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In the vast rural expanses of Southwest Virginia, Democrats were once at the top of the political pecking order. For decades, Rick Boucher, a Blue Dog Democrat, represented the Commonwealth's conservative 9th congressional district, consistently winning over voters who were increasingly supporting Republicans at the presidential level. First elected in 1982, Boucher won most of his House races rather handily in 2008, he even ran unopposed in the general election.

However, by 2010, the headwinds against Democrats had become too much to overcome, with Boucher losing his reelection bid to Republican H. Morgan Griffith. Across the country, a multitude of rural Democrats which included House stalwarts like Reps. Chet Edwards of Texas and Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota were defeated. Fueled by the Tea Party backlash against then-President Barack Obama, Republicans picked up 63 House seats and gained six seats in the Senate, winning control of the lower chamber in the process.

In 2012, Democrats had a strong showing in rural America. Obama won Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin which all have substantial rural populations in his successful reelection campaign. And Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Jon Tester of Montana won their respective Senate races that year. Heitkamp who served as state attorney general from 1992 to 2000 won her Senate race by roughly one percent even as Obama was losing North Dakota by nearly 20 percentage points. In the upper chamber, she struck a bipartisan tone, relentlessly advocating for rural issues like energy independence and broadband access. However, in 2018, she lost her reelection bid to then-Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer.

After years of declines in rural America, Democrats are now facing the real possibility of losing their House and Senate majorities next year over what many see as a failure to address pocketbook issues; the feeling has contributed to a sense of abandonment among many rural Americans, including many voters who backed Democratic candidates in the past. Heitkamp is one of several individuals with a knowledge of rural issues who spoke to Insider and have sounded alarm bells over Democrats' missteps. In assessing why Democratic support continues to falter in rural areas, Heitkamp said that the decline in ticket-splitting has been a major component. "I think people in general have gotten more tribal," she said. "The willingness for Democrats to vote for Republicans is diminished and vice versa."

With Democrats facing electoral catastrophe if they don't improve their standing in rural America virtually shutting them out from representing an entire swath of voters in an increasingly-divided country what factors are at play as the party tries to counter GOP electoral ascendancy in the countryside?

In 2008 and 2012, Obama won numerous rural counties in the Midwest powering him to victories in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. However, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, her margins dropped considerably in rural areas, dooming her candidacy in all four states. Last year, now-President Joe Biden improved on Clinton's performance in some areas, but it wasn't enough to flip Iowa and Ohio. Then-President Donald Trump defeated Biden by a 53%-45% margin in both states.

The Virginia gubernatorial election in November saw Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin lead Republicans to statewide victories despite the growth in the state's Democratic-leaning urban and suburban counties in large part from overperformance among rural voters. In Southwest Virginia's Tazewell County, Youngkin beat Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe by a 87%-13% spread, netting over 10,000 votes in the process. In neighboring Buchanan County, which was ancestrally Democratic, Youngkin defeated McAuliffe 85%-15%, netting over 4,000 votes. The scene was repeated across Virginia's most conservative locales, with huge turnouts in jurisdictions that Trump won last year.

Ben Tribbett, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist, told Insider that without concerted voter outreach in the countryside, the party could face deeper losses in future election cycles.

"I've been asked before, 'What's the lowest we can go in a place like Buchanan County and if we have hit rock bottom?' And the answer is zero," he said. "You would think that this happening cycle after cycle would cause the Democratic Party to get out there and go ask voters why and find out how we get them back. But instead, what I've seen happen on the consultant side is because the suburbs are growing, they just say, 'Don't worry about it. We'll go pick up the votes elsewhere.' And I think those people hear that message."

When Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds was first elected to the House of Delegates in 1991, the chamber had been controlled by Democrats for the entirety of the 20th century. Deeds grew up in rural Bath County, which borders West Virginia and overwhelmingly backed Trump in 2020 and Youngkin in last month's gubernatorial race.

As one of the few rural Democrats left in the legislature and the party's nominee for attorney general in 2005 and governor in 2009, Deeds knows the ins-and-outs of state politics and keeps a pulse on his district which is a world away from the state's densely-populated economic centers of northern Virginia, metropolitan Richmond, and Hampton Roads. When asked why Democrats have struggled with retaining rural support, he pointed to three "simple and complex" issues.

