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Trump seems to wave the white flag on his US attorneys gambit

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For months, President Donald Trump has used unconventional tactics to install loyalists as top federal prosecutors across the country, and battled challenges to their authority. Now, he appears to be conceding defeat.

The Trump administration has signaled in recent days that it may refocus its efforts on trying to eliminate a Senate procedural tool used to block U.S. attorney nominees, rather than continuing to challenge the disqualifications in court. The move comes after New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba resigned from her post following a court ruling upholding her disqualification along with a handful of other U.S. attorneys who have been stripped of their positions by federal judges.

On Friday, Delaware U.S. Attorney Julianne Murray also left her post, citing the Habba ruling.

The administration’s tactics with U.S. attorneys — bypassing the Senate or sidestepping federal judges to keep unvetted prosecutors in place — are a crucial component of Trump’s effort to deploy the Justice Department against his perceived enemies. He has relied on loyalist U.S. attorneys to pursue what critics call baldly political investigations and prosecutions, including those against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

On Thursday, Trump called the so-called “blue slip” process, in which home-state senators can veto judicial or U.S. attorney nominees, a “scam.” It’s his latest attack after Trump has spent months pressuring Senate Republicans to review the practice.

“‘Blue Slips’ are making it impossible to get great Republican Judges and U.S. Attorneys approved to serve in any state where there is even a single Democrat Senator,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “So unfair to Republicans, and not Constitutional.” He directed Senate Majority Leader John Thune “to get something done, ideally the termination of Blue Slips.”

Thune quickly rejected that call, and Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley has indicated no interest in scrapping the practice. Grassley also blamed the administration for failing to advance more U.S. attorney nominees, saying he has been “hamstrung waiting for background investigations and other paperwork from the administration.”

Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson referred to Trump’s public statements.

Earlier in the week, Trump appeared to acknowledge that the court rulings disqualifying his U.S. attorneys will ultimately force them out of their offices, even though many have remained there following the rulings.

Trump-installed federal prosecutors in the Los Angeles area, Nevada and in the Eastern District of Virginia, for example, have continued working in those offices despite being deemed disqualified. Trump, however, seemed to predict that may not continue.

“We have about seven U.S. attorneys who are not going to be able to keep their jobs much longer because of the blue slip,” Trump told reporters Monday.

Next stop: SCOTUS?

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said the administration appears now to have only two options: continue to try to install temporary U.S. attorneys, only to repeatedly have those choices disqualified by courts, or attempt the traditional process of Senate confirmation.

Tobias said he suspects the administration doesn’t want the U.S. attorney gambit to reach the Supreme Court. “I think the last thing they want is to have the Supreme Court say no, right? Because then the game is over.”

That way, he said, “they can continue to do what they’ve been doing, and that is avoiding advice and consent, which is in the Constitution, which they’ve done in more than half the districts, and continue to play games with the system.”

But other legal experts said it wasn’t clear how the Supreme Court might rule. Nina Mendelson, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an expert on acting officials, said she could envision the court leaning either way.

“If [the administration] does appeal, the Supreme Court may, on the one hand, be interested in preserving the Senate’s constitutional function of advice and consent and thus narrowly interpret the President’s authority to appoint acting US Attorneys,” she wrote in an email. “On the other hand, the Supreme Court has, in a series of cases, expressed its concern for presidential control and flexibility, which might prompt it to more generously interpret the President’s power.”

Though the administration can appeal the rulings disqualifying the prosecutors, it hasn’t in two key instances. In the Habba case, the Justice Department has said publicly that it will pursue an appeal, but asked the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals for an extension to decide how it will proceed. New Jersey’s Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, have urged the White House to work with them to select Habba’s replacement.

In the case involving Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in late November that it would pursue an “immediate”appeal — but it hasn’t.

Instead, it kept Halligan in place and attempted, but twice failed, to re-indict James. On Thursday, in a sign the White House may be adopting a more traditional approach to installing U.S. attorneys, the administration began seeking Senate confirmation for Halligan by submitting her questionnaire to the Judiciary Committee.

A spokesperson for the committee, however, noted that Halligan doesn’t have blue slips from Virginia’s senators, and “nominees without blue slips don’t have the votes to advance out of committee or get confirmed on the Senate floor.”

The administration is appealing disqualification rulings in the Los Angeles area and Nevada. In the Northern District of New York, a federal judge appears poised to disqualifyJohn Sarcone III, the Trump-aligned U.S. attorney whose office is pursuing a separate investigation of James.

Despite Trump’s griping about having his choices blocked, he is on pace to match the Biden administration for the number of U.S. attorneys confirmed during its first year. To date, Trump has seen 13 U.S. attorneys confirmed by the Senate, up from just two in September, and 18 more are expected to be confirmed next week, bringing the total to 31.

“ATTN WH; SEND MORE NOMS,” Grassley wrote on social media on Thursday.

Legal experts said the uptick in Senate-confirmed top federal prosecutors is a welcome development, even if they aren’t in some of the highest-impact districts.

“That’s promising for the system,” Tobias said.

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Congress

Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’

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House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.

Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.

House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.

GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.

“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own. I think that’s very unfortunate.”

The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.

Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.

Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.

“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”

Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”

He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.

Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”

“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”

Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”

“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”

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Congress

Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday

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The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.

House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.

That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.

But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.

Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.

He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.

Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.

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Congress

Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown

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Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.

House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.

The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.

This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.

Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.

Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.

That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.

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