I don't know about you, but if I'd served the Bush administration and then the Obama administration and then two days after the new guy comes to office see four different departments hit with gag orders over tiny, tedious, fundamentally inoffensive little things... ...well, I wouldn't contemplate if I was going to resign but when and then maximize my benefit/minimize my pain. These aren't folx that are gonna go play shuffleboard in Ft. Lauderdale. These are guys who are going to join corporate boards, become named partners at lobbying law firms, and otherwise benefit from the swing of the revolving door. If they pull the ripcord now they can argue that they're ready and open to positions that form the basis of a "government in exile" (because make no mistake - all these "unofficial" moves by various departments are basically setting up a defiant structure) and when the government in exile regains power, they step right back into whatever they were doing. During the Bush administration, Kim Jong Il didn't negotiate with George W Bush or any of the administration's people in the state department or diplomatic corps. He met and negotiated with Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, former head of the DOE and former ambassador to the United Nations. Li'l Kim didn't give a fuck who was president, he wanted to talk to the adult in the room. Expect to see more of this: clearly, the Trump administration has no ability to act seriously enough to be allowed to the big kids' table so expect the big kids to find another table.
Put another way: There's the shit that happens through the legislative process, and there's the shit that happens before the legislative process. One of the principle complaints of civil libertarians is that citizens have effectively zero recourse through the latter, which is one reason lobbyists etc. work on it the hardest. The unfairness is related to the fact that the results of each process are similar, where one has input through government while the other does not. We are currently in a peculiar position where our executive branch appears to care not a whit for the standards and practices of the rest of the United States, let alone its desires. As a consequence, expect far more back-room stuff. Let's step back for a moment and consider the fact that the country is de facto in the hands of a man who gets up at 6am to watch TMZ and whose executive actions take the form of shouting at an assistant to blast something out on Twitter via an unsecured android phone. An end-run around that last sentence becomes an expedient and logical maneuver.
Awesome. TIL.During the Bush administration, Kim Jong Il didn't negotiate with George W Bush or any of the administration's people in the state department or diplomatic corps. He met and negotiated with Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, former head of the DOE and former ambassador to the United Nations. Li'l Kim didn't give a fuck who was president, he wanted to talk to the adult in the room.