"In politics, showing up is a big part of getting the job done ... you've got to show up," he told Insider. "In Virginia, no successful Democratic statewide candidate has focused on rural areas since Mark Warner ran for governor in '01 and for the Senate in '08. Number two, you can just say it's a cultural divide between traditional rural voters and the rest of Virginia. But the third thing is that Virginia has changed so much. There's been a general outmigration of voters from rural areas."

Sen. Mark Warner while running for governor in 2001 made a concerted effort to attract rural voters, sponsoring a driver in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and releasing a bluegrass jingle for his campaign. In 2008, he won 65% of the statewide vote in his first Senate race and swept Southwest Virginia at the same time that Obama won 53% of the statewide vote. Even when Warner was narrowly reelected in 2014 in what was a tough year for Democrats nationally, he was able to carve out enough support in rural Virginia to win with 49% of the statewide vote.

When asked about the importance of messaging, Deeds spoke of the disconnect that sometimes exists among politicians who back policies that are advantageous to rural residents and actual voter behavior.

"It's Democrats that in the legislature and in Congress vote for things like broadband funding, which absolutely can revolutionize the economy in rural Virginia and rural America," he said. "It's Democrats that vote for job training that both improve education funding and create more opportunities for community colleges. All of this seems to benefit rural areas, but the communication is not there and it's very frustrating to me. And I'll take part of the blame. We just don't do a good enough job of effectively communicating our successes and concerns to voters in rural parts of the state and rural parts of the country."

Over the past decade, the Democratic electoral coalition powered by its strength in cities has grown to include suburban localities like DuPage County outside Chicago and Gwinnett County near Atlanta that for decades had overwhelmingly backed Republicans. However, these gains aren't enough to offset losses elsewhere. With moderate Democrats like Reps. Cheri Bustos of Illinois and Ron Kind of Wisconsin retiring from rural-based House seats next year along with Republicans holding redistricting advantages in 20 of the 35 states where legislatures possess the ability to draw multiple districts further erosion in the countryside could flip the lower chamber to the GOP. And the 2024 presidential election could featureTrump, who was able to activate millions of rural voters in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

As Heitkamp explained, failing to include rural voters in the party's overall vision will only exacerbate the political divide. She said that Democrats should focus on crafting a clear economic message regarding the president's expansive Build Back Better Act, emphasizing that universal pre-K, daycare, and paid family leave should be top priorities because the policies would allow more women to rejoin the workforce and increase productivity across the board.

To that end, Heitkamp in 2019 launched the One Country Project a nonprofit devoted to addressing rural issues and bringing rural voters back to the Democratic Party alongside former Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana.

"I did pretty well in rural areas when I ran in '12, but now we've seen kind of a realignment," she said. "I think there's been a focus on urban issues and suburban issues. The more those focuses have switched for the Democratic Party, the more rural America says, 'Well, I don't see me in this. I don't see you concerned about what I care about.'"

Excerpt from:
Democrats have growing rural problem that may cost them in 2022 - Business Insider

Christmas is just around the corner, and everyoneis lighting up the night with holidaydisplays.

Deborah Lewis, co-owner of Lewis Lights, a free, family-run Christmas light display in Purvis, said the annual display was born of a tradition involving her aunt, Evelyn Lewis, taking her to see lights on Christmas Eve. When the family realized fewer people were decorating each year, they decided to put up a display of their own.

"We started with a few lights in the front yard and it just kind of grew and grew and grew from there," Lewis said.

It has since grownto about 200,000 lights and more than 300 handmade wooden displays.

Lightdisplays are a common sight during the holidays across the Pine Belt. Here's where to go this season to see the best lights the area has to offer.

Lewis Lightsis located at 280 White Chapel Road, Purvis.The annualdisplay, which began in 1989 with only a few lights, has grown to about two acres of lights.The family also sellshomemade crafts and home grown produce, jams and jellies.

The display is open every night, weather permitting, throughDec. 31 from 5:30 to 9 p.m.

Herbie Young, who has been takinghis family to Lewis Lights for 25 years, said it offers something for the entire family to enjoy.

Beam Park

A Christmas lights maze at Beam Park, located on Highway 589 in Sumrall, will be open every night until Jan. 1. From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Dec. 23, Frank the camel will be at the park.

