Trump's Nominees & Hirees, contd. II

Is Donald Trump Installing a Mole in the Mueller Probe?
Brian Benczkowski, a former aide to Jeff Sessions, will soon be in a position to share information about the grand jury investigation with the president
Marcy Wheeler | October 16, 2017

On September 28, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved on a party line vote the nomination of Brian Benczkowski to be the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. The vote put President Donald Trump one step closer to installing a potential mole at the department, with the ability to inform him of any wiretaps or significant developments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury investigation into the possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

...Benczkowski, a partner at the firm Kirkland & Ellis, has no prosecutorial experience and almost no experience in a courtroom...he showed “really poor judgment” when he chose to represent Alfa Bank, which has been implicated in the Russia scandal, between his stint on Trump’s transition team and his June nomination to be assistant attorney general. (Alfa Bank came under suspicion after it was discovered that one of its servers had communicated with a server tied to the Trump Organization.)

...Benczkowski might serve as “a back channel source of information” from Mueller’s special counsel investigation to Sessions, who has recused himself from the case...having Benczkowski as the head of the criminal division could effectively breach the recusal. But there may be a still bigger risk: Benczkowski could share information about wiretaps and proceedings from the grand jury directly with the president.

The cause for concern comes from an old Department of Justice interpretation of the PATRIOT Act. Along with expanding surveillance authorities, the PATRIOT Act permitted any government lawyer to share national security-related grand jury or wiretap information with any government official as long as it would help them perform their job better...the authorization of such sharing explicitly extended to “clandestine intelligence activities by an intelligence service or network of a foreign power or by an agent of foreign power”—precisely the kind of nation-state spying at the heart of the Russian investigation.

...Trump...might order a Justice Department lawyer to tell him what evidence Mueller had against Kushner, or whether Mike Flynn or former campaign manager Paul Manafort were preparing to cooperate with Mueller’s prosecutors if they didn’t get an immediate pardon...

https://newrepublic.com/article/145323/donald-trump-installing-mole-mueller-prob...

The worst resolution to Trump nightmare--except perhaps for "fire & fury" it might prevent--is military coup. As retired general, John Kelly was given exemption to serve as WH chief of staff. Below, NYer detected language of military coup in Kelly's defense of Trump call to grieving widow:

John Kelly and the Language of the Military Coup
Masha Gessen | October 20, 2017

Consider this nightmare scenario: a military coup. You don’t have to strain your imagination—all you have to do is watch Thursday’s White House press briefing, in which the chief of staff, John Kelly, defended President Trump’s phone call to a military widow, Myeshia Johnson. The press briefing could serve as a preview of what a military coup in this country would look like, for it was in the logic of such a coup that Kelly advanced his four arguments.

Argument 1. Those who criticize the President don’t know what they’re talking about because they haven’t served in the military. ... in totalitarian societies, which demand complete mobilization,...dying for one’s country becomes the ultimate badge of honor...No Soviet general would have dared utter the kind of statement that’s attributed to General George S. Patton: “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”

2. The President did the right thing because he did exactly what his general told him to do....how to make the call to Myeshia Johnson...

3. Communication between the President and a military widow is no one’s business but theirs...the President, communicating with a citizen in his official capacity, had a right to confidentiality—he was claiming that this right was “sacred.” ...although the debacle with a Gold Star family had been Trump’s doing...

4. Citizens are ranked based on their proximity to dying for their country. Kelly...was now explicitly denying a majority of Americans—or the journalists representing them—the right to ask questions...framed explicitly in terms of national loyalty...Kelly told Americans who haven’t served in the military that he pities them. “We don’t look down upon those of you who haven’t served,” he said. “In fact, in a way we are a little bit sorry because you’ll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our servicemen and women do—not for any other reason than that they love this country.”

When Kelly replaced the ineffectual Reince Priebus as the chief of staff, a sigh of relief emerged: at least the general would impose some discipline on the Administration. Now we have a sense of what military discipline in the White House sounds like.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/john-kelly-and-the-language-of-the-mili...

ETA____________________________________________________

5. Defer to military officer's version of history, even when he's demonstrably wrong, wrong, wrong:

...White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood by Kelly’s comments and cautioned a reporter that it would be “highly inappropriate” to get into a debate with “a four-star Marine general” over whether he misstated facts...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/10/21/trump-takes-anot...

Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots
A scientist who worked for the chemical industry now shapes policy on hazardous chemicals. Within the
E.P.A., there is fear that public health is at risk.
ERIC LIPTON | OCT. 21, 2017

WASHINGTON — For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has struggled to prevent an ingredient once used in stain-resistant carpets and nonstick pans from contaminating drinking water.

The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, has been linked to kidney cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders and other serious health problems.

So scientists and administrators in the E.P.A.’s Office of Water were alarmed in late May when a top Trump administration appointee insisted upon the rewriting of a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and therefore regulate it.

The revision was among more than a dozen demanded by the appointee, Nancy B. Beck, after she joined the E.P.A.’s toxic chemical unit in May as a top deputy. For the previous five years, she had been an executive at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade association.

The changes directed by Dr. Beck may result in an “underestimation of the potential risks to human health and the environment” caused by PFOA and other so-called legacy chemicals no longer sold on the market, the Office of Water’s top official warned in a confidential internal memo obtained by The New York Times.

The E.P.A.’s abrupt new direction on legacy chemicals is part of a broad initiative by the Trump administration to change the way the federal government evaluates health and environmental risks associated with hazardous chemicals, making it more aligned with the industry’s wishes.

