EFTA00046247
From:The Washington Post<email@washingtonpost.com>
To:cedge@bop.gov
Subject:The Daily 202: Trump nominating Scalia's son to lead Labor is the latest salvo in his war on the administrative state
Sent:Fri, 19 Jul 2019 14:49:11 +0000
If you're having trouble reading this, **click here**. Share: Listen to The Big Idea # Trump nominating Scalia’s son to lead Labor is the latest salvo in his war on the administrative state President Trump speaks to the media as he arrives on Air Force One in Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) BY JAMES HOHMANN with Emily Davies THE BIG IDEA: President Trump has soured on hiring generals, whom he stocked his administration with at the beginning. Remember John Kelly, Jim Mattis, Michael Flynn and H.R. McMaster. But the billionaire’s fondness has grown for stocking the Cabinet with lobbyists, lawyers and executives from the corporate class. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was an oil industry lobbyist. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler was a coal lobbyist. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was a pharmaceutical executive. Personnel is policy, and these men are pursuing for Trump what Steve Bannon famously called “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” EFTA00046248 Trump’s announcement last night that he will nominate Eugene Scalia to replace Alex Acosta as the next labor secretary offers the freshest, and maybe even starkest, example. Scalia, the son of the late Antonin Scalia, has spent most of his career at a white-shoe law firm helping Corporate America thwart federal regulations and fighting various organizing efforts by employees. The 55-year-old is active in the Federalist Society and a partner in the D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. His biography on the law firm’s website touts legal work he’s done on behalf of Ford Motor, Steve Wynn’s casinos, UBS, UPS, MetLife, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, the Business Roundtable, plus the main telecommunications and retail industry trade associations. His bio also outlines some of the fights he’s waged, often successfully, against regulations or enforcement actions by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Labor Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. In a 2012 profile, the Wall Street Journal called Scalia “one of the industry's go-to guys for challenging financial regulations.” In a review of his record, today’s New York Times highlights three other cases: “In 2006, he helped Walmart triumph in a prominent fight against a Maryland law that would have required companies with more than 10,000 workers to either spend at least 8 percent of their payroll costs on health care, or pay into a state Medicaid fund. He argued that allowing individual states to establish health care mandates would create chaos and that the federal government should address the issue of rising health care costs. Mr. Scalia also defended Boeing in a politically charged case. A union representing the company’s workers in Washington State argued that Boeing had violated labor law by threatening to open another assembly plant in South Carolina unless the EFTA00046249 union agreed to a no-strike clause in its contract.” -- The impetus for Acosta’s resignation last Friday was his 2008 plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein, but another huge factor was that corporate chieftains didn’t think the secretary was being aggressive enough in trying to roll back protections for their workers. It has been widely reported that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who confessed last year while speaking to Wall Street bankers that as a member of Congress he did not meet with lobbyists unless they gave him money, chewed out Acosta during a meeting earlier this year and subsequently sought to oust him. Eugene Scalia talks with then-Sen. Kit Bond before Scalia's confirmation hearing to be solicitor of the Labor Department in 2001. (Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images) -- Scalia will almost certainly be confirmed easily by the Republican-controlled Senate. In 2002, however, George W. Bush used a recess appointment to subvert the opposition of the Senate and install Scalia as acting solicitor at the Labor Department. The Democratic-controlled chamber blocked Scalia’s nomination because of his outspoken antagonism toward unions and opposition of the ergonomics rule, which protected workers from repetitive stress injuries on the job. It had been a priority for Bill Clinton during his final year in office. “Ergonomic regulation will force companies to give more rest periods, slow the pace of work and then hire more workers (read: dues-paying members) to maintain current levels of production,” Scalia wrote in an op-ed for the Journal in 2000. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a veteran of that battle, lamented last night that “Trump has again chosen someone who has proven to put corporate interests over those of worker rights.” He added that “union members who believed candidate Trump EFTA00046250 when he campaigned as pro-worker should feel betrayed.” The younger Scalia, who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and studied at the University of Virginia as an undergraduate, also worked as a special assistant to Bill Barr during his previous tour of duty as attorney general under George H.W. Bush. And he wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan’s education secretary William Bennett. -- Meanwhile, Trump’s pending nominee for secretary of defense, Army Secretary Mark Esper, spent years as a top lobbyist for Raytheon, which received $18.1 billion in unclassified defense contracts last year. He was elevated to acting secretary last month after Patrick Shanahan, a former top Boeing