Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer have described Donald Trump's dismissal of 17 inspectors general as a "chilling purge" aimed at eliminating "accountability for malfeasance." Scott Walter and Sarah Lee of the Capital Research Center say it’s not just the fulfillment of a Trump campaign promise, but there’s no scandal in sight.
Though the federal government's 74 IGs are ostensibly independent, half of them "are appointed by agency heads—that is, by the very people who should be in the crosshairs of the IGs," Walter and Lee write. IGs report both to those agency heads and to Congress, a body not exactly known for encouraging "honest appraisals of the federal programs they take credit for."
Trump pledged on the campaign trail to make IGs "independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State." He has the power to remove nearly all of them. And judging by the gusher of wasteful government spending highlighted in recent weeks, the federal government's IG offices could use some shaking up.
Read the full piece here.
The progressive view of diplomacy "is mostly about fostering good feelings," writes the Hudson Institute's Mike Watson. Liberals and their allies "tend to hope that the process of negotiating will create trust and hopefully goodwill." Donald Trump's view of diplomacy is different. He "thinks that the United States is bound by agreements only to the extent that the other side complies—and even then, he reserves the right to pull out when he finds it advantageous."
The Beltway's mandarins have long insisted that the latter approach is catastrophic, viewing Trump's aggressive demands that Hamas honor the details of its ceasefire agreement with Israel, for example, as "hamfisted amateurism." But as Trump navigates that ceasefire and negotiates with Russia and Ukraine, the Left shouldn't be so confident that its approach is the right one, argues Watson.
Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden hoped that a nuclear deal with Iran would be the first step to calming down the Middle East. Both failed, since the mullahs are not interested in getting along with the Great Satan. James Hansen, one of the intellectual godfathers of the climate movement, lambasted the Paris Agreement on climate as "a fraud really, a fake," since it is nonbinding and had no chance of reaching its targets. But for Beltway progressives, Trump’s withdrawals from the agreement in 2017 and last month were signs of the apocalypse.
Trump cherishes his reputation for unpredictability, and as of this writing, the contours of the Ukraine deal are not yet clear. But his interest in developing Ukraine’s mineral deposits indicates he is not planning on throwing Kiev under the bus. And during the last congressional debate about aiding Ukraine, Trump wrote, "As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us! GET MOVING EUROPE!" ...
Trump is betting that he can shock the Europeans out of their post-Cold War slumber. German chancellor Olaf Scholz is now calling for another Zeitenwende, a strategic reorientation. But the German Army is less prepared for battle than it was when he announced the last Zeitenwende three years ago.
Trump is also betting that Putin wants a deal that meets his bottom line. Perhaps. But Russia is winning the war, and Putin may decide that humiliating America is worth the wait.
Read more on Trump's art of diplomacy here.
Down in Florida, Trump's attorneys are battling the members of the Pulitzer Prize board over their 2018 awards honoring the New York Times and the Washington Post for their intrepid Russiagate coverage. Trump's lawsuit argues that the Times and Post stories were replete with bogus references to collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. So far, judges in the Sunshine State are siding with the president.
On Wednesday, a Florida appeals court judge denied the Pulitzer board's motion to dismiss the suit, taking the board to task for its decision to stand by the "now-debunked allegations that [Trump] colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election." One day later, our Chuck Ross reports, the board dropped its opposition to a Trump effort to obtain a confidential internal report that reviewed and defended that Pulitzer board’s decision to dole out awards for the Russiagate coverage.
"The internal report, authored by former Reuters editor in chief Stephen Adler, is key to Trump’s lawsuit against the board's members over their 2018 award to the newspapers for a series of stories that 'dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections' to Trump, as the board originally put it," writes Ross. "The board referred to Adler’s review—though without identifying him—in a July 2022 statement that reaffirmed its award four years earlier to the Times and Post and said none of the stories had been 'discredited.'"
Trump's attorneys proposed a subpoena of Adler aimed at obtaining the report and all communications related to it in late January. The Pulitzer board filed an objection one week later but withdrew it on Thursday, citing circuit court judge Robert Pegg's ruling that the board's internal communications can't be shielded during the discovery process.
"The withdrawal does not guarantee that Trump will obtain internal documents from Adler—the president's attorneys first need to secure approval for the subpoena in New York, where Adler lives, and Adler can launch his own effort to shield the documents from there," reports Ross. "The withdrawal does, however, come on the back of a string of positive developments for Trump in the lawsuit, which he filed in December 2022." We'll have updates as they come.
Away from the Beacon:
- Canadian hockey fans booed the U.S. national anthem when the boys in red, white, and blue played in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament in Montreal on Thursday night. America went on to win 6-1. Enjoy statehood, guys.
- Donald Trump has already hosted three foreign dignitaries in the Oval Office—and all three walked by a photo of Trump's mugshot framed in gold before they entered, photos show.
- Axios put out a big scoop on Friday: "Trump's immigration arrests," the outlet wrote in a headline, "appear to lag Biden's." Three paragraphs in, it explains why: "The publicity surrounding the new president's tough talk on immigration has fueled a dramatic dip in the number of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally." Details, details.