It is a cause with far-reaching consequences for consumers and chemical companies, as the E.P.A. regulates some 80,000 different chemicals, many of them highly toxic and used in workplaces, homes and everyday products. If chemicals are deemed less risky, they are less likely to be subjected to heavy oversight and restrictions...

...Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, until last month (EPA's) top official overseeing pesticides and toxic chemicals, say the dangers are real and the pushback is often a tactic for deflecting accountability — and shoring up industry profits at the expense of public safety.

...In March, Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. chief, overrode the recommendation of Ms. Hamnett and agency scientists to ban the commercial use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, blamed for developmental disabilities in children.

The E.P.A.’s new leadership also pressed agency scientists to re-evaluate a plan to ban certain uses of two dangerous chemicals that have caused dozens of deaths or severe health problems: methylene chloride, which is found in paint strippers, and trichloroethylene, which removes grease from metals and is used in dry cleaning.

...Mr. Pruitt has selected a replacement for Ms. Hamnett (recently retired): Michael L. Dourson, a toxicologist who has spent the last two decades as a consultant helping businesses fight E.P.A. restrictions on the use of potentially toxic compounds. He is already at work at the agency in a temporary post while he awaits Senate confirmation.

The American Chemistry Council, and its members, are among the top private-sector sponsors of Mr. Dourson’s research. Last year, he collaborated on a paper that was funded by the trade group. His fellow author was Dr. Beck.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/us/trump-epa-chemicals-regulations.html

Fascinating overview of Mike Pence. Interesting that bumpy and slow transition that gave Flynn the NSA and Kochs influence on appts and deregulation had roots in Trump superstition against preparing to govern before winning election, plus Jared & Ivanka's resentment of Chris Christie, who had jailed the elder Kushner.

The Danger of President Pence
Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own risks.
Jane Mayer | Oct 23, 2017

...Kelly Anne Conway...“People started to see an authentic, affable conservative who was not in a bad mood about it.” Michael Leppert, a Democratic lobbyist in Indiana, saw Pence differently. “His politics were always way outside the mainstream,” Leppert said. “He just does it with a smile on his face instead of a snarl.”

...Mike Lofgren, a former Republican congressional staff member, who has become a Trump critic, “(Pence) never really put a foot wrong politically. Beneath the Bible-thumping earnestness was a calculating and ambitious pol.”

...He sponsored an unsuccessful amendment to the Affordable Care Act that would have made it legal for government-funded hospitals to turn away a dying woman who needed an abortion. (Later, as governor of Indiana, he signed a bill barring women from aborting a physically abnormal fetus; the bill also required fetal burial or cremation, including after a miscarriage. A federal judge recently found the law unconstitutional.)

...(not)“much money going from the Kochs to Pence before he promoted the ‘No Climate Tax’ pledge.” Afterward, “he was the Kochs’ guy, and they’ve been showering him with money ever since.”

...In a few surprising instances, Pence veered from conservative orthodoxy. In 2014, he broke with many other Republican governors and agreed to expand Medicaid in Indiana...waivers...all Indiana residents were required to demonstrate “personal responsibility” by paying something toward the cost of their medical services. Critics argued that such measures were needlessly punitive toward poor residents.

...(anti-gay) Religious Freedom Restoration Act...Even the Republican establishment turned on Pence...Within days, the (IN) legislature had pushed through a less discriminatory version of the bill, and Pence signed it, before hastily leaving town for the weekend.

...Indiana’s H.I.V. outbreak...(under pressure, Pence) supported allowing a (syringe) exchange program as an emergency measure, but only on a temporary basis and only in Scott County, with no state funding...the number of new H.I.V. cases fell. But Republican leaders later stripped (Ed Clere, a Republican state legislator who chaired the House Committee on Public Health) of his committee chairmanship, a highly unusual event

...Clere remains bitter about Pence. “It was all part of his pattern of political expediency,” he said. “He was stridently against it until it became politically expedient to support it.” Clere, a Christian who opposes abortion, told me that he now finds Pence’s piety hypocritical. “He says he’s ‘pro-life,’ ” Clere said. “But people were dying.” When Clere was asked whom he would rather have as President—Trump or Pence—he replied, “I’d take Trump every day of the week, and twice on Sunday.”

...After the November, 2015, terrorist attacks in Paris, Pence, like several other U.S. governors, issued a controversial executive order barring the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the state.

...Pence has also been criticized for his treatment of Keith Cooper, a former resident of Elkhart, Indiana, who spent nine years in prison for an armed robbery that he didn’t commit. He was released in 2006, but on the condition that he admit guilt, which made it impossible for him to get a decent job. The prosecutor and the Indiana Parole Board, citing DNA evidence and victim recantations, urged Governor Pence to pardon him immediately. But Pence dragged out the process for years...left the decision to his successor, Governor Eric Holcomb (R)...pardon(ed him) within weeks of taking office...on the basis of innocence, rather than clemency...(Cooper)..."I don’t forgive Mike Pence, and never will. He talks all this God stuff, but he’s biased. He hates Muslims, he hates gay people, and he hates minorities. He didn’t want to be the first white man in Indiana to pardon an innocent black man.”

...(Gaming)...Despite Pence’s straitlaced reputation, he had closer ties with these figures than most people knew.

...In 2016, according to a campaign-finance disclosure form, Pence had one bank account, which held less than fifteen thousand dollars.