Creator Dawn Beam said she bought Christmas lights throughout the year to construct the unique maze.

"With this pandemic, we're reminded that life is temporary, that we're all just passing through. So that's the idea of the maze."

The maze features a tea party, basketball goal, Charlie Brown, gingerbread men and more.

The Bellegrass Subdivision, located atBellegrass Boulevard off Highway 589 in Hattiesburg, is locally known for an impressive holiday light display.

Frederick Lights, located at 867 JB Horne Road in Hattiesburg, offers an annual drive-thru holiday light display from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The third annual Lights of the Wild, featuringdisplays of lanterns highlighting life-sized animals, plants and holiday dcor, returned to the Hattiesburg Zoo in 2021.

Tickets are available for Dec. 17-23. Tickets are limited for each night, so purchasing in advance is recommended.

Harvison Lights, located at 48 Harrington Road in Hattiesburg, has a drive-thru light display open every night from dusk until 10 p.m. through Dec. 31.The display is drive-thru only, so guests will need to stay in their vehicles.

The Kingsmill Neighborhood, located atS. Kingsmill off W. 4th St. in Hattiesburg, features over 100 homes and is celebrating the holidays with lights displays and decorations.

The Sandstone Subdivision, located off Highway 589 in Hattiesburg, features a Christmas display at the entrance and homes decorated with lights for the holidays.

The Wade Family Light Show, located at 3 Pinewood Drive in Petal,has a holiday light show whichfeatures images that flash to Christmas music. The display will be operating from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday until Jan. 3. Guests should tune in totune to 99.7 for music that goes with the display.

Contact reporter Laurel Thrailkill at lthrailkill@gannett.comor on Twitter.

The rest is here:
Where to see Christmas lights in Hattiesburg, Pine Belt this holiday season - Hattiesburg American

Kyle Rittenhouse looks back before going on a break Nov. 15 during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse is scheduled to speak at the conservative AmericaFest in Phoenix this weekend. (Photo by Sean Krajacic-Pool/Getty Images)

ACROSS AMERICA Good morning! It's Thursday, Dec. 16. Last month, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in the shooting of three people, two of whom died, during a protest against police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This weekend, he will speak at a conservative conference in Phoenix. More on that in a bit but first, here are some other stories we're following today:

Kyle Rittenhouse will be in Phoenix this weekend for Turning Point USA's four-day AmericaFest.

Describing AmericaFest on its website as "the largest celebration of our constitutional rights and freedoms," Turning Point USA says its mission is "to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government."

The 18-year-old Rittenhouse is slated to speak Monday afternoon during a panel called "Kenosha on camera," the Arizona Republic reported.

The event will be attended by a who's who of controversial political commentators and legislators including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, and U.S. Rep. Majorie Taylor Green, just to name a few. Kyle Rittenhouse Is Coming To Phoenix For Conservative Conference, via Phoenix Patch

A bill introduced in October by U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday along party lines. The bill was approved weeks after a video surfaced in which Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert called Omar a member of the "Jihad Squad" and suggested she might be a suicide bomber. The bill would require the secretary of state to establish a special office to monitor and combat Islamophobia. House Passes Rep. Omar's Combating International Islamophobia Act, via Southwest Minneapolis Patch

President Joe Biden on Wednesday pledged to do "whatever it takes, as long as it takes" to help Kentucky and other states after a series of deadly tornadoes that left a trail of what he called unimaginable devastation. "You will recover and rebuild," he said.

"The scope and scale of this destruction is almost beyond belief," he said as he stood before a home reduced to a few walls and piles of rubble in Dawson Springs, one of two Kentucky towns he visited. Biden Pledges 'Whatever It Takes' To Assist Tornado Victims, via Across America Patch

What's known as the "Log4j" or "Log4Shell" vulnerability, originally detected as a software bug in Microsoft's online gaming program Minecraft, is causing widespread worry across the internet because it gives cybercriminals easy, password-free access to servers around the world. Here's what you should know about the threat. 'Log4j' Vulnerability, Cybersecurity Threat: 5 Things To Know, via Across America Patch

More national headlines on Patch, other news websites:

Jason Jones joined the Hanover, New Jersey, Police Department as its only Black officer, but his tenure there lasted less than a year. He resigned after a series of racist incidents pushed him to the decision, according to his lawsuit against the township and police department, via Hanover Patch

