Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced their resignations Thursday, citing the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday.
“Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the president stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed,” Chao said in a statement she posted on Twitter. “As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”
Chao said her last day would be Jan. 11 and suggested she’d use some of her final days to help President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for her job, Pete Buttigieg, “with taking on the responsibility of running this wonderful department.”
She was the first Cabinet member to resign in the aftermath of Wednesday’s riot, which was sparked by President Donald Trump urging thousands of his supporters to go to the Capitol and make their “voices heard” against lawmakers who were unsupportive of Trump’s call for objections during the electoral vote count.
Chao’s husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was the most prominent Republican to push back against the president’s plan.
Devos, who has had a rocky tenure as education secretary, said late Thursday her last day would be Friday. She said in her letter, obtained by NBC News, that the violent clash and the president’s rhetoric factored into her decision.
“We should be highlighting and celebrating your administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people,” she said. “Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business. That behavior was unconscionable for our country.”
She added, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me. Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us.”
Also announcing his resignation Thursday was Trump’s former acting chief of staff and current special envoy to Northern Ireland, Mick Mulvaney.
“I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I would be resigning from that. I just can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney said in an interview with CNBC, citing the Trump-inspired riot.
“The president of the United States went on stage and said go march down the street and invade the Capitol, and they did,” Mulvaney said.
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Mulvaney, a key figure in the Trump impeachment proceedings who defied a congressional subpoena to testify about what he knew, told CNBC that when he was acting chief of staff “the president never asked us to do anything unethical or certainly illegal.”
“Clearly, he is not the same as he was eight months ago, and certainly the people advising him are not the same as they were eight months ago, and that leads to a dangerous sort of combination as you saw yesterday,” Mulvaney said.
He acknowledged his resignation is “a nothing thing.” “It doesn’t affect the outcome, it doesn’t affect the transition, but it’s what I’ve got, and it’s a position I really enjoy doing, but you can’t do it,” he said.
Mulvaney said he has spoken with other friends in the administration and expected others to leave in the next day or two.
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“Those who choose to stay, and I have talked with a couple of them, are choosing to stay because they’re concerned the president might put someone in to replace them that could make things even worse,” Mulvaney said.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., said it could be better for the country if some officials didn’t resign.
“I urge the good men and women honorably serving at all levels of the federal government to please stay at their post for the protection of our democracy,” Machin said. “The actions of a rogue president will not and should not reflect on you. Instead, your patriotism and commitment to the greater good of our country will be reaffirmed.”
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Deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger also resigned, his boss, Robert O’Brien, announced on Twitter.
“Asking Matt Pottinger to serve as my deputy was my first act as NSA and it turned out to be one of my best decisions. As he heads West to rejoin his family in beautiful Utah, Matt does so with my appreciation for a job well done and with my enduring friendship,” O’Brien wrote in a pair of tweets.
O’Brien added that Pottinger’s work led “to a great awakening in our country and around the world to the danger posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Justice Department also announced the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband, who had been the head of the civil rights division. Dreiband said the job had been “an honor of a lifetime.”
Dreiband made headlines last year for pushing back against coronavirus restrictions in numerous states and localities.
“Simply put, there is no pandemic exception to the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights,” he wrote in a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year.
Tyler Goodspeed, the acting chair of the Council on Economic Advisers, also resigned, the agency’s spokesperson, Rachael Slobodien, confirmed to NBC News. He told the New York Times “The events of yesterday made my position no longer tenable.”
John Costello, deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for Intelligence and Security, tweeted that he’d resigned as well. He called the riots an “unprecedented attack on the very core of our democracy — incited by a sitting president.”
On Wednesday, Melania Trump’s chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary, left her post, as did deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews. Social secretary Rickie Niceta stepped down as well, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.
On Thursday, Jerome Marcus, a lawyer who worked on behalf of the Trump campaign in a lawsuit involving Pennsylvania’s election, asked to withdraw as an attorney on the case.
In a letter to the judge, Marcus wrote, “the client [Trump] has used the lawyer’s services to perpetrate a crime and the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant and with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.”
The letter did not elaborate on the allegations. The underlying case centered on a Trump campaign complaint that poll watchers were not allowed to view the counting of votes in Philadelphia. At an emergency hearing in November, Marcus acknowledged to the judge that there had been a “non-zero number” of poll watchers in the room. “I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?” the judge responded.
The judge ultimately denied the campaign’s bid to stop the vote count and worked out a compromise between elections officials and the campaign about how many observers were allowed inside.
Mulvaney became Trump’s acting chief of staff in late 2018 after the president announced that John Kelly was resigning. Trump replaced Mulvaney in March, appointing then-U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., in his place. Mulvaney has also previously served as a U.S. representative from South Carolina and director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
“I can’t stay here, not after yesterday,” he said in the interview Thursday. “You can’t look at that yesterday and think I want to be a part of that.”
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
