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| President Trump and Chief-of-Staff Reince Priebus with new hiring freeze order. |
PPPS(Washington, DC)—In an ironic twist only possible in DC, the hurried executive order signed last Monday to impose a hiring freeze on all federal employment, appears to have backfired on President Trump and is now preventing his appointment of any new Cabinet Secretaries, over 4,000 other high level appointments, and his upcoming selection of a Supreme Court Justice.
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| Senator Schumer (D) NY |
The hiring freeze was expanded to include presidential appointments in a controversial ruling by Judge Loretta Lynch of the D.C. Circuit Court issued early this morning. The ruling was in response to a midnight petition filed jointly by Senator Charles Schumer of New York and the Open Societies Foundations, an obscure DC Beltway think tank.
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| Judge Loretta Lynch |
The ruling establishes that any hiring freeze instituted by the President in an Executive Order must apply equally to ALL federal government branches and appointments, not just to civil service employees, citing the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, in what some critics are saying is an overly broad interpretation of that Clause, Judge Lynch ruled that the same principle also applies to the President's power to remove appointees from office, essentially creating a simultaneous "firing freeze".
The practical result of this ruling, and the President's own executive order, is that no new Cabinet or lower level appointments not already approved by the Senate prior to last Monday, January 23rd, are likely to take office any time soon, and that all existing Cabinet and department heads, many of whom were appointed by President Obama, will remain in office, even those who may have turned in their resignations or have been fired since the executive order was issued.
Naturally, the mainstream press and other Democrats are celebrating the ruling this morning, and the conservative "fake news" organizations and pundits are outraged. No formal response has yet been issued by the Trump administration, in part due to confusion about who would be authorized to issue that response. As further evidence of the shocking setback to President Trumps accelerated pace of action, the President has yet to tweet on the matter.
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| Acting Attorney General Yates |
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates represented the federal government in the midnight court hearing, and is purported to have provided a "friend of the court" brief on the firing freeze issue which was ultimately adopted in Judge Lynch's ruling.
Judge Loretta Lynch, formerly the U.S. Attorney General, is the newest member of the D.C. Circuit Court, having been appointed by President Obama in a secret recess appointment during the 30-second interval on January 3, 2017 between the gaveling out of the previous U.S. Senate session and the gaveling in of the current Senate session. Judge Lynch's appointment and swearing in took place in Air Force One while parked on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, shortly after President Obama's return from a well-earned vacation in Hawaii.
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| The only available photo of Judge Lynch's appointment, January 3, 2017 |
Judge Lynch was apparently the only member of the D.C. Circuit Court on call last night to hear the midnight petition and make a ruling.