...When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, revealing Trump’s boast about grabbing women “by the pussy,” Karen Pence was horrified. According to a former campaign aide, Pence refused to take Trump’s calls and sent him a letter saying that he and Karen, as Christians, were deeply offended by his actions...in public Pence was forgiving...

...Three days after the election, Trump pushed aside Christie, who had been overseeing his transition team, and put Pence in charge...had promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, but he had no experience governing, and few political contacts. He was also superstitious, and during his campaign he had deflected discussions about post-election staffing, fearing that it would bring bad luck. Christie’s team had been quietly gathering résumés and making plans for months, but Pence’s team threw out the research, dumping thirty binders of material into the trash. “Donald Trump ran against the establishment, but there was a vacuum,” a member of the earlier transition team said. “Movement conservatives jumped in...”

...Trump began to appoint an extraordinary number of officials with ties to the Kochs and to Pence, especially in positions that affected Koch Industries financially, such as those dealing with regulatory, environmental, and fiscal policy.

...Senator Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat,...“One by one, all the things that Trump campaigned on that annoyed the Koch brothers are being thrown overboard. And one by one the Koch brothers’ priorities are moving up the list.” Trump’s populist, nationalist agenda has largely been replaced by the agenda of the corporate right...

...(General Mike) Flynn...was not on any of the original transition team’s long lists for government appointments. Christie considered him too risky...Ivanka Trump, who was a member of the transition team’s executive council, ...praising Flynn’s “amazing loyalty to my father,” she turned to him and asked, “General, what job do you want?”...Flynn said...he’d settle for national-security adviser...There is no indication that Pence raised any objections about Flynn to Trump, even after ...(warned in writing) about Flynn’s questionable ethics...

...before Comey’s dismissal, Pence had attended a White House meeting where Trump discussed his intention to fire Comey and devised a plan to get the Justice Department to support the move.

Several law professors have argued that the Vice-President could be vulnerable to charges of obstructing justice, or “misprision of a felony,” for participating in a meeting about shutting down the federal investigation and then providing a false cover story to the public.

...Unlike most Vice-Presidents, Pence has been given no particular portfolio of issues or projects...publicly deferential to his President...Trump... likes to “let Pence know who’s boss.”...mocking...needling...

...Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to the former Vice-President Joe Biden, ...“There is no success for Mike Pence unless Trump works—he cannot run far enough or fast enough to not get hit by the falling tree,” Klain said. “But he may think he can.”...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/the-danger-of-president-pence

These generals are following orders — even as they lead America off a cliff
Michael A. Cohen | Oct 24, 2017

...For those who’ve spent their entire career fetishizing the chain of command (and rightly so), (the generals') overriding impulse is to see the mission through and serve their principal, even if that means taking positions they don’t necessarily share — or even consider dangerous — but that reflect the attitudes of their boss. Saying no to the commander-in-chief, based on personal disagreement, goes against decades of military training and culture.

...For all the loose talk of how placing generals in positions of political power could produce a military coup, the opposite may be occurring. By enabling an incompetent and increasingly unstable president — and lending their military standing to policies and political attacks — they risk delegitimizing the military and turning it into just another political and partisan actor. Once billed as the so-called “adults in the room” who would hold in check Trump’s worst impulses, Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis have increasingly become part of the problem.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/10/24/these-generals-are-following-orde...

Scott Pruitt blocks scientists with EPA funding from serving as agency advisers
Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin | October 31, 2017

...a fundamental shift, one that could change the scientific and technical advice that historically has guided the agency as it crafts environmental regulations. The decision to bar any researcher who receives EPA grant money from serving as an adviser appears to be unprecedented.

...EPA will not impose a similar litmus test on scientific advisers who receive grants from outside sources. But Pruitt said they will undergo the same sort of ethics review that is already in place “to ensure that there aren’t issues of potential conflict with areas that they’re working upon.”

...“Pruitt is turning the idea of ‘conflict of interest’ on its head — he claims federal research grants should exclude a scientist from an EPA advisory board but industry funding shouldn’t,” Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “The consequences of these decisions aren’t just bad for a few scientists. This could mean that there’s no independent voice ensuring that EPA follows the science on everything from drinking water pollution to atmospheric chemical exposure.”

...Among the expected appointees are sharp proponents of deregulation who have argued both in academic circles and while serving in government that federal regulators need to raise the bar before imposing new burdens on the private sector...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scott-pruitt-blocks-scien...

Trump's new ambassador to Canada has her challenges:

‘Both sides’ of climate change debate are valid, argues new U.S. ambassador to Canada
She also thinks the Trump administration is leading on environmental issues.
E.A. Crunden | Oct 26, 2017

...(Kelly) Craft, the first woman to serve in her position (US Ambassador to Canada), is a businesswoman, philanthropist and major donor to the Republican Party. She is also married to Kentucky coal magnate Joe Craft, who actively criticized the climate policies of the Obama administration. He is the president and CEO of Alliance Resource Partners LP — one of the largest coal producers in the eastern United States.

...Clashes over NAFTA and the environment won’t make Craft’s job any easier. Roland Paris, Trudeau’s first foreign policy adviser, told the Toronto Star that Trump’s unpopularity over the border isn’t going to help Craft’s odds of success.

