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The unemployment rate is approaching historic lows and it is difficult to find good help. Perhaps that's why Donald Trump keeps turning to the same group of officials to fill multiple positions.
Todd Blanche is deputy attorney general and second in the Justice Department, which is an important and important task. As of this week, he was also an acting librarian in Congress. Russ Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, is also the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and although he is actually freezing the bureau’s work, it may not be a big boost. Kash Patel was head of the FBI but also served as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Guns and Explosives until he was replaced by Daniel Driscoll, who also happened to be the Army Secretary.
No one works as hard as Marco Rubio, who now has four jobs. His main performance was Secretary of State, but in February he was appointed acting administrator for the U.S. International Development Agency. A few days later, he also became a performance archivist in the United States. Earlier this month, Rubio appointed Rubio to fill the position on an agent basis as well after Trump fired National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. (A State Department spokesman said he received only one salary.) The government also relies on acting officials (appointed at any time but not confirmed by the Senate) to take on other key roles, including FEMA chief and U.S. lawyer D.C.
There is a term for government: Double bats. Or rather, there is a term that is what Blanche, Vought and Patel do. Rubio is breaking new grounds both in semantics and in government. The design has some double hat characters. The heads of the U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA are the same person who improves agility in dealing with cybersecurity threats, although some believe that roles should be split.
But, in other cases, Trump either couldn’t find or could find someone who actually fills the role. Both possibilities are encouraging. If he can't, in the early stages of the government, Finding enough qualified persons willing to do these jobs will be a constant struggle for execution. If he simply wouldn't, because he would rather stick to a small circle of numbers he trusted, the government would also be plagued by dysfunction because leaders stretched out too many directions, and dangerous incompetence and conflict of interest.
The double mockery reflects Trump’s attempt to learn from his first term. In the 2025 project, the Heritage Foundation documents have been the government’s blueprint, and the authors’ appointments to Trump appointees are very slowly filling government positions. They wrote: “This is the impact that permanently hinders the launch of the new presidential agenda because “many administrations rely on senior professionalists and those appointed by Obama to fulfill their sensitive responsibilities that would otherwise fall under the new presidential appointment. "As Trump's presidency continues, he began to rely on appointments, in part because the Senate refused to confirm some of his lower-qualified nominees.
The 2025 project recommends using more agent appointments, but more importantly, trying to address this by identifying and training a loyal businessman ready to be appointed on the first day. This doesn't seem to work. Trump got more choices at the same time as the first administration and the Joe Biden administration than at the same time, but he was just in sync with Barack Obama and he seemed to have a very important issue, which is very important, but below the cabinet rating.
Whether the double hat wearer is eligible to do the job has little importance on Trump. The reason the White House fired Congressional librarian Carla Hayden was ridiculous: She was accused of obtaining books of inappropriate books, which was meaningless when discussing a non-loan library without a collection. She holds a PhD in library science and serves as president of the American Library Association. Blanche, by contrast, has worked as a white-shoe lawyer in his career (including defending Trump at his criminal trial).
Rubio's role at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Security Adviser at least overlaps with his Secretary of State (if not each other) work, but they require extensive management skills and knowledge. As my colleague Tom Nichols recently wrote: “Rubio was the only person who once operated both the National Security Council and the State Department, which was both a criticism and a compliment to say that Marco Rubio was not Henry Kissinger.”
As for the fourth character, it makes no sense except for attempts to undercut the archive. “I don’t think it’s possible to have valid archives without archivist,” David Ferriero, archivist from 2009 to 2022, told me. Ferriero has been in contact with former colleagues and told me that Rubio hasn't appeared in the government's National Archives until recently. This means that the Archives do not have full-time leaders at critical moments.
"The first 100 days are very important because during that period, 4,000 newcomers usually enter the government. "Those newcomers need to be trained on the rules and regulations for record preservation. This is a work that I don't know now. All previous guidelines, principles and rules of compliance are out the window. This means huge loopholes in our history. ”
"The core task of the National Archives is to preserve records of the U.S. government and provide those records to the American people," the National Archives and Records Administration said in an emailed statement, citing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents recently issued related to the assassination of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The statement did not address the frequency of Rubio's work in the archives.
Rubio may also have motivation no Save the record. As Secretary of State, he was a member of a signaling team discussing strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg's editor-in-chief was added accidentally. These discussions are too sensitive to go beyond signals, which is an off-the-shelf application, but once done, they comply with the public record law. However, how and how to save them is still unclear and may have been deleted. Is it possible for archivist Marco Rubio to make a fuss about Secretary of State Marco Rubio's violation of the law?
Conflicts of interest like this, as well as simple neglect, will expand the longer the government uses the same group to fill many jobs. Trump attributes his agenda and his country to double hats.
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Stephanie Bai contributed to the newsletter.
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