Thursday, January 23, 2025

Trump news. Items which speak for themselves; commentary being scant but needed.

Here and here. The first item's ending paragraphs -

The White House press office didn’t answer questions on Wednesday about whether Trump might [after canceling a Biden executive order on ethics mandates for executive officials] have his own ethics rules in the works to replace the Biden-era ones he nullified. Trump himself has in the past criticized the “revolving door” of people who move from government positions to posts in government and back.

That last sentence reads funny. The revolving door worry is movement from government sector to private sector and back and forth, to profit by peddling influence or using influential connections to lobby, grow income, and repeat the process. Likely an editorial oversight there. Continuing the quote -

During a 2022 interview with podcast host Theo Von, Trump said, “I was not a big person for lobbyists.”

Rob Kelner, chair of the election and political law practice at the firm Covington & Burling, said Trump might sign his own new set of executive actions on ethics. But he also said that the new president might not be anxious to do so given that it could ultimately be redundant. “There are already hundreds of pages of ethics laws and rules that govern executive branch employees,” Kelner said.

Kelner said a more immediate impact of Trump scrapping Biden’s order might be that it gives former members of the Democratic administration additional employment options by wiping out bans they would have otherwise had to heed.

“As they’re all out looking for jobs, this takes a burden off their shoulders,” Kelner said.

If Trump will be chopping heads per Musk/DOGE/Project 2025, there will be less anger and opposition if people can more easily transfer to private sector paychecks. And, to attract people he may want in his administration, Trump might feel it counterproductive to impose restrictions upon what they can do if/when leaving his administration. Finally, unless the item posts links to the new executive order and to the old one, we only know what the reporter tells us. There may be relevant detail omitted.