“Among other things, she will be asked to explain why President Trump seems inclined to treat Canada, America’s closest ally and friend, as an economic adversary rather than as a partner,” Paris said. He also noted it might be hard for Craft to do her job “given the confused state of the Trump administration.”...

https://thinkprogress.org/climate-denial-canada-f1c079162a72/

___________________________________________________

Canada’s doing just fine, thanks

U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft, in her first Canadian print interview, stated, “The golden rule is we want Canadians to be as successful as Americans.”

I doubt Canadians want to be “as successful as Americans.” In February, Scott Gilmore, writing in MacLean’s magazine, provided some statistics that show Canadians are already more successful than Americans. We live 2.5 years longer than Americans. Americans are six times more likely to be incarcerated. The World Economic Forum ranks Canadians as the sixth happiest people in the world. Americans are 13th.

Fifty-nine per cent of Canadians have college degrees versus 46 per cent in the U.S. Home ownership rates are five per cent higher in Canada than in the U.S. Canadians are twice as likely as Americans to move from the poorest quintile of the population to the wealthiest. And perhaps most telling for the citizens of the “Land of the Free,” the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index considers Canadians to be the sixth freest people in the world. Americans are way behind, in 23rd place.

So Ambassador Craft, I suggest to you revisit your Golden Rule. Instead, during your appointment as Ambassador to Canada, you should try to help your citizens be as successful as Canadians. As helpful Canadians, we would be happy to show you how.

Robert Macdonald, Ottawa
http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/letters/todays-letters-taxing-sugary-drinks-fil...

6, contd. I have heard that kids' immune systems can benefit from early exposure to microbes, but not chemicals in the air! Water pollutants, at least, have endocrine effects at vanishingly low concentrations. (Phalen's 2004 paper, calling for more research on dose-response of air pollutants, is at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2659607/. )

Incoming EPA Adviser Thinks Air Is Too Clean
Summer Meza | 11/2/17

...Robert Phalen, an air pollution researcher at the Irvine campus of the University of California, said in 2012 that children need to breathe irritants so that their bodies learn how to ward them off.

“Modern air,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “is a little too clean for optimum health.”

Phalen is one of 17 new appointees to the Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Advisory Board, which helps develop environmental policy. Other nominees include scientists from the oil industry, a chemical industry trade association, and various universities and consulting groups...

http://www.newsweek.com/robert-phalen-epa-air-too-clean-700143

Of course, in Trump world, a lawyer from Big Pharma is needed to lead Health & Human Services...get those drug prices down, provide better health care...

Trump picks Alex Azar to lead the Health and Human Services Department
Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein | November 13 at 10:06 AM

President Trump has tapped Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical executive and a top health official during the George W. Bush administration, to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

...president of Lilly USA, the biggest affiliate of Eli Lilly and Co., before stepping down in January to work as a health-care consultant...(GW Bush's) HHS general counsel and deputy secretary to pursue Trump’s goals through executive action.

...highly critical of the Affordable Care Act

...he thought the administration could shift the ACA in a more conservative direction even if congressional Republicans failed to repeal much of it. “I’m not one to say many good things about Obamacare, but one of the nice things in it is it does give tremendous amount of authority to the secretary of HHS”

...supports converting Medicaid from an entitlement program covering everyone who is eligible into block grants...opposed expanding the program under the ACA to people with slightly higher incomes.

...clerk(ed) for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia before working under special counsel Kenneth Starr to investigate Bill Clinton’s failed Whitewater real estate investments.

...Azar’s ties to Pence date to his days at Lilly, an Indiana-based pharmaceutical firm, when Pence was the state’s governor.

While Azar initially backed Jeb Bush for president in 2016 and served on his Indiana steering committee, he later donated $2,700 to a “Trump Victory” committee....

...As HHS general counsel, Azar worked on the administration’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing anthrax attacks, stem-cell policy and the advent of the Medicare prescription drug benefits. He then served two years as deputy secretary, during which he pushed for greater disclosure of prices associated with medical services to help foster competition and contain costs. He also backed converting medical records to electronic form.

“It is absurd to me that one of the largest sectors of the economy is run in a way where consumers don’t have a way to find out about price or quality,” Azar said at an event in Providence, R.I., in 2007. “We will not continue to be the dominant power in the world if we continue to spend so much more on health care than other economies.”

HHS, the government’s largest civilian agency, encompass(es) the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, among other branches.

His selection comes even as Trump has repeatedly attacked U.S. drug companies for profiting too much, suggesting the federal government should negotiate with them to get lower prices.

...Azar has opposed such price controls, but he has found other ways to address concerns about drug countries’ hard-charging tactics.

Recruited for a lobbying and communications position at Eli Lilly at a time when it was facing multiple lawsuits and some negative publicity, Azar championed a soft-sell approach in which company officials found the kinds of pharmaceuticals doctors wanted, even if they came from another firm...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-picks-alex-azar-to-...

>10 2wonderY:

He also Did Not Disclose He Is Married to a White House Lawyer

Bad news for butterflies, swallows, bees, people?

A Wide-Open Door for Pesticide Lobbyists at the Agriculture Department
Robert Faturechi, ProPublica, and Danielle Ivory | Nov. 13, 2017

A former lobbyist for the pesticide industry now leads the deregulatory team at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Visitor logs show old ties remain strong...

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-wide-open-door-for-pesticide-lobbyists-at-a...

