At 10:30 Thursday morning, Jeff Sessions will officially be sworn in as attorney general of the United States. On a near party-line vote, 52 to 47, the Senate confirmed one of its own Wednesday night for the job of the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Sessions was one of Donald Trump’s earliest and most ardent supporters from Congress during the election, and now he’ll be in one of the most important Cabinet positions in the new administration.
The task of confirming Cabinet positions continues, much more slowly than the White House and Senate Republicans would like. Votes on Tom Price for Health and Human Services and Steve Mnuchin for the Treasury are also on the Senate’s schedule this week.
The glacial pace for confirming these nominees is a big reason the president’s legislative agenda is currently stalled. But Vice President Mike Pence continues to work as the administration’s chief liaison to Capitol Hill on crafting and planning that agenda—he met Tuesday with the Senate Republican conference and had a one-on-one lunch with House speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday. Pence, White House aides say, remains a critical part of Trump’s inner circle—someone the president relies on for institutional knowledge of government and Washington.
A Visit to the Future Site of the Wall
The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday night that Secretary John Kelly will travel to the border at the end of this week “to meet with Department of Homeland Security employees and state and local officials, tour security operations, and discuss the administration’s efforts to improve security along the border.” Kelly will meet with Arizona governor Doug Ducey at the border patrol station in Nogales on Thursday, and on Friday will visit with law enforcement officials at the port of entry at San Ysidro near San Diego, California.
DeVos Calms Down Her Department
My colleague Alice Lloyd has a great report from the Education Department on the first day with its new leader, Secretary Besty DeVos. Here’s an excerpt:
Obama Attorney Comes Out for Gorsuch
The Judicial Crisis Network has a new 30-second ad in support of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. The ad features Jane Nitze, a former Obama Justice Department attorney, clerked for Gorsuch (as well as Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor). Nitze has a reassuring message for liberals: “I don’t think folks on the left should be concerned about Judge Gorsuch becoming a Supreme Court justice.”
The ad has a small, $2-million buy on cable.
New(-ish) to Twitter
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus has a new, official Twitter account, @Reince45. That’s different from his personal account, @Reince, which has been mostly dormant since the inauguration (except for a tweet and a retweet when Priebus’s fellow Wisconsinite Scott Walker visited the Oval Office late last month).
So far, @Reince45 has just one tweet, noting a $7 billion investment by technology giant Intel (whose CEO met with Trump at the White House Wednesday) for a new microchip factory. And while the chief of staff has over 11,000 followers, he follows only 10 accounts—@POTUS, @WhiteHouse, @FLOTUS, @VP, @GOP, @PressSec, @LaCasaBlanca (the Spanish-language White House account), @Scavino45 (Dan Scavino, the White House social media director), @SecondLady, and, of course, @RealDonaldTrump.
White House staff who tweet in an official capacity will need to have a separate account, like @Reince45, that will be automatically archived per the Presidential Records Act. And yes, that includes tweets from @RealDonaldTrump.
Song of the Day
“Turn to Stone,” Electric Light Orchestra
