Latest news with #SenateConfirmation
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump pick Jay Clayton's term extended as Manhattan's top federal prosecutor
By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) -Federal judges in Manhattan on Monday extended Jay Clayton's term as the district's top federal prosecutor, as Senate Democrats block U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee for the U.S. Attorney role from being permanently confirmed. Trump in April appointed Clayton, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for a 120-day period while the administration pursued Senate confirmation for him to serve in the role full-time. In a brief statement, the court's judges said they had authorized Clayton to serve in his role until a permanent nominee is appointed by the Senate. Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been blocking Clayton's nomination, invoking a Senate tradition that allows senators to block some of the president's judicial nominees in their states. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney is considered one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country. The office, known for bringing high-profile financial crimes, terrorism and public corruption cases, has historically enjoyed a greater degree of independence from the Justice Department than the other 92 U.S. Attorneys' offices around the U.S. Clayton, a former lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell who specializes in mergers and capital raising, is a political independent who developed a reputation while at the SEC during Trump's first term for trying to forge consensus with the agency's Democratic commissioners. During the first seven months of Trump's second term, the Justice Department has intervened in the Southern District's cases and personnel matters in ways legal experts say undermine the office's traditional autonomy. In February, acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon resigned rather than carry out the Justice Department's instruction to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had pleaded not guilty. In July, the Justice Department fired a widely-respected Southern District prosecutor, Maurene Comey, without explanation. She is the eldest daughter of James Comey, the former FBI director whom Trump has attacked for his role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, which Trump won.
Reuters
a day ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Trump pick Jay Clayton's term extended as Manhattan's top federal prosecutor
NEW YORK, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Federal judges in Manhattan on Monday extended Jay Clayton's term as the district's top federal prosecutor, as Senate Democrats block U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee for the U.S. Attorney role from being permanently confirmed. Trump in April appointed Clayton, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for a 120-day period while the administration pursued Senate confirmation for him to serve in the role full-time. In a brief statement, the court's judges said they had authorized Clayton to serve in his role until a permanent nominee is appointed by the Senate. His term had been set to expire this week. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney is considered one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country. The office, known for bringing high-profile financial crimes, terrorism and public corruption cases, has historically enjoyed a greater degree of independence from the Justice Department than the other 92 U.S. Attorneys' offices around the U.S.
Fox News
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
MORNING GLORY: Memo for President Trump, Secretary Burgum and Director Nesvik
Before the United States Senate broke for the summer and decamped from D.C., one nominee it did confirm was Brian Nesvik, who will lead the United States Fish and Wildlife Service ("USFWS.") The Senate voted last Friday by 54-43 to approve Nesvik, the onetime head of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. This is some great news for Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum who needed some of his top-tier appointees finally put into their jobs —more than six months into President Trump's second term. Many other positions across the administration remain blockaded by a combination of obstructionist tactics by the Senate Democrats, as well as White House delay in nominations, paperwork filing by nominees, Senate committee hearings as well as votes, and a Senate work schedule which is leisurely as measured against the private sector even though this Senate has done more in the face of complete Democratic obstruction than recent iterations of the body. (Insiders among the Senate GOP promise they will change the Senate's absurd confirmation rules when they return on September 3. That's a great thing…if it happens. It should have happened immediately after the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" passed the Senate.) Nesvik's appointment is crucial because the USFWS long ago blew past the intent of the federal Endangered Species Act ("ESA.") Congress has acquiesced in this bureaucratic mission creep for decades and decades as the agency grabbed more and more power over private landowners, but Burgum and Nesvik can take a sharp machete to the regulatory overgrowth. First, though, President Trump should use an executive order to delist all "species" and "subspecies" that landed on the ESA list by virtue of the criteria of "decline in the historic range of the species' or subspecies' habitat." The USFWS uses this metric to list species and subspecies like the California gnatcatcher (a bird) or the San Diego fairy shrimp (a crustacean) or the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly (an insect) as "endangered" or "threatened." This metric of "projected future habitat loss" is not "science." It is politics and environmental extremism dressed up as "science." It works this way. First, the Service identifies a "species" or a "subspecies" which it wants to "study" (and the definition of subspecies is itself a dodgy process of questionable legitimacy in the original law.) Then the Service proclaims the "historic range" of that subspecies —let's say 10,000 square miles. Then "scientists" at the USFWS calculate how much of that 10,000 square miles has been developed for buildings, homes, parks, roads and reservoirs as well as anything else man-made and subtracts that area from the original "historic range." If we are dealing with Southern California's coastal regions, or the Bay Area, or the area around Las Vegas or Denver for example, a great deal of development of all sorts has taken place in those regions in the past 200 years. The USFWS then subtracts the developed part of the historic range over the past 200 years from the original historic range and then projects the same pace of development out decades or centuries. Thus, if the 10,000 square miles of original "historic habitat range" had seen 7,500 square miles developed in the past 200 years, the Service concludes that the pace of past development which saw 75% of the historic range of the subspecies used by humans is going to continue into the future. Thus, the