Trump’s NOAA Nominee Puts American Farmers and Fishermen at Risk
Seth Watkins and Tony D’Aoust | October 24, 2017

...President Trump’s nomination of Barry Myers, the current chief executive officer of AccuWeather Inc., to serve as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

While weather forecasting is one of NOAA’s core missions, Myers’ background and history of political dealings show he may be more interested in private profit than public service, an agenda that would put NOAA’s weather forecasting service at risk.

According to Associated Press reports, Myers and his brother, AccuWeather co-founder Joel Myers, gave thousands of dollars to their then-senator Rick Santorum and his super PAC between 2003 and 2005. In 2005, Santorum introduced and was the sole sponsor of unsuccessful legislation that would have banned NOAA’s National Weather Service from conveying weather information directly to the American public, instead requiring data and forecasts to be routed through commercial firms like AccuWeather. This blatant attempt to capture more profit from taxpayer-funded science would’ve undermined public safety, and small businesses like ours.

NOAA’s work forms the basis of every weather forecast and storm alert delivered in the United States, whether it comes from an iPhone app, your local TV news, or Myers’ own company. Meteorologists throughout the government and private sector rely on NOAA’s data to support 1.5 million forecasts and 50,000 hazardous weather warnings issued to the public every year.

Farmers and ranchers need these predictions to schedule planting, irrigation, fertilizing, haying and harvests. Mis-timing any of these activities relative to the weather can greatly diminish a season’s earnings. For example, during calving, National Weather Service forecasts and extreme weather alerts are essential so we can brace for Iowa’s spring storms, which can devastate the herd of an unprepared cattle rancher.

...Unlike 10 of NOAA’s 11 past administrators, Myers does not have an advanced degree in science.

...Myers’ most notable interaction with the agency he has been nominated to lead was an effort to undermine its most vital public mission for his own private profit.

http://www.insidesources.com/trumps-noaa-nominee-puts-american-farmers-fishermen...

Departure of U.S. Census director threatens 2020 count
Jeffrey Mervis | May 9, 2017

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/departure-us-census-director-threatens-20...

We, the little people, about to be screwed again?

Confusion as Trump and outgoing director pick leaders for consumer agency
Faith Karimi and Jackie Wattles | Sat November 25, 2017

...Trump named Mick Mulvaney, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, as interim director of the consumer watchdog agency.

...hours before, CFPB Director Richard Cordray had sent a letter to Trump, declaring he was officially done leading the federal consumer watchdog agency once the clock struck midnight.

Cordray named his chief of staff, Leandra English, as deputy director, which essentially establishes her as the bureau's acting director.

...While serving in Congress, (Mulvaney) voted in favor of killing the CFPB, which was created after the financial crisis to protect consumers and keep an eye on Wall Street. He has worked alongside Trump to roll back some of the rules they have pinned as anti-business.

...repealing a rule issued by the CFPB that made it easier for consumers to team up to sue banks and credit card companies...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/25/politics/trump-consumer-agency-appointment/index.h...

Beyond the ick factor, another reason Alabama election is important:

Conservatives have a breathtaking plan for Trump to pack the courts
Ronald A. Klain | November 21, 2017

...If conservatives get their way, President Trump will add twice as many lifetime members to the federal judiciary in the next 12 months (650) as Barack Obama named in eight years (325).

...Due to GOP obstruction, “the number of judicial vacancies . . . on the table when Trump was sworn in was unprecedented,” White House Counsel Donald McGahn recently boasted to the conservative Federalist Society.(~150)

...Senate Republicans...breaking a 100-year-old tradition,...eliminated the “blue slip” rule that allowed home-state senators to object to particularly problematic nominees.

...sometime next year, 1 in 8 cases filed in federal court will be heard by a judge picked by Trump. Many of these judges will likely still be serving in 2050.

... a new plan written by the crafty co-founder of the Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi. In a paper...features a section titled “Undoing President Barack Obama’s Judicial Legacy”), Calabresi proposes to pack the federal courts with a “minimum” of 260 — and possibly as many as 447 — newly created judicial positions. Under this plan, the 228-year-old federal judiciary would increase — in a single year — by 30 to 50 percent.

...the judicial branch would come to consist of almost equal parts judges picked by nine presidents combined(Johnson thru Obama)...and judges picked by one: Donald J. Trump.

...Calabresi has also proposed that Congress abolish 158 administrative law judgeships in federal regulatory agencies, such as the (EPA, FDA, FCC, and SEC) and replace these impartial fact-finders with a new corps of 158 Trump-selected judges who — unlike current administrative law judges — would serve for life.

...Calabresi...propos(es) that Congress do all of this in the tax-cut bill that Congress is trying to pass before it leaves for the holidays....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservatives-have-a-breathtaking-plan-f...

16 contd. (acting director of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) I've been told that last-in-time doctrine gives preference to most recent, specific legal directive on a matter. If so, why would DOJ Office of Legal Counsel advise the President otherwise? (Oh right, this is Office that authorized torture in GW Bush administration...)

The next Trump legal crisis: Who is in charge at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
Tim Fernholz | 11/27/2017

...The agency’s first director...stepped down on Nov. 24...Beforehand, he elevated his chief of staff, Leandra English, to the position of deputy director; this made her the acting director... Later same day, Trump tapped Mick Mulvaney, his director of the Office of Management and Budget, to be the acting director.

...a memo from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel...argues that a law called the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) allows the president to appoint a new acting director to positions that require senate confirmation.

However, (FVRA) was written before the CFPB was created...a key distinction, since the legislative record of the FVRA says that future laws that offer an alternative mode of succession won’t be covered by its procedures. The law that created the CFPB does outline its own plan for succession, with the deputy director stepping in as acting director...

