular concern. In late June, when President Trump pondered whether to strike Iran for downing a drone, both the outgoing acting secretary of defense Shanahan and the incoming acting secretary Esper attended a critical White House meeting.
In recent months, the leadership ranks throughout the Department of Homeland Security have been shuffled, and shuffled again. In these two primary national security departments, as of July 19, there is currently no confirmed secretary of defense, deputy secretary of defense, secretary of homeland security, deputy secretary of homeland security, and administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among other important positions. Notwithstanding these critiques, the traditional appointments process takes time, increasingly so in recent administrations.
For those nominations that the Senate did confirm sometimes on the second or third nomination , the confirmation process took two months under President Regan but increased to four months under President Obama. Federal agencies have to operate in the meantime. Acting leaders may bring expertise at the cost of political accountability. One criticism of acting officials is that they are unqualified for their posts because they were not properly vetted by the Senate. Yet, acting officials often possess the stability, knowledge, and management necessary for their posts.
For many positions, such as the general counsel of the EPA, first assistants—the default for acting service under the Vacancies Act—are drawn from the senior career ranks. But even acting leaders plucked from the political corps may lead effectively. In addition, under divided government, recent administrations have relied on skilled political acting officials to take charge of important functions, old and new.
The conventional dislike of acting officials at all levels of government sits in some tension with repeated calls for cuts in agency positions requiring Senate confirmation. Commentators and scholars, myself included, who have made these calls want Congress to use its authority under the Appointments Clause to allow the president or the head of the agency to choose lower-level officials instead.
Congress, however, resists relinquishing its confirmation power—though it did agree to its elimination for about positions in under the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act. In some sense, the frequent use of acting officials—at least in lower-level positions—accomplishes functionally what Congress refuses to do formally. If we want the federal government to function since confirmation delays do not appear to be going away anytime soon , acting officials are necessary to fill the gaps of Senate-confirmed leadership.
Federal legislation addressing vacancies in Senate-confirmed agency positions dates back to The terms have shifted over the centuries, with the Vacancies Act establishing the latest procedures for filling vacancies in these positions. In light of policy and legal concerns, some changes to the Act are warranted to foster more accountability and transparency and to ease some leadership disruptions.
I flag four changes here. First, Congress should resolve some of the arguable ambiguities of the Vacancies Act—specifically, whether it applies to firings the statute neither bars nor allows firings explicitly , when it can displace agency-specific successions statutes for instance, at the CFPB and DOJ , and whether first assistants can be named after the vacancy occurs as was done at U.
Citizenship and Immigration Services. Litigation has been brought recently over the first two issues and presumably will soon be brought on the last , but litigation often is not the ideal mechanism to resolve such uncertainty. Second, while the Vacancies Act clearly details who can serve as an acting official and for how long, those mandates do not vary by the level of the position. For the most important jobs, say an agency head and the next level down, the permitted pool of acting officials should be smaller and the time limits somewhat shorter.
Specifically, the third category under the Act—senior agency workers—should be restricted to senior employees who have served at the agency for a much longer period, such as five years, rather than the current day minimum in the year before the vacancy. With a five-year mandate, any staff members almost certainly will be drawn from the career, and not the political, ranks of the agency, and so will possess critical agency expertise.
This reform also would decrease the incentive for presidents to use the Vacancies Act as an end-run around the traditional appointments process, and improve agency governance. For instance, it would have prevented Whitaker from serving as acting head of the Department of Justice but would have allowed Adam Szubin, a long-time careerist, to serve as acting secretary of the treasury at the start of this administration.
Relatedly, the pool of acting leaders should shrink as the length of the vacancy increases for lower-level positions. For instance, while the first nomination is pending, the usual categories—first assistants, other confirmed officials, and senior agency workers—should be able to take on the acting title. But if the first nominee fails to get confirmed, the acting leader should continue serving only if she is the first assistant before the vacancy occurs or a senior careerist who has worked in the agency for at least five years.
This would give presidents a wider pool of political officials, who presumably are more aligned with White House priorities than careerists, at the start of a vacancy in lower-level jobs, but as the vacancy drags on, presidents would have to rely on deputies or high-level civil servants. In addition, any acting official no matter the level who is allowed to continue serving while nominated should have to step down if her nomination is withdrawn, returned, or voted down.
Third, we need more vetting of acting officials, particularly those who lead agencies for more than a few days. The Vacancies Act mandates without penalty agencies to report the name of any acting official under the statute to the GAO.
Generally, presidents will invoke executive privilege in matters relating to national security, the military and foreign affairs, for example to protect the names of spies and informants. And Jefferson is considered the first president to establish the precedent of only releasing parts of subpoenaed material; when he was subpoenaed by his political rival Chief Justice John Marshall to present documents for the treason trial of his former Vice President Aaron Burr, who was accused of plotting to carve out the Western territories to form an independent republic, Jefferson initially refused to turn over the requested materials.
President Dwight Eisenhower invoked executive privilege more than 40 times. Nixon had ever made such an extreme assertion of executive privilege in peacetime. Though plenty of others have invoked the idea, Nixon remains to this day the president most closely associated with the concept.
In fact, the only Supreme Court case on executive privilege is United States v. Nixon , which came about when he claimed executive privilege during the Watergate investigation to get out of a grand jury subpoena and avoid handing over recordings of his conversations in the White House. What is the limit to its use and how will it be enforced are questions that continue to be debated.
Many scholars worried about that problem as soon as U. So presidents have been very reluctant to assert executive privilege, and then the courts have tried to duck the issue, and they can.
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