bureaucrats conclude that the 2,500 square miles will be reduced by 75% in the next two hundred years leaving only 600 square miles of historic range. The same calculation is then applied to the 600 square miles over the next 200 years etc. The conclusion that the species or subspecies is "endangered" or "threatened" by habitat loss is baked into the process. The species or subspecies that is endangered by "habitat loss" is placed on the endangered species list, and all land which is occupied by that subspecies is off-limits to development without one of two federal permits —a Section 10(a) permit from the USFWS or a Section 7 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ("USACOE"). Indeed, sometimes the career bureaucrats at the agency attempt to assert that if the habitat in question could potentially be occupied by the species or the subspecies, it too is off limits to development without a permit. Most permits applied for by private landowners are never granted, and are usually abandoned or made so expensive in terms of mitigation demanded by the USFWS that they end up combined into one big permit application that creates a new regional bureaucracy, which adds another layer of red tape and extreme costs to the private landowners' plans. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I retired from this area of law in 2015 after practicing in it on behalf of landowners for nearly 3 decades. It's only gotten worse since I left practice to teach law and broadcast. The ESA isn't the only reason we have a housing shortage in many parts of the country and that critical infrastructure rarely gets built and never on budget or on time. States have their own versions of the ESA as well and their own versions of the Clean Water Acts and a host of other hurdles to construction. But this maze of species and subspecies law and regulations is backed up by criminal penalties of fines and years in jail for every individual member of the subspecies disturbed —not killed, but even just disturbed (the technical legal term is "taken")— by a landowner acting without a permit. It's an outrageous and idiotic system and much of it rests on three giant leaps of logic: That the ESA was intended to regulate "subspecies," that the "science" behind declaring either a species or a "subspecies" is sound, and that "decline of historic range" is also a legitimate scientific metric. Hopefully President Trump, Secretary Burgum and Director Nesvik take aim at all three absurdities and, via executive order or rule-making, clear away hundreds of the 1,300 species and subspecies from the list of endangered and threatened species maintained by the Service. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration regulates the endangered or threatened species in the water though sometimes the USFWS and "NOAA" have overlapping jurisdiction.) Two other moves would greatly assist the pressing need for more housing of all varieties and for major infrastructure projects and safe forests and wild-lands. First, the Supreme Court should be on the lookout for a case that allows it to make sense out of a tangle of cases having to do with "regulatory takings," and fashion a new, coherent rule of black letter law to apply to such regulatory takings: If any level of government requires longer than 60 days to approve a landowner's plans for their private property, the government owes that landowner rent on a monthly basis. No more uncompensated "temporary" takings by regulation. The framers of the Constitution would be mortified by the extent the federal, state and local governments trample property rights which were explicitly protected by the Fifth Amendment from uncompensated takings, a prohibition applied to state and local governments by the 14th Amendment. Once government had to pay for its delay, the pace would pick up at every level of bureaucracy. Second, Burgum and Nesvik should take the initiative and publish "nationwide Section 10(a) permits" that allow for all fire-prevention clearing, harbor dredging, and pier and pipeline construction and prospectively for "SMRs" —"small modular reactors" that are the future of carbon-free energy production— regardless of impacts to all species and subspecies. These are all projects of enormous public benefit and almost all of them are held-up if not blocked completely by environmental extremists using the ESA as a disguise for their no-growth, anti-human agendas. President Trump, Secretary Burgum and Director Nesvik cannot make America great again if they can't expedite big new infrastructure projects or prevent vast destruction by wildfires that use uncleared land for fuel or stop the quiet theft of private property by the leviathan of the giant combination of federal, state and local government regulations. Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives America home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel's news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
Fox News
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Senate drives off for recess, leaving Trump's 150+ stalled confirmations in its wake
As lawmakers depart Washington for a month-long recess, more than 150 of President Donald Trump's nominees remain in limbo, awaiting Senate confirmation or further action amid stalled proceedings and deepening partisan gridlock. Key positions across Trump's administration remain unfilled, with the judiciary and diplomatic posts bearing the brunt of the backlog. Former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is still awaiting Senate confirmation for his nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Likewise, Andrew Puzder has yet to be confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, an especially significant post given that the EU is one of America's largest trading partners. At the Department of Justice, Stanley Woodward is nominated to serve as associate attorney general, while Patrick Davis awaits confirmation as assistant attorney general for legislative affairs. Nominations for several lawyers at U.S. Attorney's Offices in Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Pennsylvania and South Dakota remain pending confirmation. Congress left town on Saturday after confirming only a few nominees, with no bipartisan deal in place to advance the bulk of Trump's pending appointments. Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host and New York judge and prosecutor, was among the seven of Trump's nominees swiftly confirmed on Saturday. Pirro's confirmation as U.S. Attorney for D.C. comes as dozens of interim prosecutors aligned with Trump's judicial agenda approach the end of their 120-day term limit. After that, appointment to these key roles shifts to the courts if no Senate-confirmed successor is in place. Following the collapse of bipartisan talks on Saturday, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune described the confirmation process as "broken," emphasizing that Senate rules governing nominations are "desperately in need of change." Meanwhile, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said a rules change would be a "huge mistake" in speeding up the pace of confirmations. He also added that lawmakers have "never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now."