Dr. Daniel Lee will serve as Culver City's next mayor, making him the first Black mayor in the California city's history. Three years ago, Lee was elected the first Black city council member in the town's more than 100-year history, via Culver City Patch

Spencer, the beloved 12-year-old golden retriever who appears at the Boston Marathon each year, has been diagnosed with terminal spleen cancer but he'll still be at the 2022 race, via Boston Patch

More local news:

Curious what a half-million dollars can buy you in a sought-after Washington, D.C., suburb? Not a heck of a lot. However, if you're in the market for a "cozy," true fixer-upper, this 900-square-foot, three-bedroom home would be perfect for you. If not, you could always just tear it down and start over.

On this day in 1773, American colonists threw 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company into Boston Harbor to protest a tax on tea. Historically, the event is known as the Boston Tea Party.

Patch is in more than 1,000 communities across America. Find your community and see what's happening outside your front door.

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Kyle Rittenhouse To Speak At Controversial Conservative Festival - Patch.com

All photos courtesy of Lori Diane Photography.

We were running late to the book burning.

We need to leave, my wife told me, What if they burn all the books before we get there? Theyd scheduled the book burning for the same day that the Apache Log4j vulnerability dropped, so I ended up patching servers later than anticipated.

While that was an unhappy coincidence, it was intentional that people had scheduled the book burning the night of the latest Spotsylvania County School Board meeting. Everything had been on fire: fire and brimstone proclamations from concerned parents, fired up teachers and students speaking out against censorship, a flame war in local online groups, heated arguments between the board members, and surprise readings of red-hot literary excerpts.

It had started two meetings prior when two parents addressed the board during Public Comments to complain about two books on the high schools shelves, Call Me By Your Name by Andr Aciman and 33 Snowfish by Adam Rapp. In response, the board voted 6-0 to remove all sexually explicit books from the high school shelves, though it never defined what constituted sexually explicit. Going further, two members, Mr. Rabih Abuismail and Mr. Kirk Twigg, suggested that they might burn any books they found to be inappropriate. Predictably, those actions had divided the community into two opposing factions.

The call for burning books made the national news and, depending on how you looked at things, either made Spotsylvania County a laughing-stock or placed it on the latest front in the culture war to #SaveTheChildren. People had turned out at the next meeting in large numbers, most of them to decry the decision to remove the books, the suggestion of book burning, and the perceived homophobia of Mr. Abuismail. Following their display, the board had voted 5-2 not to remove the books after all, with Abuismail and Twigg casting the dissenting votes.

Then, just when everyone thought that Spotsylvania was done making a national spectacle of itself, a local Facebook page named Spotsy411 went viral for scheduling a book burning to coincide with the next meeting. On the event page, they invited everyone to have their children check inappropriate books out of the school libraries so that they could burn the books before the meeting. Screenshots of the Facebook Event were all over my Twitter feed.

Commenters deluged the Spotsy411 page, lambasting it for supporting censorship. The local paper published an article about the event, which included a quote from the Spotsylvania Sheriffs Office that it would be present to ensure that no book burning took place. The page disappeared for some days; they either deactivated it or made it private. When it reappeared the event was gone. When people confronted the page, it repeatedly denied that they had ever suggested that people should burn books. Contrary to all of this, screenshots circulated in local online groups showing that the page had confirmed in chat messages that they still planned to have a book burning.

The Spotsylvania County Schools administrative offices are one intersection past Patriot Park. Despite the delay, my wife and I arrived half an hour early. We couldnt find anything burning.

I checked my phone and discovered that, three hours before, the Spotsy411 page had posted, PERVERT ALERT, and gave a time an hour away and location across the street with no further information. The post had been liked by someone using a picture of Jason Statham as their profile pic. I thought this might be a covert announcement of the book burning and so drove over there, where I discovered a high school swarming with cops and a few members of the media. The school board meeting had been moved to the high school auditorium and, despite the fact that the county website had not been updated to reflect this, everyone seemed to have known but me.

I went inside to get the lay of things. The public portion of the meeting had started but, consulting the provided agenda, the public comments were not due to start for a while. I refreshed the PERVERT ALERT post and it had a new like from a woman named Sandra who, according to her Facebook profile, believes that Biden stole the election and that the pandemic is related to the JFK assassination. Minutes before she had made a mocking post, including a series of pictures clearly taken within the auditorium, about a teacher pushing her mask up in order to eat a snack.

