US foreign policy recent news by Zetpress? Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, remained under scrutiny over reports that he rented a condominium from the wife of a top Washington lobbyist. He paid $50 a night to stay in the Capitol Hill unit. At least five officials were reassigned or demoted, or requested new jobs, in the past year after they raised concerns about Mr. Pruitt’s spending and management, which included unusually large spending on office furniture and first-class travel, as well as requests for a bulletproof vehicle and an expanded 20-person protective detail. Mr. Pruitt was already facing questions about his first-class travel at taxpayer expense over the past year.
By establishing inescapable facts on the ground over the ceaseless objections of critics, President Trump overrides the often meaningless verbiage that constitutes international diplomacy and ends up changing the very terms of the foreign policy conversation. Nowhere has this dynamic been clearer than in U.S. relations with China. Beginning with his surprise call to Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen in December 2016 and continuing through his resumption of U.S. Navy freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea the following year, his tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018, his and his administration’s rhetorical barrage against China beginning in earnest in 2019, and culminating in his multiple actions against China this year, from limiting travel to canceling visas to forcing the sale of TikTok to tightening the vise on Huawei to selling an additional $7 billion in arms to Taiwan, Trump has reoriented America’s approach to the People’s Republic. No longer is China encouraged to be a “responsible stakeholder.” It is recognized as a great-power competitor.
US Foreign politics and Brexit 2020 latest : And so, after becoming prime minister last year, Boris Johnson signed on to a Withdrawal Agreement that left Northern Ireland within the economic structures of the EU. All EU regulations on trade and customs would continue to apply in Northern Ireland even after it had legally left the EU along with the rest of the U.K. Essentially, this amounted to a regulatory annexation of sovereign British territory by a foreign power (ably and obligingly aided by the British prime minister). Of course, this was never going to work in the long term. No government can function properly when a huge swath of its territory is in chattel to a foreign power. How could the American federal government enforce regulations equally in Texas and Tennessee in a scenario where Texas was obliged to conform itself to the internal market regulations of Mexico?
In every instance we adhered to the process explicitly laid out in the Constitution: The president has the constitutional duty to nominate; the Senate has the constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. It is written plainly in the Constitution that both presidents and senators swear an oath to uphold and defend. Is Biden saying that McConnell should ignore his sacred constitutional duty? Biden knew then, as he knows now, that there’s no constitutional duty, nor is there any precedent, either prohibiting or requiring Republicans to fill a vacancy. Nor is there any prohibition (as nearly every Democrat has already argued) against “rushing” such a nomination. Three Supreme Court justices have been confirmed with less than 45 days — including Ginsburg, who was nominated by a Democrat and confirmed by a Democrat-majority Senate. As my colleague Dan McLaughlin points out in meticulous historical detail, every real norm points to the Republicans’ filling the vacancy. Find even more information at zetpress.com.