title:  White House Sinks To New Lows Of Obstruction; Orders Every Agency To Ignore Democrats’ Oversight Requests
text: The White House is beginning to panic. At least that s the most logical conclusion from their latest jaw-dropping move. In an order that s pretty much unprecedented (wouldn t it be nice if we had just one day without something unprecedented coming from this White House?), the Trump White House has told various government departments that they are not to cooperate with Democrats period.Reportedly, this has been happening since Trump took office. They have formulated a policy that says that agencies are only allowed to respond to committee chairs. Republicans hold both houses of Congress, so every committee is chaired by a Republican.The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president. You have Republicans leading the House, the Senate and the White House,  a White House official said.  I don t think you d have the Democrats responding to every minority member request if they were in the same position. A White House spokeswoman said the policy of the administration is  to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party.  There are no Democratic chairmen, as Congress is controlled by Republicans.Source: PoliticoThe information blackout, at least according to White House officials, isn t toward every request from Democrats, just the requests from oversight committees. Whew, that should make us all feel so much better. It s only the agencies that are tagged with making sure laws are followed that are being hobbled.While Obama s White House didn t answer every request from Republicans (admittedly, many are meant to back the opposition into a corner), there was never an explicit policy.Now, of course, while the agencies are under the executive umbrella, they work for the office of the presidency, not for the president personally. For Trump, though, that seems to be far too nuanced a distinction. While agencies are legally free (and some would argue ethically obligated) to abide by oversight requests, even from the minority party, Trump has proven that he will fire anyone who steps out of line.This could certainly backfire, though. If Trump is still in office by the time midterms roll around, and if he keeps destroying the Republican Party, we could see a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress. That would give Democrats committee chairs. While the White House could still ignore Democrats  requests, there would be no way around the word  obstruction. Featured image via Pool/Getty Images