Trump’s Cabinet Is Increasingly Bare

President Donald Trump has lost yet another cabinet secretary. On Sunday, he forced out his second secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, without naming a successor. In fact, the official he announced as the acting secretary, Kevin McAleenan, isn’t legally entitled to that position, which instead should go to Claire Grady. Who is that? She’s currently the acting deputy secretary – because that position, too, is vacant and has been for a year. (Trump will presumably need to fire her to make way for McAleenan.)

At least there’s a nominee for Homeland Security’s chief financial officer. Granted, his name was only put forward in March, after the previous nominee was withdrawn 10 months ago. FEMA? Trump named Jeffrey Byard on Feb. 15 after the last administrator resigned, but don’t expect Senate action any time soon: The president hasn’t gotten around to formally submitting the nomination yet, almost two months later. As for the assistant secretary for policy, Trump hasn’t nominated anyone at all – after almost 27 months in office.

All in all, of the 18 most important positions in the department subject to presidential nomination and Senate confirmation, Nielsen’s departure will leave only nine filled. This is almost entirely Trump’s fault: He has failed to select any nominees for some positions, caused other personnel to leave at unprecedented rates by making impossible demands, and done such a poor job of picking people that many have withdrawn before they could get confirmed.

One reason that Trump is constantly frustrated by the failure of Homeland Security to do what he wants is that some of what he wants is illegal. Another reason is that he’s inept at bargaining with members of Congress, so he can’t get them to advance his priorities. Yet another reason is Trump’s well-known pattern of issuing threats and then caving, as he did last week over shutting down the border. But a final and crucial reason, which Trump doesn’t seem to appreciate, is that it’s easy for permanent civil servants to resist a president who doesn’t have confirmed nominees in place.

Meanwhile, there’s still no nominee for secretary of defense. Later this week, Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan will have served longer than all previous acting defense secretaries put together. Granted, there were only two of them, but that’s because every previous president has treated the position as a priority.

It’s now been more than a year since Trump had a full, confirmed cabinet, something he’s only had for about four and a half months of his presidency. He’s unlikely to change that any time soon.

It’s not clear why the president is so negligent in this regard. Trump himself has suggested that he likes “actings” because he can bully them more easily than Senate-confirmed nominees – not seeming to realize that the same weakness those officials display to him makes them incapable of carrying out his instructions when they return to their departments. An alternate explanation is that Trump doesn’t have a firm grasp of how the federal government works or what his own job is supposed to entail.

1. Sarah Binder at the Monkey Cage on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s latest maneuver.

2. Norm Ornstein on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler.

3. Dara Lind on Nielsen.

4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Michael R. Strain on Trump’s terrible Fed choices.

5. And Rick Reilly on Trump and golf.

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