Thanks to English’s suit (seeking temporary restraining order), the courts will pick which succession law takes precedence...

https://qz.com/1138391/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-cfpb-acting-director...

I'm not sure the legalities are all that clear. The Dodd-Frank Act states that the deputy director shall “serve as acting director in the absence or unavailability of the director." It seems reasonable to conclude that "absence or unavailability" was intended to cover temporary illnesses and the like and not resignations.

Nine Things We Learned on Tuesday About the Next Fed Chairman (Jerome Powell)
John Cassidy | November 28, 2017

1. He’s a cool customer.

2. He’s keen to avoid being seen as a Trump stooge.

3. Powell is also staying carefully away from partisan land mines.

4. He seems like a fiscal moderate.

5. He seems certain to follow Yellen’s lead, which means that the Fed’s current policy of slowly raising interest rates will continue.

6. The biggest difference between Yellen and Powell’s approaches might be their respective attitudes toward financial regulation...Powell also said that the Fed should take a “fresh look” at some of the rules and see if any of them were too costly or burdensome.

7. He could well approve a weakening of the Volcker Rule, which was designed to prevent the trading departments of big banks from speculating on their own accounts—an activity known as proprietary trading...he was in favor of “tailoring the application” of the rule.

8. He thinks “Too Big to Fail” is a thing of the past.

9. He doesn’t fully understand rising inequality...to him, the “most compelling” factor in explaining them was a shortfall in educational attainment that had left American workers without the skills they need to compete in a high-tech world...widely cited theory...may well help explain the gap between the wages of skilled and unskilled workers. But it doesn’t really address the explosion in inequality at the top of the income distribution, much of which emanates from rising compensation in the financial sector—where Powell spent much of his career—or the slow growth in wages earned by recent college graduates. When Powell said that the Fed doesn’t have many tools for dealing with the issue of income distribution, he was stating received wisdom. But the Fed does play an important role...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/nine-things-we-learned-on-tuesday-...

Trump plans to replace Tillerson with Pompeo: report
Rebecca Savransky | 11/30/17

President Trump is reportedly planning to oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The move will come in the next several weeks, The New York Times reported, citing senior administration officials.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) would then replace Pompeo as CIA chief, the Times reported, according to the White House's plan...

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/362534-trump-plans-to-replace-tillers...

>21 margd: Boo and boo.

Reader beware: you can't un-read articles or un-see photos, as below. I still eat meat, but wild-caught fish and game for the most part, plus humanely raised poultry and eggs...sure missing bacon and ham, so I slip occasionally, with guilt...my sister once told me a pig-slaughter story that I won't share here, gentle readers...Thanks, sis--NOT!

The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms
Glenn Greenwald | October 5 2017

...The current secretary of agriculture, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue...vividly highlights the revolving door form of legalized corruption that dominates this industry.

Perdue was raised on a Georgia row farm and obtained his doctorate in veterinary medicine. Despite those seemingly benign credentials, the factory farm industry celebrated the news of his nomination by President Donald Trump. The National Chicken Council, for instance, demanded that he be “confirmed expeditiously.” The enthusiasm was for good reason.

“Georgia was pretty friendly to food-industry interests during Perdue’s two terms,” Grub Street reported, and Perdue “took about $330,000 in contributions from Monsanto and other agribusinesses for his campaigns.” In 2009, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the lobbying group for genetically modified foods, named Perdue its “Governor of the Year” because, it said, “he has been a stalwart advocate of the biosciences in Georgia and truly understands the promise of our industry.” As Georgia governor, Perdue supported the rapid expansion of factory farm giant Perdue Farms (to which he has no familial relation), with its long history of allegations of animal abuse.

And Perdue has extensive ties to the agribusiness sector he’s now supposed to oversee and regulate. The firm of which he is the founding partner and his family owns and runs, Perdue Partners LLC, is an agribusiness at the heart of this industry:

After being confirmed, Perdue wasted little time lavishing his agribusiness industry with gifts. In February, the USDA “abruptly removed inspection reports and other information from its website about the treatment of animals at thousands of research laboratories, zoos, dog breeding operations and other facilities,” reported the Washington Post. Then, two senators who have received large sums from farmers and ranchers — Democrat Debbie Stabenow (my senator--guess a missive is warranted) and Republican Pat Roberts — agitated for the recession of the Obama administration’s mild regulations on organic eggs, designed to improve conditions for chickens, and the Perdue-led USDA “put the new standard on hold and suggested that it might even be withdrawn.”

In sum, with industry insiders dominating the sole agency (USDA) with the authority to regulate factory farms, animals that are captive, abused, tortured, and slaughtered en masse have little chance, even when it comes to just applying existing laws with a minimal amount of diligence...

https://theintercept.com/2017/10/05/factory-farms-fbi-missing-piglets-animal-rig...

Given that these are lifetime appointments and that Rs want many conservative appointments, good to see that maybe there are some limits to what is acceptable...

The White House Says Two Of Trump's Controversial Judicial Nominees Won't Go Forward
Zoe Tillman | December 12 & 13, 2017

Brett Talley last week offered to withdraw his nomination to a federal district court in Alabama, a source close to the situation told BuzzFeed News. The White House on Wednesday confirmed reports that Talley and Jeff Mateer's nominations will not move forward.

