Biden’s plan to save the ‘deep state’

The Biden administration is bracing for a second Trump term by rolling out a rule that would complicate Donald Trump’s pledge to fire tens of thousands of federal workers if he wins in November. The new rule is also a huge gift to the public-sector unions that Joe Biden needs firmly in his corner.

The latest edict, issued by the US Office of Personnel Management, is an almost direct response to Trump’s stated plans to purge the bureaucracy. That’s not how the OPM is framing it, of course; instead, OPM deputy director Rob Shriver said it “is about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs, no matter their personal political beliefs.”

Those political beliefs caused never-ending ire in the Trump years, of course. One political appointee in the Trump administration relayed a story to The Spectator about how when his boss, a cabinet secretary, needed to have his color printer ink restored during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was stymied by career employees, who told him that the office needed to be vacated for ten days before they felt safe showing up to work. Despite several stages of escalation, the most they were willing to do was turn on a different printer on another level in the building. “There’s a career mindset that they were here before you and will outlast you,” he said.

While this new rule would complicate Trump’s proposed plan — dubbed “Schedule F” — it would ultimately be more of a road bump than a full-blown road closure. It can be overturned almost immediately, since it does not carry the weight of actual legislation. 

“Schedule F is an important tool for holding the federal bureaucracy accountable. It is functionally impossible to dismiss a tenured federal bureaucrat for poor performance or misconduct,” James Sherk told The Spectator.

Sherk served on Trump’s domestic policy council and authored the expansive executive order, signed by Trump and immediately rescinded by Biden, that would allow an incoming Trump administration to ax thousands of federal workers who they see as opposing their policies — a well-documented phenomenon that dogged the Trump team during his first term.

“During the Trump administration a lot of career employees acted like they — not elected officials — set policy. Many bureaucrats refused to enforce laws they disliked or slow-walked implementing policies they opposed. Such behavior undermines democracy. Voters — through their elected representatives — must set policy, not unelected bureaucrats,” Sherk said. 

-Matthew Foldi

On our radar

UKRAINE TO NATO? Secretary of state Antony Blinken said Thursday that Ukraine will join NATO after the conclusion of its war with Russia, the administration’s strongest statement yet on Ukraine’s potential inclusion in the international organization. 

BLUMENTHAL BLUNDER Senator Richard Blumenthal drew ire from some Democrats for saying that Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor should consider retiring before the end of Biden’s first term: “Graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included,” Blumenthal said. 

MELANIA, GAY ICON Former first lady Melania Trump will return to the campaign trail for her husband, Donald Trump, as she is set to hold an event with the Log Cabin Republicans. 

Hillary attacks voters… again

President Joe Biden received some good news Thursday when the No Labels political organization announced that it would not field a candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The centrist group’s failure to lure a moderate politician of stature — à la Joe Manchin or Chris Christie — is music to Democratic strategists’ ears, who feared that a challenge to Biden from the middle would doom his campaign. Yet for all of the reasons to celebrate, Democrats have reason to worry, especially with Hillary Clinton still hanging around.

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show on Monday, the former secretary of state was asked by Jimmy Fallon about voters who are unhappy with a Trump versus Biden rematch.  “Get over yourself,” Clinton responded. “Those are the two choices.” To this, she added that the president is “old and effective and compassionate and has a heart and really cares about people.” Trump, on the other hand, is “old and has been charged with ninety-one felonies.”

For Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh, Clinton’s remarks are evidence of the former presidential candidate’s ability to be “tonally off-sync.” Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, also chimed in, saying that “the Democratic Party in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, have a ‘street rep’ for preaching at, and lecturing, the voters. This doesn’t help that at all. It’s like the ‘basket of deplorables.’ It fits a reputation you have, which does not help you with voters.”

–Juan P. Villasmil

Biden up in Pennsylvania, poll claims

As a Pennsylvania native, I am accustomed to the color purple. The county I live in is as hillbilly as they come, yet State College, in which Penn State University is located, is twenty minutes “over the mountain,” and their blue politics mixes with (read: controls) our red way of life (we have to have our vehicles emissions-tested, for goodness’ sake!), to the vexation of many a small-town resident.  

That said, a new Franklin & Marshall College poll has me shook: according to the Hill, “President Biden leads former president Trump by ten percentage points in a hypothetical 2024 general election match-up in a survey of registered Pennsylvania voters released Thursday.”

This info is coming from a state that elected John Fetterman as senator, after the poor guy suffered a stroke and was barely able to speak. Still, Fetterman has since reportedly separated from his wife and simultaneously come to his senses, so there is hope. Plus, we backwoodsy folk tend to have a mind of our own, and the poll further found, “Third-party and independent candidates seemed to be slowing some of Biden’s momentum in Pennsylvania.”

–Teresa Mull

Kamala’s airball

March Madness offers a great chance for the nation’s politicians to attempt to seem relatable, picking their local teams to win it all, even when doing so defies logic. Vice President Kamala Harris has had a fairly decent run of it so far, earning major points for picking Oakland to upset Kentucky early on in the men’s tournament (even though the school is in the politically useful Michigan as opposed to her native Bay Area). But her wildly inaccurate remarks about women’s college basketball are blowing up just as the tournaments come to a close.

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark is the animus behind women’s college basketball taking the nation by storm this year — but according to our vice president, in a Thursday interview with New York local news, “women’s teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022.”

That would be a damning indictment of sexism in college athletics — to say nothing of the recent uptick in male athletes switching teams to dominate women in sports à la Lia Thomas. There’s only one problem: Kamala is glaringly wrong.

In the “history lesson” she offered, she botched the key claim: “We love March Madness and even just now allowing the women to have brackets and what that does to encourage people to talk about the women’s teams, to watch them.”

The irony deepens when you note that Harris’s husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, boasted about his Women’s NCAA March Madness bracket in 2021 — a full year before his wife posits they existed. And Harris responded to his post at the time — did she forget? Or perhaps the staffer who sent it has since been catapulted through the notorious Kamala revolving door…

–Cockburn

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