The House Republican position on President Obama’s recess appointments is hard to even express without laughing. GOP Congressmembers are actually saying that they oppose the appointments because Congress is not in recess – and as soon as they finish their vacation and get back to Washington, they’ll have something to say about that. I’ve heard [...]

I think we have found the unifying thread on the President’s recess appointments yesterday. He did not decide to make appointments on key financial regulatory positions, like OCC or FDIC or the Federal Reserve, and some worry that those nominees will now get blocked from confirmation as a result, though they are seen as uncontroversial. [...]

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer put out his rationale for the recess appointment of Richard Cordray, including some of the legal reasoning. Here are the facts: The Constitution gives the President the authority to make temporary recess appointments to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess, a power all recent Presidents have [...]

The National Labor Relations Board, in what could be one of its final acts before it goes dark due to a lack of a quorum, formally approved new rules that would accelerate union elections. Because there may not be a functional NLRB after January 1, however, there will be no immediate practical effect to this [...]

The recess appointment fight nominally only concerns Richard Cordray, the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans want to block his confirmation because they stop the agency from gaining regulatory powers over non-bank financial institutions if they remain without a director. So they’re using the nomination fight as a proxy to force changes [...]

As is typical at the end of the year, Harry Reid attempted to clear out a backlog of uncontroversial Presidential appointments before the holiday break. But Mitch McConnell would not allow it. He wanted assurances, instead, that the President would not seek out any recess appointments during the break, and he objected to moving the [...]

The Obama Administration, expecting that we’re in an age where the normal rules of politics apply and not an age of nullification, nominated two labor officials for open slots on the National Labor Relations Board. That board will see previous recess appointments expire at the end of the year, leaving it without a quorum and [...]

I forgot to circle back around to this. In my story yesterday on the settlement in the Boeing/NLRB dispute, I mentioned that the NLRB planned a vote on a scaled-back proposal to speed up union elections and reduce the endless delays and intimidation that has characterized how management handles them. There was some question as [...]

The Machinists union reached tentative agreement on a new four-year contract with Boeing, in a move that probably ends the dispute over moving a factory from Washington State to South Carolina, which prompted action from the NLRB against what they saw as an illegal labor violation: It is not immediately clear what, if any, impact [...]

Sen. Lindsey Graham openly threatened the National Labor Relations Board before they filed a complaint against Boeing for illegally moving their plant from Washington state to South Carolina, according to notes taken by the NLRB’s general counsel, Lafe Solomon. The House Oversight Committee obtained the documents through a subpoena, and they show total intimidation on [...]

The World Trade Organization ruled today that the US legally imposed tariffs on Chinese tire imports last year. These tariffs were imposed in response to a United Steelworkers petition, showing that Chinese firms were dumping substandard tires on US markets, causing “material injury” to the domestic tire industry. This victory at the WTO is a [...]