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It seems strange that President Donald Trump appointed a housing expert to monitor the US intelligence community.
But Trump is skeptical of his temporary appointment of housing official Bill Pulte, who he wants to start next week and get things in order and clean house during a temporary assignment to oversee the intelligence community. Democrats could let a major foreign surveillance law lapse and Republicans on Capitol Hill are scrambling to oppose the appointment move, according to CNN’s most recent report.
It seems like a similar problem that capable leaders of both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were ousted and have not yet been replaced. The role of Surgeon General has not yet been permanently filled during Trump’s second term.
Trump’s power to push nominees for key roles through the Senate is waning as his party prepares for a November election in which his low approval ratings could spell trouble for other Republicans.
In recasting his first administration, Trump is likely to rely more and more on “acting” heads of some agencies, at least as long as the law allows. Meanwhile, he will continue to test the same law — the Federal Vacancy Reform Act of 1998 — by giving a few close aides greater responsibility over multiple agencies.
This is not a new concept in the Trump administration, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also acting archivist, or where the administrator of the Social Security Administration is pulling double duty in the invented position of CEO of the IRS because the director position at the tax collection agency can no longer legally be filled on a temporary basis.
Soon to be the “acting” director of national intelligence and the Senate-confirmed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the throughline for Pulte is neither housing nor intelligence but, as CNN has reported, his track record of using his federal job to target Trump’s political enemies.
In the Oval Office on June 4, the President made clear that Pulte would not have the job very long: “It’s an acting position, it’s not permanent,” Trump said.
And, rather than citing the need to coordinate wartime intelligence, the President hoped that in Pulte’s role, “he might find out some things about rigged elections.”
“This is a layered cake of mismanagement,” said Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that lobbies for effective government.
A civil service that is already scarred by efforts to cut positions and that Trump believes has a deep state against them is also dealing with leaders who have no background in the agencies they lead.
“This is a recipe for waste, corruption, incompetence and bad outcomes for the American people,” Stier said.
Pulte’s elevation in particular raises two distinct issues with how Trump has run the US government:
► The first issue is Trump’s use of “acting” officials to temporarily end the Senate confirmation process, which can be acrimonious and political under the best of circumstances. Every president has done this, but Trump does it more often and openly. In his first term, he spoke of liking the “flexibility” given to avoid the confirmation process. Never mind that the Constitution requires it.
► The second issue is the elimination of unrelated responsibilities in the cadre of trusted Trump aides, which has created a number of strange job combos.
Both issues ultimately play out in laws.
For example, the law establishing the DNI role requires that any individual nominated “must have extensive national security expertise.” Pulte did not even have a security clearance when the announcement was made, although he has not been nominated for the permanent role either. But another part of the law stipulates that if a vacancy occurs, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence “shall act” for the DNI during the vacancy. The current Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence is an experienced former CIA officer named Aaron Lucas.
But there is another law at play here.
The Federal Vacancies Act of 1998 was passed on a bipartisan basis to constrain President Bill Clinton’s ability to avoid getting lawmakers’ blessing for major political appointments that require Senate approval. Washington shorthand for these jobs is PAS.
The Vacancies Act presents a somewhat complex system for filling vacancies. First, it requires that PAS roles be filled only by their top representatives, other top officials in their agency, or another official confirmed by the Senate. Pulte is a Senate-confirmed official.
But there are time limits also. An acting officer can serve only for 210 days after the post becomes vacant. If the President nominates a permanent replacement, the 210-day period pauses during the nomination process. If the first nomination fails or is withdrawn the President gets an additional period of 210 days for the acting official. But they don’t get the third one.
According to the Government Accountability Office, presidents of both parties have routinely violated this law.
US Trade Representative Jameson Greer was already busy with Trump’s trade war when he was also tasked with leading the Office of Government Ethics, which is supposed to protect against conflicts of interest in government, and the Office of Special Counsel, which plays a key role in assisting government whistleblowers.
It appears Trump may not have much use for any office during his second term. At present both of them do not have any permanent leader.
The Federal Election Commission, which is supposed to be bipartisan, does not currently have enough commissioners to launch an investigation.
The U.S. Merit System Protection Board, which is tasked with hearing complaints from federal employees, has a quorum of sorts, but only because its Senate-confirmed chairman, Henry Kerner, is also the executive vice chairman.
According to the Steer Partnership for Public Service, there are approximately 1,300 Senate-approved positions. The group is tracking more than 800 key roles, and more than 270 of them have no nominees from the Trump administration. About 100 roles have a nominee who has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. This is actually a slightly higher confirmation rate for Trump 2.0 than the Biden administration or the first Trump administration.
But the way Trump is relying on acting officials tests the laws that determine how vacancies must be filled and the spirit of the Constitution, which tried to broker a compromise between lawmakers and the president by requiring the Senate’s “advice and consent” for top officials in the government.
“It appears that this is the primary lesson he has learned from his first term, which is to elect people who will do what he wants, no matter what, as opposed to electing people who will stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and be able to run these very important, complex organizations that have an enormous impact on the American public,” Stier said.
This title has been updated.
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