...Information about Talley and Mateer's nominations not moving forward came the day after news broke that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley had reportedly urged the White House to reconsider Talley and Mateer's nomination...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/trump-is-suddenly-facing-a-significant-repub...

>24 margd: Yay Grassley!

Brian Petersen nominated to District Court of DC, "one of the nation's most important federal courts" never tried a case in court, didn't know basic questions of law:

Video Shows Trump Judicial Nominee Unable To Answer Basic Questions Of Law
Brian Naylor | December 15, 2017

...Matthew Petersen has been nominated for a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, one of the nation's most important federal courts. Petersen is now a member of the Federal Election Commission.

...he had never tried a case in court.

...taken less (fewer?) than five depositions in his career.

..."Daubert standard...a rule about using expert testimony?

...motion in limine...a common court motion to request testimony be excluded from a trial?...

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/15/571060681/video-shows-trump-judicial-nominee-unab...

Alex Azar is bad medicine for HHS (opinion)
Hilary McQuie | 01/06/18

...former drug company executive Alex Azar (nominated) for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

...predatory pricing, including tripling the price of insulin* (Eli Lilly: $74 -> $269, https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/civil-society-letter-to-senate-vote-...

...Azar has demonstrated an enthusiasm for exporting the same international property (IP) laws that have driven up drug costs in the U.S., through trade agreements that make affordable and safe medicine less accessible in other countries.

...HHS is tasked to provide leadership and expertise in global health diplomacy and policy to contribute to a safer, healthier world...

http://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/367740-alex-azar-is-bad-medicine-for-hhs

ETA___________________________________________________________

In Election Year, Drug Industry Spent Big To Temper Talk About High Drug Prices
Jay Hancock | December 18, 2017

...PhRMA also gave big money to national political groups financing congressional, presidential and state candidates. The conservative-leaning American Action Network got $6.1 million. The Republican Governors Association got $301,375. Its Democratic counterpart got $350,000.

...Then-candidate Donald Trump, a Republican, suggested he could save $300 billion annually by requiring drugmakers to bid on business...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/18/571206699/in-election-year-...

ETA____________________________________________________________

*How Insulin Became Unaffordable
By Drew Pendergrass | January 22, 2018

http://harvardpolitics.com/united-states/how-insulin-became-unaffordable/

Stephen Miller's Liberal Family Is Publicly Wrestling With His Role In The Trump Administration
"Young Mister Miller did his best Goebbels impression. Seig Heil!"
Ellie Hall | February 14, 2017, at 1:53 p.m.

...Stephen's mother, Miriam (Glosser) Miller, who is David's sister, grew up in Johnstown (PA) with her family.

"The Glosser family escaped Europe as dirt poor immigrants, joined the community, built businesses, and honestly sold goods to their fellow Johnstowners," Glosser wrote. "My nephew and I must both reflect long and hard on one awful truth. If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know."...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/stephen-millers-liberal-family-members-have-...

Power and Integrity at the FBI: Chris Wray Stands Up to the President and the Attorney General
Jack Goldsmith, Benjamin Wittes | January 22, 2018, 11:28 PM

Jonathan Swan of Axios (https://www.axios.com/scoop-1516661397-877adb3e-5f8d-44a1-8a2f-d4f0894ca6a7.html): ...FBI Director Chris Wray “threatened to resign” if FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe “was removed” from office. The threat apparently came in response to pressure on Wray by “Attorney General Jeff Sessions—at the public urging of President Donald Trump” to fire McCabe. ...“Sessions told White House Counsel Don McGahn about how upset Wray was about the pressure on him to fire McCabe, and McGahn told Sessions this issue wasn’t worth losing the FBI Director over.” It isn’t entirely clear...whether the controversy that led to Wray’s threat of resignation is ongoing or if it occurred sometime earlier and has since subsided.

Either way, this reveals a great deal about power and integrity in Washington.

First, we should underscore what a difficult situation Wray is in....

As the leader of the FBI, Wray must maintain his credibility with both the White House and, more importantly, the FBI workforce. He is also supervised in an immediate sense by an attorney general who is evidently trying to placate the president’s anger at him for having recused himself from the Russia investigation—and who is doing so by facilitating the president’s demands for a house-cleaning at the bureau...

...Second, it is clear from this episode that Wray has chosen...that his ultimate commitment lies with the FBI and the preservation of its institutional integrity. This is exceptionally good news....

...One of the underappreciated benefits of Senate confirmation and a 10-year term for the FBI director is that it gives him an outlook and perspective that favor the rule of law and the integrity of law enforcement over high-profile presidential pressure.

...third, we should nonetheless recognize the fortitude and grit he showed in reportedly telling the attorney general—and through him the president of the United States—to lay off....

...Fourth, while the situation is fluid and Trump’s temperament makes the future impossible to predict, the reality in which Wray holds a lot of cards may be a stable one. Trump has already fired one FBI director...

...Finally, a word about Attorney General Sessions...when the president is attacking McCabe and explicitly tying the attacks to the Russia investigation, and when Sessions is recused from that investigation, the proper role for Sessions is actually...to try to uphold and defend the FBI’s independence. Not only did Sessions not do that, ... but Wray had to do it, to protect the FBI from the attorney general himself.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/power-and-integrity-fbi-chris-wray-stands-president-...

>16 margd: Trump named Mick Mulvaney, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, as interim director of the consumer watchdog agency

CFPB Drops Investigation Into Payday Lender That Contributed To Mick Mulvaney's Campaigns
Josh Keefe | 01/23/18

Mick Mulvaney’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) quietly closed an investigation into a payday lender headquartered in Mulvaney’s home state Monday. The company previously donated to the former congressman’s political campaigns ($57,100).

