July 12, 2017
Good morning from Washington, where President Trump lags in executive branch appointments and Senate confirmations compared with four immediate predecessors. Fred Lucas updates the numbers. Senate Democrats' blocking game extends to a judge on Trump's Supreme Court list, reports Rachel del Guidice, who also covers conservatives' win in shortening the August recess. Plus: John Malcolm and Jason Snead on states' troubling tolerance for voter fraud, Katrina Willis on what makes an FBI director, and Walter Williams on what's wrong with a higher minimum wage.
The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Trump's 197 nominees to executive branch posts. By this point, President Obama had won 200 of 356.
Liberal politicians scoffed at President Trump's election integrity commission after it requested "publicly available voter roll data" and asked for feedback on ways to secure the electoral system against fraud.
Trump thinks highly enough of Michigan's Joan Larsen that he included her on a list of potential U.S. Supreme Court justices. Not so her home-state senators.
One senator says that failing students should go to summer school, not enjoy a long vacation, and likewise the Senate.
"I have no doubt he will approach this new job, once he is confirmed, in a thoroughly professional, nonpartisan manner," Heritage Foundation legal scholar John Malcolm says.
Those disciplined include 22 senior leaders at the VA, more than 70 nurses, 14 police officers, and 25 physicians.
"How compassionate is it to call for a government policy that destroys a person's best opportunity?" Walter Williams writes.
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