The Trump Conflicts Of Interest Policy Could Be Even Worse Than Last Time

“Jubilant crowds gathered in cities across Syria for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad, including at the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, where civilians and fighters worshiped side by side and joyful chants erupted over the collapse of a long authoritarian dynasty,” the New York Times reports. “The largely celebratory mood in Damascus, the capital, belied the monumental challenges facing Syria’s new leaders as they try to bring order to a country wracked by sectarian divisions, the bloody legacy of the Assad era and the competing interests of an array of armed groups that fought in a 13-year civil war that human rights groups estimate killed hundreds of thousands of people.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was injured and admitted to a hospital in Luxembourg while on a congressional delegation trip to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, NBC News reports.

Punchbowl News: “The House Republican Steering Committee has finished selecting chairs for the 119th Congress. And this will come as a shock to no one, but we have some thoughts about what happened.” “The steering committee selected a lot of white men to lead panels across the Capitol. Of the 16 elected committee chairs, 15 of them are white men.

“We talk a lot about the coming dictatorship, but I think what’s really coming is what you would call an oligarchy.” — Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), on MSNBC.

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, who has earned bipartisan respect in roughly a year on the job, said he will resign on Donald Trump’s inauguration day, Politico reports. David Kurtz: “If the presidential appointees whose terms are longer than the president’s – precisely in order to make them more independent and less susceptible to political interference – keep resigning at the end of the president’s term, then they’re basically turning these positions into the same as those held by any other administration appointee.”

Garrett Graff: “There was some speculation in the hours following Wray’s announcement to leave before January 20th that it was some advanced bureaucratic maneuver to forestall Kash Patel being installed as FBI director under a recess appointment or under what’s known as the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which governs who and how someone can be appointed an ‘acting’ leader in the government.” “And, indeed, in various ways Wray’s resignation would preclude Patel from being installed via an FRVA appointment if Trump’s plan had been to wait until day 91 of the administration to fire Wray — Patel (or anyone else named acting) needs to have been in government for 90 days in the year period *preceding* the vacancy, for instance, among other FVRA provisions — but there’s also an open legal debate about whether FVRA can even be used if a firing happens, because the president is then creating the vacancy he’s trying to fill, so legally and procedurally it feels sort of a wash in that sense…” “But I think, practically, Wray’s decision not only doesn’t hinder Patel taking over the bureau, it accelerates it.” Earlier for members: Washington Shrugs at Christopher Wray’s Departure