Congress
Pat Leahy has a warning for his former colleagues about Trump’s US attorney gambit
Pat Leahy saw it coming.
In the throes of a 2007 scandal that seems quaint by modern standards, the then-Senate Judiciary chair issued a warning to all presidents: If you repeatedly sidestep the Senate to jam political loyalists into temporary U.S. attorney posts, you are violating the law. He was particularly concerned about “double dipping” — an effort by presidents to circumvent legal time limits on unconfirmed U.S. attorneys by creatively reshuffling personnel.
“It is not designed or intended to be used repeatedly for the same vacancy,” Leahy said at the time.
Fast forward to 2025: President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi are seeking to shatter that check on presidential power, finding new ways to carry out the “double dipping” that Leahy warned against:
- In Washington, D.C., after Trump’s initial pick Ed Martin failed to win Senate confirmation, Trump simply appointed a second interim prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, to a successive 120-day slot.
- In northern New York and Los Angeles, Bondi maneuvered to put Trump’s expiring U.S. attorney picks into “acting” roles that would give them another 210 days on the job without Senate confirmation.
- And in New Jersey, the Justice Department went nuclear after district court judges appointed a career prosecutor to replace Trump’s favored pick, Alina Habba, as temporary U.S. attorney — a power the courts have had since the Civil War. An aggressive effort to keep Habba in place has already disrupted a handful of criminal cases in New Jersey.
With a largely compliant, Republican-led Congress, Trump has faced minimal pushback. But the campaign presages battles to come, particularly in blue states where Democratic senators still wield significant sway over who can be confirmed as permanent U.S. attorneys.
It’s the latest expression of Trump’s effort to shrug off traditional constraints on presidential power and relegate Congress to bystander or cheerleader. And it was a concern that animated Congress’ decision to pass the 2007 law checking the president’s power to unilaterally install U.S. attorneys in the first place.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the moves by Trump and Bondi to reshuffle U.S. attorneys are rooted in a pair of federal laws creating “separate mechanisms” to appoint different types of temporary office-holders. Those statutes, however, don’t speak to whether presidents and attorneys general can deploy those mechanisms in back-to-back succession.
Blue Light News caught up with Leahy, who’s living a peaceful retirement in Vermont, and asked about recent developments in the U.S. attorney saga. His main message: The Senate needs to stand up for itself and its power of “advice and consent” for all officers of the federal government.
“No senator should have to go back home and have people say why the heck did you let this person come in as a U.S. attorney,” the former Democratic senator said. “Republicans and Democrats agreed with me on that, that we had to have some say in the matter. We can’t tell the president who to appoint. But we can certainly tell them who not to appoint for our states.”
Habba’s case, in particular, may test whether that longstanding history can outweigh the gravitational force of a president intent on rejecting it.
“The Senate seems to have forgotten that it’s an independent body,” Leahy lamented, “and if it fails to act that way, the Senate suffers but the country suffers.”
Congress
Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent
President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.
One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.
“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.
A Blue Light News call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.
The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”
Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.
The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.
The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.
“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”
Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.
He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,
Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.
Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.
“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.
Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.
Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”
Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.
Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.
“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”
Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.
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