Inauguration - Military Times

Trump signs first bill and actions as president

migration — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 19:30:33 +0000

President Donald Trump on Friday quickly claimed the mantle of the White House, signing legislation allowing retired Gen. James Mattis to serve as his defense secretary, as well as the nomination papers for his Cabinet choices.

Less than an hour after wrapping up his inaugural address, Trump sat in an ornate room steps from the Senate floor and signed a series of papers formally launching his administration. Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and congressional leaders, he praised each of his nominees as he signed the papers and handed out the pens he was using, exchanges that allowed him to banter with his new congressional rivals, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

Trump also signed a proclamation declaring a national day of patriotism, according to a tweet from White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

The bill passed by Congress last week grants Mattis a one-time exception from federal law barring former U.S. service members who have been out of uniform for less than seven years from holding the top Pentagon job. The restriction is meant to preserve civilian control of the military. Mattis, 66, retired from the Marine Corps in 2013.

The signing ceremony captured Trump’s first acts as president. It was unclear whether more was coming Friday.

The president distributed pens to top congressional leaders during the ceremony. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, received the pen with which Trump nominated Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife, to be Transportation secretary.

When Pelosi jokingly objected to a pen used to nominate Rep. Tom Price of Georgia to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, House Speaker Paul Ryan interjected, “I’ll take it.”

While Trump participated in the ritual of the day, there were signs his new government was up and running. Federal websites and agencies immediately began reflecting the transfer of power, and WhiteHouse.gov was revamped to reflect Trump’s policy priorities.

Gone was a page dedicated to outlining the president’s policies on LGBT rights. Trump’s site appears to make no reference to the issue.

And in place of a page promoting the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan was a page detailing Trump’s “America First Energy Plan,” which stresses Trump’s commitment to “eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan.”

But the Trump team kept a section of the White House site that let voters petition the White House. Two new petitions were posted Friday: one calling on him to release his tax returns and verify that he is not receiving payments from foreign government, while the other asks him to divest of his holdings or put them in a blind trust.

Shortly after Trump became president, the Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended the Obama administration’s planned reduction of mortgage insurance premium rates, a move that had been intended to make home ownership more affordable. Trump’s choice to run HUD, Ben Carson, said at Senate hearings that he wants to examine the reductions.

Although Trump campaigned on promises to get to work immediately, Trump officials have said they expected Monday as the first big workday of the new administration, his effective Day One.

As a candidate, Trump assembled an 18-point plan of actions for his first day in office. But has backed off some of his promised speed, downplaying the importance of a rapid-fire approach to complex issues that may involve negotiations with Congress or foreign leaders. On others issues, he has affirmed the plan, indicating significant policy announcements may be teed up in the first hours and days of the Trump administration.

“The glacial pace and the excuse of divided government in Washington, those days are gone,” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s final campaign manager. “That really will be swept into the bin of recent history.”

Spicer said Thursday that two executive orders on trade would be coming soon. On his Day One list, Trump said he would formally declare the United States’ intention to withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which he vigorously opposed during his campaign as detrimental to U.S. businesses and workers. He also promised to declare his intention to renegotiate the two-decades-old Clinton era North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from the deal.

During the campaign, Trump promised to propose on his first day a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress. He vowed to impose a hiring freeze for federal workers, and begin to remove immigrants who are criminals and living in the country unlawfully.

He also said he would “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.”

Given Trump’s opposition to Obama’s immigration actions, that could mean cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has protected about 750,000 young immigrants from deportation. The program also offered those immigrants work permits.

If he terminates the program, Trump could choose to immediately cancel the deportation protection and revoke the work permits, or he could opt to block new enrollment and allow those already approved to keep their work permits until they expire.

Trump also faces an early choice of naming a Supreme Court justice to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump has said he will announce a nominee in about two weeks.

Other issues poised to receive early action include energy, where Trump is likely to undo regulations on oil drilling and coal, and cybersecurity, where he has already said he will ask for a report on the strength of the nation’s cyber defenses within 90 days of taking office.

Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell contributed to this report.

Contentious presidential transition could threaten national security

migration — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 17:54:23 +0000

The continued discord between the outgoing Obama administration and the incoming Trump administration is setting the stage for one of the more contentious presidential transitions in recent memory, and may present the country with dire national security threats as a result.

The two teams have clashed on matters of policy, foreign relations and hypothetical election results, culminating with a Dec. 28 tweet from President-elect Donald Trump that the transition would not be a smooth handover of power.

Despite efforts to walk back those sentiments following a phone conversation between Trump and President Barack Obama that same day, there is speculation that after witnessing one of the better transitions in modern presidential history in 2009, the current inauguration may be one of the most contentious on record.

“It’s really hard to change direction once things start rocketing down the road they are on now,” said Don Kettl, professor and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. “It’s clear that the two teams don’t like each other much. It’s also clear that within the Trump transition team that teamwork is at a premium.

“There are a lot of dissenting views with people fighting for oxygen and fighting for access. So both the incoming Trump team’s ability to speak as a team and the ability of that team to interact with outgoing Obama people, that seems likely to get worse for a while.”

But as exhaustive research on presidential transitions by both the Partnership for Public Service and the National Academy of Public Administration have shown, there’s little time for communication breakdowns between administrations.

Starting more than a year out from the upcoming inauguration, both think tanks produced a series of research papers and roundtables with former administration officials to game-plan what a smooth transition of power would look like, in part because of the vulnerability such a transition creates for the country.

“Both the incoming and outgoing administrations must steadfastly commit to making the transfer of power not only peaceful but also effective,” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told Federal Times in an email.

“This is a time of high vulnerability for our nation and in a post-9/11 world, the national security imperative requires the utmost cooperation and effort on both sides of the transfer to strengthen and uphold this cornerstone to our democracy,” Stier said.

Speaking at the opening of the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition on Jan. 20, 2016, former George W. Bush Chief of Staff Josh Bolten detailed how officials from the outgoing administration worked hand in hand with new Obama appointees to effectively navigate a credible terror threat while the inauguration was unfolding.

“The night before the inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security picked up credible threat information about an intended attack on the inauguration festivities themselves,” he said.

“[We were] trying to figure out how to best do the handoff and especially how to prepare the incoming team for a situation in which they might face a national security crisis and an attack on the homeland not just in Year One, in Hour One.”

With the legal authority of Bush’s Department of Homeland Security set to expire at noon, a potential attack could have put the new Obama administration into a crisis situation before much of the Cabinet had even moved into its offices.

By 10 a.m., Bolten had brought incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to a joint briefing, and both Homeland Security teams had gathered together in a command center to assess the nature of the threat.

“We had arranged with the Obama administration to sit side by side the day before and the day of the transition, even though the Constitution was clear on who actually makes the call to try and assist each other,” Bolten said. “The threat turned out not to be real, but the intelligence was pretty serious.

“The point of the story is that there was no template for this. We were making it up as we went along.”

While contentious presidential transitions have happened before — including a truncated timetable following Bush’s 2000 win — there hasn’t been one since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, creating a new paradigm that emphasizes the importance of cooperation.

“The world is just much more interconnected than it’s ever been,” Kettl said. “That means everything from perhaps less obvious having to do with the financial system to the obvious questions about both homeland security and international security. The risks and the costs of missteps are far higher than they have ever been before.”