DL Open Thread: Saturday, March 6, 2021

Manchin Has Mini-Snit, Holds Covid Relief Hostage For Nine Hours.  He may not be President, but he sure exercises power–against Democratic constituencies.

Biden Dumps Another Trump Appointee.  Good:

The White House fired the general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Friday, continuing a push to oust controversial Trump appointees viewed as hostile to the mission of the agencies they worked for.

Sharon Gustafson, who as the commission’s general counsel was in charge of its high-stakes litigation over workplace discrimination on issues like race, religion and sex, was dismissed by the White House by letter on Friday afternoon after refusing to resign, according to Gustafson’s resignation letter, obtained by The Washington Post, as well as a source familiar with the White House letter who was not authorized to speak about it.

Gustafson had raised the hackles of civil rights, LGBTQ and women’s groups during her confirmation hearing, by what they saw as “evasive” answers she gave about the rights of LGBTQ workers during her Senate confirmation hearing.

“Her evasiveness suggests that she is unwilling or reluctant to preserve the EEOC’s critical mission of defending LGBT people’s well-established legal rights,” several human rights advocates wrote in a 2018 letter to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the then-chair of the committee that deals with labor issues, and ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.).