Daily Mail
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Ex-Fox News host Jeanine Pirro - ridiculed on SNL - is new Attorney for the District of Columbia
Another former longtime staple presence of the Fox News Channel has officially joined the Trump administration. Judge Jeanine Pirro was confirmed as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia by the U.S. Senate on Saturday evening with a vote of 50-45. Pirro was President Donald Trump 's second pick for the role, and has been serving in the position on an interim basis since May. The president's initial selection for the post was Ed Martin, a longtime conservative activist, podcast host, and recent defender of January 6th rioters. Martin failed to garner enough support from enough Senate Republicans to proceed with his conformation. Pirro's own confirmation process was not without hurdles. She had to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee twice. Democrats walked out of a committee hearing two weeks ago, claiming that Republicans improperly rushed the confirmation process. The walkout which invalidated the initial committee vote. During a swearing-in ceremony for the Judge, which took place in the Oval Office back in May, Trump noted that 'Over five decades, Jeanine Pirro, known by millions as Judge Jeanine, has devoted her life to the pursuit of justice, the defense of freedom and the fair, equal and impartial rule of law.' Trump also referred back to Pirro's early career as a district attorney in Westchester County, New York. 'And she went after real criminals, not fake criminals, like we seem to do today, nowadays,' the president added back in May. Pirro will now formally serve in a unique position, overseeing both federal crimes, and serious crimes committed in Washington, D.C. Her new jurisdiction encompasses the U.S. Congress, as well as the headquarters of most government agencies, which makes her role one of the most influential in the country. Cases brought before her division may include ones of national security and public corruption, as well as violent crimes and drug trafficking. Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, praised Trump's selection of Pirro for the role, while doing their best to fend off attacks on Pirro from their Democrat counterparts. 'You may hear my Democrat colleagues criticize Ms. Pirro for some of her colorful remarks during her time as a TV personality,' Grassley, stated on the Senate floor ahead of Saturday's vote, adding that 'yes, she has a larger-than-life personality.' However, Grassley added that, 'she has [a] decades [long] distinguished record as a prosecutor and judge. D.C. is fortunate that the president nominated her to serve as its U.S. attorney. Her job in the interim role, where she is stationed now, has been heralded.' Democrats framed Pirro as 'an election denialist, recklessly peddling President Trump's Big Lie.' Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that Pirro continued to push claims about the 2020 election, 'despite even her own Fox News producers and executives warning her to reel it in.' Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, is still locked in a legal battle with voting machine technology company Smartmatic, and Pirro is among the list of Fox personalities accused of spreading false claims about the 2020 election. Pirro's comments during her Fox News tenure also captured the attention of writers at the comedy show 'Saturday Night Live'. There, Pirro was played by Cecily Strong. In her portrayals of the Fox News personality, Strong frequently praised Trump, and also carried and drank alcohol during her imitations of Pirro. After Saturday's confirmation vote, Pirro wrote on social media site X that she was 'blessed to have received a Senate confirmation vote this evening of 50 to 45 to be the United States attorney for the District of Columbia the largest United States Attorney's Office in the country.' 'Thank you to those senators who supported my confirmation and DC- get ready for a real crime fighter,' Pirro added in her X post.