Using the pictures, I found the woman sitting in the back row with a clump of other women. That triangulation should really have been unnecessary, as that group were the only ones there without masks. I noticed that several of them had brought young children with them, which seemed risky given that Mr. Abuismail had read sexually explicit passages out of context and without warning at previous school board meetings.

I had just missed the board voting to accept the resignation of the School Supervisor, Dr. Scott Baker, by a vote of 4-3, with board member Lisa Phelps joining Abuismail and Twigg in voting against it. His resignation surprised no one. The county elections in November had tipped the balance of power toward the Tea Party and the new board majority had been open about their intention to find an excuse to fire him.

After it showed a video presentation of a student choir, issued various awards and recognitions to members of the school system, and performed various other administrative agenda items, the board opened the floor to public comments. This part of the meeting lasted around three hours. About a third of the speakers thanked Dr. Baker profusely and bemoaned that the school system would be much worse off without him.

An overlapping 80% of the speakers covered much the same ground as the previous meeting, with concerned teachers and citizens speaking out for student choice and against school board censorship and homophobia. Many seemed to be competing to see who could deliver the best roast of Misters Abuismail and Twigg. Abuismail kept getting up from his seat and leaving for lengthy periods, to the great annoyance of many. Even when he was present, he stared at his phone and did not make eye contact.

The remaining speakers, who numbered fewer than 10, decried the filth on the library shelves, the mask mandate, and suggested that the staff of the schools might be full of sexual predators. Predators go where prey is, insisted one woman repeatedly. She asked for regular background checks on teachers and other school employees. She read a sexually explicit passage from The Kite Runner. I noted that one of the maskless women in the back put headphones on one of her grand-daughters but not the other one. The woman then read the infamous peach scene from Call Me By Your Name. This was not the only time that an anti-book speaker read explicit passages, but thankfully this was the only time that a warning, so that parents could remove their children from the auditorium, didnt come first.

It went back and forth like that for the rest of the evening. A man pointed out that removing books with explicit content would mean removing the Bible. A librarian spoke about the necessity of stocking diverse books in order to enable marginalized students to see themselves represented in the books that they read. A woman spoke at length about freedom and the Constitution before insisting that schools are indoctrinating students rather than teaching them and that biology is redefined in the classroom.

A teacher pointed out that theyre not assigning these books to students, just making them available. She said that it is important to allow students to set their own boundaries. to choose for themselves. Sometimes they choose books that are not the right fit: maybe its not a subject they like, or the style of prose doesnt work for them, or its too mature or immature; when that happens they put down the book and get another. Sometimes a student chooses a book that they like but it contains scenes that they arent prepared for; when that happens they put down the book or skip ahead in it. The important thing is that they choose and are in control of how they engage with the material, unlike those in the auditorium when Abuismail and earlier speakers read explicit excerpts.

A man named Daniel explained that he does not believe that we should ban books. Hes all for legal pornography, yet believes that schools should stick to core academics and not allow morality to guide their reading lists. He then railed against school libraries for shelving sexually explicit material. As he continued, it became evident that by morality he meant what some call the gay agenda and not his own internalized Puritanism.

Of the small number of people who spoke in support of removing books, Daniel was the only one willing have a local reporter interview him on camera. I ducked out of the auditorium to watch the interview and then to listen as others chatted him up. Daniel claimed to know the man who runs the Spotsy411 page and insisted that he was only trolling people when he created the book burning event, that he never really planned it.

He repeatedly complained that everyone had latched onto book burning, saying that it was a straw man that distracted from the real issue: that he had failed as a parent to prepare his children to navigate the culture at large and therefore could not trust them to make choices for themselves, therefore it was imperative that the rest of the world continue to shield his children. (NOTE: Those were not his exact words but his meaning was clear.)

The rest of the school board meeting was largely uneventful. No books were burned.

View post:
The Book Burning That Wasn't - Book and Film Globe

Historically, the FDIC operated collegially: although the chair presided over board meetings, the chair would allow free discussion and a vote on any item a director wished to have on the agenda. The current fracas arose when a board member sought to put an item approval of a request for information about the process for evaluating bank mergers on the boards meeting agenda. The request for information is a preliminary step in reexamining how the FDIC approves bank mergers, which is part of Bidens pro-competition agenda.

