Among many others, these three men served as "Acting" members of Trump's cabinet during the first weeks of his administration, as the president pondered permanent replacements.
For other offices, it's apparently standard practice for presidents to unilaterally fill an empty cabinet seat with an acting secretary of their choosing, subject to certain restraints.
Acting secretaries aren't functionally much different from normal ones.
Acting attorney general Yates refused to offer Justice Department legal support to President Trump's "Travel ban," a decision that presumably would have stood had Trump not proceeded to fire her.
In a complex 2016 case that attempted to clarify the terms of a president's power to appoint "Acting" people, Clarence Thomas argued that acting appointments could not be justified by any logic found in the Constitution, only the logic of bureaucracy.
This is the debate we should be having over acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker - not whether his appointment was kosher under the various dubious executive-branch succession laws Congress has dreamed up, but whether "Acting" cabinet officers should be an understood part of American government at all.
Acting secretaries are a strange artifact of the American state's top-heavy nature, the notion that the executive branch's power to regulate, spend, dictate, and control is so essential that it cannot possibly afford to leave a single post unmanned for even a moment.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/acting-cabinet-members-unnecessary-probably-unconstitutional/
For other offices, it's apparently standard practice for presidents to unilaterally fill an empty cabinet seat with an acting secretary of their choosing, subject to certain restraints.
Acting secretaries aren't functionally much different from normal ones.
Acting attorney general Yates refused to offer Justice Department legal support to President Trump's "Travel ban," a decision that presumably would have stood had Trump not proceeded to fire her.
In a complex 2016 case that attempted to clarify the terms of a president's power to appoint "Acting" people, Clarence Thomas argued that acting appointments could not be justified by any logic found in the Constitution, only the logic of bureaucracy.
This is the debate we should be having over acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker - not whether his appointment was kosher under the various dubious executive-branch succession laws Congress has dreamed up, but whether "Acting" cabinet officers should be an understood part of American government at all.
Acting secretaries are a strange artifact of the American state's top-heavy nature, the notion that the executive branch's power to regulate, spend, dictate, and control is so essential that it cannot possibly afford to leave a single post unmanned for even a moment.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/acting-cabinet-members-unnecessary-probably-unconstitutional/
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