The U.S. has acting secretaries of defense and interior, attorney general, White House chief of staff, and heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Management and Budget, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and other major federal agencies. For President Trump, this is a feature not a bug, he told CBS's Margaret Brennan in his pre-Super Bowl interview. "It's easier to make moves when they're acting," he said. "Really, I like acting because I can move so quickly. It gives me more flexibility."

To maintain that flexibility, the Trump administration is resorting to legally dubious means, putting policies at risk of falling to legal challenges. The large number of vacancies and temporary agency heads is also starting to earn Trump some pushback from Senate Republicans, The Washington Post reports. "It's a lot, it's way too many," said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). "You want to have confirmed individuals there because they have a lot more authority to be able to make decisions and implement policy when you have a confirmed person in that spot."

In fact, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in July, "an action taken by any person" not complying with the Vacancies Act "in the performance of any function or duty of a vacant office ... shall have no force or effect." This hasn't been tested in court, yet, the Post notes, but legal experts say it's a plausible position. "Congress specifically sought to limit this sort of strategy," said Nina Mendelson, a law professor at the University of Michigan. "Legally binding actions taken by these officials would be subject to challenge."

Trump tends to blame Democrats for the numerous vacancies — 54 percent of his civilian executive branch nominations have been confirmed, according to the Partnership for Public Service — but Republicans have controlled the Senate for his entire presidency and Trump hasn't even nominated 150 of 705 Senate-confirmable posts. Peter Weber

On Tuesday, Sri Lanka raised the official death toll from Sunday's coordinated bombings at churches and luxury hotels to 321 dead and 500 wounded, and Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardene gave a possible motive for the attack. "The preliminary investigations have revealed that what happened in Sri Lanka was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch," New Zealand, he told Sri Lanka's parliament.

A 28-year-old Australian white supremacist has been charged with murdering 50 people in two mosques during Friday prayer services on March 15. Sri Lanka has blamed a domestic Islamist militant group, National Thowfeek Jamaath, for Sunday's suicide bombings, which struck three Christian churches during Easter services and three hotels almost simultaneously, followed later by two more attacks. At least 40 people have been arrested as of Tuesday morning, including the driver of the van allegedly used by the initial seven suicide bombers, Sri Lanka said.

Sri Lanka responded to the bombings by shutting down social media sites and granting the military sweeping powers not used since the country's 26-year-old civil war ended in 2009. But Sri Lanka's government is also struggling to explain why it did not respond to warnings from foreign intelligence services, starting April 4, that National Thowfeek Jamaath was planning to target "some important churches" in a suicide terrorist attack to be carried out "shortly." Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Cabinet were unaware of the intelligence reports, blaming political dysfunction. Peter Weber

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is performing enviably in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary polls and he's getting glowing press, but his record isn't spotless. And at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Monday night, he got a question about an incident from 2012 involving his demotion of South Bend's first black police chief. CNN's Anderson Cooper set up the question by noting that the former police chief, Darryl Boykins, had allegedly ordered people to secretly record racist comments by senior white police officers.

A student asked Buttigieg what was on Boykins' tapes. "The answer is I don't know," Buttigeig said, explaining that the way the tapes were recorded potentially violated the federal wire tap act. "That's a law punishable by a term in prison and so I'm not going to violate it, even though I want to know what's on those tapes like everybody else does," he said. Buttigieg said he demoted Boykins after learning he "was the subject of a criminal investigation, not from him but the FBI, and it made it very hard to me to trust him as one of my own appointees."

Buttigieg conceded that he didn't handle the situation perfectly and said he learned a lot about the need to seek input from various communities and improving relations between communities of color and police.

Buttigieg also mused about whether coming out as gay earlier would have derailed his public-service career, pointed out that "God doesn't have a political party," argued that it's a good thing not to "drown people in minutia before we've vindicated the values that animate our policies," and said that while Trump has "made it pretty clear he deserves impeachment," that's up to "the House and Senate to figure out" and he thinks the most decisive way to "relegate Trumpism to the dustbin of history" is to hand Trump "an absolute thumping at the ballot box." Peter Weber

President Trump's job approval rating has dropped 5 points since Special Counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report was released Thursday, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Monday evening, and Trump's new 39 percent approval matches the lowest point in his presidency, right after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The poll also found that 57 percent of voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing, putting him 18 percentage points underwater.

The poll also found a declining appetite for impeachment — 34 percent favor starting impeachment proceedings while 48 percent say no — even though 41 percent of voters agreed that Trump's campaign worked with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and a 47 percent plurality said Trump tried to impede Mueller's investigation; 41 percent said Trump's campaign did not work with Russia and 34 percent said he did not try to hinder Mueller's probe. In a rare bit of bipartisan agreement, 48 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of Republicans, and 43 percent of independents said Mueller's investigation was handled fairly.

Politico/Morning Consult polled 1,992 voters Friday through Sunday, and the survey has a margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points. Other polls have also found slippage in Trump's approval rating since the report was released; FiveThirtyEight's polling aggregate has Trump's approval at 41.3 percent, from 42 percent on Thursday, while RealClearPolitics puts his aggregate approval rating at 42.9 percent, from 44 percent on Thursday. Peter Weber

On Monday night, White House Deputy Counsel Michael Purpura informed House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) that acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had ordered former White House security clearance chief Carl Kline to defy a subpoena and skip a deposition scheduled for Tuesday. Kline's lawyer said in a separate letter that his client, who now works at the Defense Department, would comply with the White House's order. "With two masters from two equal branches of government, we will follow the instructions of the one that employs him," said the lawyer, Robert Driscoll.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating how President Trump's White House approves security clearances. It subpoenaed Kline in early April after a whistleblower, career White House Personnel Security Office staffer Tricia Newbold, testified that Kline had overruled his staff and approved at least 25 security clearance applications rejected due to serious red flags, then retaliated against her when she spoke out. One of the senior officials whose application Kline approved despite significant concerns was reportedly Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law.

Earlier Monday, Cummings had rejected the White House's request that someone from the White House counsel's office attend the deposition with Kline, saying his committee would hold Kline in contempt if he ignored the subpoena. Peter Weber

During the day, he delivered eggs and candy and baskets filled with toys to delighted children, but by night, he was throwing down in the streets of Orlando.

The Easter Bunny in question was actually Antoine McDonald, who told WESH he decided to dress up in celebration of the holiday while bar hopping across town with friends. At about 10:30 p.m., he said, he saw a man and woman outside the Underground Public House get into a fight, and while other people stood by and watched, he raced over to break it up. McDonald got in a few blows of his own against the man before police arrived and told the crowd to disperse. No one was arrested, and police say it's unclear how the altercation started.

McDonald said this wasn't planned, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time wearing the right costume. "I didn't say, 'Hey, look, look at this,'" McDonald stated. "No, I just rushed over there. The real deal. Nothing fake." Catherine Garcia

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Monday that if elected president, she will give Congress 100 days to "get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws," and if they "fail to do it, then I will take executive action."



The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate made this promise Monday night during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. Her executive action would require that anyone who sells more than five guns a year conduct background checks on people purchasing guns; allow the ATF to take away the license of any gun dealer that breaks the law; and no longer allow fugitives from justice to purchase handguns or other weapons.

Harris decried the fact that students of all ages have to go through school shooting drills, and blasted Congress for failing to act when it comes to protecting kids from mass shootings, saying there are "supposed leaders who have failed to have the courage to reject a false choice, which suggests you're either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone's guns away." There needs to be "reasonable gun safety laws in this country," she added, "starting with universal background checks and renewal of the assault weapons ban." Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia