30 Jan
2017
The Judicial Branch Weighs In On the New Trump Administration, Plus More Cabinet Votes
- Whew! And that was just week one. The new president launched a flotilla of executive orders, including a hotly debated immigration ban, played hardball with Mexico on trade, and talked with the leaders of Britain, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Japan, France and Australia. His “extreme vetting” order drew the Judicial Branch into the fray, while the Legislative Branch was all but mute about both the substance and the backlash from the order.
- More court battles are certain to play out this week over President Trump’s immigration order, but in reality the fight is likely to take years to decide. Four cases have already found their way to federal court, in Boston, Alexandria, Va., Seattle and Brooklyn. Particularly aggrieved were technology companies, who count large numbers of immigrants among their labor pool. Trump’s order was criticized by the chiefs of Netflix, Airbnb, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, among others.
- More votes on cabinet nominations are scheduled for this week, with the Senate expected to resume discussion of the nomination of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State on Monday evening, and a vote to end debate scheduled for 5:30 pm. On Tuesday, the Senate will take up the nomination of Elaine Chao for Transportation Secretary.
- Several committees are also scheduled to vote on Trump nominees for cabinet posts this week. On Monday the Senate Finance committee votes on Steven Mnuchin’s nomination for Treasury Secretary and the Small Business Committee will consider Linda McMahon as head of the Small Business Administration. On Tuesday the Senate Judiciary committee will vote on the Attorney General designee, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama; the Energy and Natural Resources Committee votes on the bids of Ryan Zinke for Interior Secretary and Rick Perry for Energy Secretary; and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee considers Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary.
- The nomination of Andy Puzder, the chief of CKE Restaurants, which includes the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. chains, to be Labor Secretary has been postponed a third time because of the nominee’s failure to complete filings with the Office of Government Ethics over financial disclosures. The hearing is now set for Feb. 7, Bloomberg BNA reported.
- The Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve arm that keeps watch over the government’s main interest rate and inflation measures, conducts its first two-day meeting of the year on Tuesday and Wednesday. No press conference is scheduled this time, however, making it less likely that the Fed will raise rates, probably preferring to see more data on the effect of its December rate hike.
- Hours after his inauguration, President Trump signed an order freezing all federal regulations under consideration. That is not an uncommon move; President Obama did much the same thing upon taking office. But there are two significant differences in Trump’s order: It freezes regulations that already have been published in the Federal Register but which hadn’t yet reached their effective date; Obama’s order had asked agencies to “consider” postponing the effective date. And Trump’s order extends to “guidance documents” as well as formal regulations, a tighter conscription than Obama ordered.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average finally reached above 20,000 last week, putting it a full 8 percent above its level on Election Day. Helping to propel the stock market higher were the new administration’s regulatory freeze and its emerging plans to boost infrastructure spending. Stocks are expensive compared to historical levels, however, and the immigration order could give investors an excuse to let some air out of the market. Earnings for the fourth quarter of 2016 are expected to be higher than a year earlier, giving the optimists hope for further gains.
- The Trump Administration raised confusion last week when it announced, then walked back from, a plan to fund its much-talked-about border fence with a levy on all imports coming from Mexico. Beyond paying for it, the question remains whether and how well a fence will work. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee will take ponder that issue on Wednesday at a hearing, “Fencing Along the Southwest Border.”
- Technology-industry advocates are hoping to include aggressive plans for broadband expansion in the Trump Administration’s infrastructure spending package, as broadband growth generally has gathered bipartisan support. Two groups take a look this week: Brookings considers “Agenda Setting at the FCC and FTC” on Wednesday, and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on Thursday discusses “Telecom Priorities for Congress and the FCC.”