Since I'm seeing some confusion on this, the inauguration is always designated an NSSE event. That allows various federal agencies to provide and coordinate support (& to do so on non-reimbursable basis, which matters at agency level). Wolf is simply moving up timeline by a week.
It's significant because instead of DHS implementing some discreet preparation a week earlier or ramping up monitoring, it will set in motion literally hundred of pieces a week earlier than planned. But it's tweaking the timeline, not changing a fundamental approach.
NSSE happen routinely and usually no one outside federal and state governments notices or cares. The Super Bowl is an NSSE, for example.
This is a very sensible move. It shows that DHS believes that is a significant threat to the inauguration period it hadn't anticipated, etc. But don't overread it.
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One reason some Republicans want to avoid impeachment is because they are going to try to minimize and memory hole this in the future to avoid electoral accountability. It's easier to do that with some disapproving tweets than it is if you've voted for (or against) impeachment.
In other words, they are afraid of impeachment not because they don't want to hold Trump accountable, but because they don't want to be held accountable for their vote.
The current set up allows them to have it all ways. Express disapproval and distance themselves now, claim it wasn't so bad and was a figment of Trump Derangement Syndrome later on. And then they get to hedge no matter which way the political winds blow in the future.
It's not as novel as the new fangled Trump-brand of corruption, just good old-fashioned waste, fraud and abuse. Every step of the way. slate.com/news-and-polit…
So a spring must have snapped in the doorknob and I am now fully stuck in my bedroom. It is a weird antique knob. So umm does anyone have ideas? (Small mercy, my kids are on the other side of door and happily fetching me snacks while the grownups brainstorm).
Those suggesting I just disassemble the latch, it is fully inside the door (which is over 100 years old and original to the house). That square hole still turns. It just isn’t connected to whatever opens the latch.
(For those concerned, my husband is home and watching kids.)
The split is a matter of when, not if—though "when" is a tricky question. But the idea that this is going to happen in the final 32 days of an administration, under an acting SefDef, without congressional support (and while POTUS is holding the NDAA hostage) is a fantasy.
To the extent Solarwind has any real bearing on the question, it would cut against the arguments for splitting now.
Moments like these do reveal the gaping hole left in the Senate by the death of John McCain, one of the few members who actually understood and cared about this issue over the years.
I think the question of whether and how to respond to Solarwinds hack is complicated. But it'll be, at a minimum, weeks until government has the relevant information needed to *begin* assessing an appropriate response. Those calling for massive retaliation are just being silly.
The incident response process here alone is massively complicated. This intrusion reportedly involves designated national security systems, non-NSS federal systems, and the private sector. Provision of technical assistance and intelligence and information sharing takes time.
Once the various parties collect and assemble the basic forensics, that needs to be paired with other forms of intelligence to produce assessments with varying degrees of confidence (with agencies squabbling and disagreeing with one another).
I'd bet that, deep down, Biden team would view Trump pardoning family & associates as a gift. The last thing Biden or incoming AG want is to be bogged down with Trump admin scandals and pardons would absolve them of hard choices while letting them still pound table on corruption.
The one place where this might operate in the inverse is if Trump pardons himself, because that would create pressure to challenge the constitutional validity.
If Trump engages in corrupt, self-dealing pardons, then essentially it shifts the issue from the executive branch to Congress, which would then have to decide whether and how to limit the power. So there are still ways to address it, it just becomes someone else's problem.