executive, withdrew after details emerged about a contentious divorce, including an incident in which his son attacked his ex-wife with a baseball bat. At his confirmation hearing this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Esper declined to extend a 24-month ethics commitment he signed upon joining the administration in 2017. That means that, after November, he will no longer need to steer clear of decisions involving Raytheon. Esper also declined to commit to not working for a private defense company for the four years after he leaves the Pentagon. (The Center for Responsive Politics has a lengthy list of lobbyists who got sub-Cabinet jobs in the Trump administration.) -- There are daily proof points that the former lobbyists in the administration are advancing Trump’s quest to eviscerate the administrative state. Just last night, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency quietly rejected a petition by environmental and public health groups to ban a widely used pesticide that has been linked to neurological damage in children, even though a federal court said last year there was “no justification” for such a decision. EFTA00046251 “The Obama administration had proposed in 2015 to revoke all uses of chlorpyrifos after EPA scientists determined that existing evidence did not meet the agency’s threshold of a ‘reasonable certainty of no harm,’ given exposure levels in Americans’ food supply and drinking water,” Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin report. “EPA staffers cited studies of families exposed to it in apartment buildings and agricultural communities that found lower birth weight and reduced IQ, among other effects. But before the ban was finalized, in March 2017, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt rejected the agency’s own analysis, saying the agency would reassess the science underpinning that decision. … That action, welcomed by the pesticide industry and Agriculture Department officials who had questioned the EPA’s findings, led to the latest court fight.” -- Part of the battle to deconstruct the administrative state is a war of attrition. Two research agencies at the Agriculture Department are uprooting from D.C. to Kansas City this fall, for instance, but many staffers have decided to give up their jobs rather than move, prompting concerns of hollowed-out offices unable to adequately fund or inform agricultural science. “About two-thirds of the USDA employees declined their reassignments,” Ben Guarino reports. “Ninety-nine of 171 employees at the Economic Research Service, an influential federal statistical agency, will not move. At the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which manages a $1.7 billion portfolio in scientific funding, 151 of 224 employees declined to relocate. … Jack Payne, University of Florida’s vice president for agriculture and natural resources, warned that the hemorrhage of employees will devastate ERS and NIFA. ‘This is the brain drain we all feared, possibly a destruction of the agencies,’ Payne said.” -- The Trump administration has been chipping away at post-9/11 programs designed to prevent terrorism in the United States. A new Los Angeles Times investigation found that multiple programs under the EFTA00046252 Department of Homeland Security, aimed at detecting and preventing terrorism, have been cut back or dismantled entirely without rigorous risk assessments. -- As a result of retirements and a federal hiring freeze, the number of compliance safety and health officers tasked with conducting workplace inspections at OSHA – which is part of the Labor Department – has been falling since Trump took office, despite public pledges from Acosta that he’d boost the number of such officers on the beat. CONTENT FROM RETIREMENT SECURITY COALITION Multiemployer pensions are in crisis. Congress must act. Americans' retirements are at risk. Congress must come together to protect multiemployer pensions for our families, friends and neighbors. Learn more from the Retirement Security Coalition. Subscribe on Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod and other podcast players. Welcome to the Daily 202, PowerPost's morning briefing for decision-makers. Sign up to receive the newsletter. EFTA00046253 # WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris speak simultaneously during the Democratic primary debate in Miami on June 27. (Wilfredo Lee/AP) -- Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will face off again in the next two-night debate at the end of July, while the ideologically aligned Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will appear together the other night. CNN, which is hosting the debate, held a televised, live drawing last night to determine the lineups. Joining Sanders and Warren on the first night, July 30, will be Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Steve Bullock, Tim Ryan, John Hickenlooper, John Delaney and Marianne Williamson. The next night, July 31, with Biden and Harris, will be Julián Castro, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bill de Blasio, Michael Bennet, Tulsi Gabbard and Jay Inslee. “The Democratic field is the most diverse ever and yet all five minority candidates ended up on the same night,” Colby Itkowitz notes. “Who is matched with whom can shift the trajectory of the race, as Harris showed in the first debate when she went after Biden on the issue of busing. The aftershocks of that moment were felt for days later culminating in Biden giving a major speech defending his civil rights record. A rematch gives Harris another shot to handicap Biden, while Biden gets an opportunity for a do-over after his fumbling performance last time. … For socialist democrat Sanders and capitalist Warren, who are vying for many of the same far-left voters, their matchup allows them the