The board members request to put the item on the agenda is the sort of pro forma action that has always been approved by FDIC chairs in the past, even when they have not supported the item. But McWilliams broke faith with the agencys tradition of collaborative engagement and refused to put the item on the agenda. Instead, McWilliams attempted to deep-six the request for information and any reexamination of the bank merger process by committing it to bureaucratic purgatory.

After McWilliams unprecedented departure from FDIC tradition, the board majority proceeded to put the request for information up for a vote without a meeting, as expressly permitted by FDIC bylaws. Even though a majority of the board voted in favor of issuing the request, McWilliams declared the vote invalid and forbade the FDIC staff from taking action on it.

Lets be clear: McWilliams does not have a legal leg to stand on. The FDIC is structured as a government corporation, and the law provides that the management of the FDIC shall be vested in a Board of Directors. Nothing in federal statute or the FDICs bylaws gives the chair exclusive power to set meeting agendas, much less decide when a board vote is valid.

McWilliams all but admits this. In the course of the controversy, including in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, she has not once pointed to any legal authority for her position. Instead, her position stands solely on purported FDIC tradition. It has never been FDIC tradition, however, for a chair to refuse to put an item on the agenda, much less when asked to do so by a majority of the board.

Collegiality is a two-way street. After McWilliams refused to allow the FDIC to function according to its normal collegial procedures, she can hardly complain that the board majority decided to do things differently (although completely by the book). The FDIC is designed to function as a board democracy, in which majority rule controls, but McWilliams has recast the agency as a personal dictatorship, willfully ignoring the consequences of the 2020 election that gave Democrats a majority on the FDIC board.

The fight at the FDIC reflects a broader shift in the politics of financial regulation. Bank regulation used to be a clubby, boring world where partisanship was secondary. This collegial atmosphere was facilitated by bank regulatory agencies political independence from the White House.

The norm of agency independence, however, has been severely eroded in recent years by the GOP and its allies. Mick Mulvaney working double-duty as OMB director (serving at the pleasure of the president) and Acting CFPB director (nominally independent) showed that Republicans had little regard for the agency independence when it was inconvenient. Conservative majorities on the Supreme Court further undermined agency independence with decisions holding that the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency are removable at will by the president.

The new reality is that bank regulation is an ugly, partisan blood sport. Republicans have recognized and embraced this new reality. Thats the game McWilliams is playing with her disingenuous appeals to a selectively interpreted FDIC tradition as somehow controlling over unambiguous statutory language.

McWilliams is acting in bad faith. She knows that she merely needs to run the clock to prevail. Her term as chair formally extends until June 2023, but she can continue in the position until a successor is confirmed, something that is unlikely if Republicans retake the Senate in 2022. If McWilliams can unilaterally control the FDIC, as she claims, she can block Democrats initiatives on a range of financial regulatory matters for all of Bidens current term.

The FDIC board majority could bring suit against McWilliams, but that will take months to reach a final resolution, and time is on McWilliams side. The alternative and best move is for Biden to fire McWilliams. The FDIC chair is removable at will. There is no statutory limitation of only for cause removal. Even if there were a for cause requirement, however, the president already has ample cause to fire McWilliams. The president is constitutionally required to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. McWilliams has failed to faithfully execute the law by refusing to acknowledge a valid vote by the majority of the board. To be sure, McWilliams could contest her removal in court, but she would be the one facing the uphill fight in that situation.

The real question in the FDIC power struggle is whether Democrats will continue to play by outmoded rules of engagement. If they do, they will lose, and Bidens pro-competitive agenda will be stymied. The President might not want to spend political coin on the FDIC power struggle, but if he fails to do so, he will embolden Republicans in other agencies and in Congress to engage in further bad faith and illegal tactics.

Any hope of a dtente or return to pre-Tea Party political norms at the FDIC and more generally requires Democrats to deploy the same hardball tactics as Republicans, so that there will be no advantage to either party. Unless McWilliams quickly backs down and commits to lawful governance, Biden should make clear that he understands the new rules of the game and fire her for her illegal administrative putsch.

Read more from the original source:
Opinion | Its Time for Biden to Fire the FDIC Chief - POLITICO