chance to differentiate. It also denies Sanders a chance to go after Biden, whom he competes with for the populist and working-class vote. In the past week, Sanders has targeted Biden for not embracing Medicare-for-all, providing a preview of how hard he planned to go after Biden if given the opportunity.” -- The debate in Detroit could be a season finale for as many as EFTA00046254 half the candidates who have made the stage, as they struggle to meet the higher qualification requirements that will go into effect for later televised gatherings. (Annie Linskey and Michael Scherer) -- Unionized campaign organizers working for Sanders are clashing with the campaign manager, according to internal communications leaked to Sean Sullivan: “Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers and other employees supporting them have invoked the senator’s words and principles in making their case to campaign manager Faiz Shakir. A review of emails, instant messages and other documents obtained by The Post show that the conflict dates back to at least May and remains unresolved. … The Sanders campaign made history in March when it announced that all employees below the rank of deputy director would be represented by a union. The Warren and Castro campaigns followed suit.” The Sanders campaign responds that it’s offering wages and benefits competitive with other campaigns, pointing to the latest fundraising reports. “Bernie Sanders is the most pro-worker and pro-labor candidate running for president,” Shakir emails. “Bernie and I both strongly believe in the sanctity of the collective bargaining process and we will not deviate from our commitment to it.” -- A new Pew poll finds that Democratic voters are relatively satisfied with their choices for president. The level of excitement is comparable to 2008 and significantly higher than in 2016. GET SMART FAST: EFTA00046255 Trump says U.S. shot down Iranian drone over Strait of Hormuz 1. A U.S. naval ship downed an Iranian drone that flew too close and ignored multiple calls to turn away. Speaking at the White House, Trump said the drone came within 1,000 yards of the USS Boxer in the Strait of Hormuz before the crew “took defensive action” and “immediately destroyed” it, per Dan Lamothe and Liz Sly. In New York, meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that if Congress lifts sanctions against the country, Tehran will commit firmly to allowing international inspections of its nuclear program, per Carol Morello. 2. An alleged Islamic State fighter and American citizen has returned to the United States, transported by the U.S. military to face terrorism-related charges. He was previously held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which has custody of more than 2,000 foreign Islamic State fighters. (CNN) 3. Millions of opioid pills found their way to the remote city of Norton in southwestern Virginia’s coal country. Over the course of seven years, from 2006 through 2012, the local Walmart received more than 3.5 million opioids. The CVS received more than 1.3 million. Those numbers come from a Washington Post analysis of newly released Drug Enforcement Administration database that shows that the pharmaceutical industry pumped out 76 billion pills over that seven-year period. (Joel Achenbach) 4. The New Jersey judge who said a 16-year-old boy accused of sexual assault should not be tried as an adult because he came from a “good family” resigned under pressure. And another New Jersey judge who asked a woman if she had attempted to close her legs to stop being raped has been suspended by the state’s high court. （Timothy Bella） EFTA00046256 5. The Senate agreed to vote Tuesday on legislation that would extend a victims compensation fund for 9/11 workers. The chamber will consider amendments by conservative Mike Lee to stiffen oversight of the spending and from Rand Paul to demand spending cuts as offsets. But the bill has 75 co-sponsors in the Senate and is expected to easily pass. （Felicia Sonmez and Devlin Barrett） 6. Boeing said the grounding of its 737 Max jets would reduce its revenue and earnings by $5.6 billion in the second quarter, the largest financial effect of two deadly crashes of the jetliner so far. (Douglas MacMillan) 7. In Berkeley, Calif., “man-made” will soon be “human made,” “chairman” will become “chairperson,” and “manhole” will change to “maintenance hole” — at least in the city’s municipal code. In an effort to make Berkeley more inclusive for its non-binary residents, the city council voted to make the language more gender neutral, following a city clerk review that found that the municipal code primarily contained masculine pronouns. (Kayla Epstein) 8. The Federal Trade Commission is considering updates to the children’s online privacy law, a process that could change underage engagement on YouTube, Instagram, Fortnite and more. （Tony Romm and Craig Timberg） 9. Russia continues its campaign of harassment against American diplomats in Moscow. The Kremlin refused visas for 30 new teachers at a school that educates the children of Western diplomats. The school, overseen by U.S., British and Canadian embassies, has 1,100 children from more than 60 countries. Vladimir Putin is trying to bully the U.S. into rolling back restrictions that were put in place by the Obama administration for 2016 election interference. (Associated Press) EFTA00046257 -- Best headline of the week, and of course it’s from Florida: “Five guys arrested after fist fight at Five Guys.” (Orlando Sentinel) Puerto Rico protests: Police fire tear gas during anti-Rossello demonstrations ## PEOPLE IN THE NEWS: 1. Tens of thousands of Puerto Rican protesters continue to occupy the blue cobblestone streets of Old San Juan to demand th > This document was truncated for web display. See the linked source PDF for the complete record.