...the CFPB has moved to undo several actions it has taken against payday lenders since Mulvaney replaced previous CFPB Director Richard Cordray, who left the agency in November to mount a gubernatorial bid in Ohio as a Democrat.

Last week, the CFPB announced it would reconsider rules governing payday lending it finalized in October under Cordray. The rules required payday lenders to verify borrowers could pay back the loans before lending. Then on Thursday, the CFPB dropped a lawsuit it filed last year against four payday lenders located on Indian reservations for allegedly charging interest rates between 440 and 950 percent...

...The payday lending industry has aligned itself with Trump since the president's 2016 electoral victory...

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/cfpb-drops-investigation-payday-lender-...

CDC Director resigned. Trump will have to find another nominee, no doubt from the same pit that he found Azar (HHS), et al.

Trump's top health official traded tobacco stock while leading anti-smoking efforts
SARAH KARLIN-SMITH and BRIANNA EHLEY | 01/30/2018

CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald bought shares in a global tobacco giant even as her previous holdings were under review.

...The stock was one of about a dozen new investments that Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made after she took over the agency’s top job... Fitzgerald has since come under congressional scrutiny for slow walking divestment from older holdings that government officials said posed potential conflicts of interest.

Buying shares of tobacco companies raises even more flags than Fitzgerald’s trading in drug and food companies because it stands in such stark contrast to the CDC’s mission to persuade smokers to quit and keep children from becoming addicted. Critics say her trading behavior broke with ethical norms for public health officials and was, at best, sloppy. At worst, they say, it was legally problematic if she didn't recuse herself from government activities that could have affected her investments.

Rich property owners are influential in Republican party. I know of a few R appointees who have resisted the pressure and some who have caved on resource issues. Smith caves. Apparently without irony, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke says. “I can think of no one better equipped to help lead our efforts to ensure that the National Park Service is on firm footing to preserve and protect the most spectacular places in the United States for future generations.”

Meet Your Controversial New Park Service Director (Acting)
J. Weston Phippen | Jan 29, 2018

The résumé of P. Daniel Smith, including a troubling work history

...the deal that got Smith reprimanded involved billionaire and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder. For years, Snyder had been pressing the Park Service to let him chop down trees near the C&O Canal National Historical Park because they blocked his mansion’s view of the Potomac River. Snyder even offered to donate $25,000 to a fund of the Park Service’s choosing, according to the OIG investigation. But the local park superintendent turned him down. That changed after NPS Director Mainella attended a Redskins game. Smith was put on the case, and a deal was made to cut down roughly 40,000 square feet of trees, including about 140 native old-growth trees—all done without the required environmental surveys...

https://www.outsideonline.com/2277876/new-park-service-director-trees-worst-enem...

Withdrawing as nominees, Kathleen Hartnett White (to head Council on Environmental Quality) and Michael Douson (to serve as EPA's top chemical safety official >3 margd: contd):

...Controversial nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett White (withdrew her nomination)

...Hartnett White, who once headed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and now serves as a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has stirred controversy because of her statements on climate change. Testifying in the fall before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she said that while humans probably contribute to current warming, “the extent to which, I think, is very uncertain.”

...When asked during her hearing by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) what portion of the heat trapped in Earth’s atmosphere is absorbed by the world’s oceans — the majority of it is stored there — Hartnett White responded, “I don’t have numbers like that.”

“But I believe that there are differences of opinions on that, that there’s not one right answer"...
______________________________________________________

...Michael Dourson, whose nomination to become the Environmental Protection Agency’s top chemical safety official drew widespread criticism, withdrew from consideration in December after it became clear that the Senate probably would not confirm him.

A longtime toxicologist who worked at the EPA from 1980 to 1994, Dourson was closely tied to the chemical industry through a nonprofit consulting group he founded shortly after leaving the agency. Over the years, it produced research for chemical companies that consistently found little or no human health risks from their products. Critics said Dourson had too many conflicts of interest to be considered for an Environmental Protection Agency post in which he might oversee reviews of chemicals produced by companies he once represented.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/02/03/white-house...

Coal Lobbyist Hosted Fundraisers for Senators Evaluating His Nomination for Top EPA Post (deputy administrator of the EPA, the No. 2 slot at the agency)
Lee Fang, Nick Surgey | February 7 2018

..Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist...hosted campaign fundraisers for two members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works — Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. — last May...both senators received donations of Wheeler’s law firm PAC last year.

...Wheeler spent 14 years as a staffer for Inhofe, including as chief counsel for the senator on the Environment and Public Works committee. Wheeler is also a Donald Trump donor, having given $1,000 to Trump Victory, a joint campaign committee that worked to elect Trump and other Republicans in 2016.

...Wheeler manages the energy and natural resources practice at the law firm of Faegre Baker Daniels. His lobbying energy clients have included the coal company Murray Energy, the largest privately owned coal firm in the United States, as well as Xcel Energy, a major utility interest group. Public disclosures show that Wheeler most recently lobbied for the firm in August 2017.

Before he joined the law firm in 2009, Wheeler spent 14 years as a staffer for Inhofe, including as chief counsel for the senator on the Environment and Public Works committee. Wheeler is also a Donald Trump donor, having given $1,000 to Trump Victory, a joint campaign committee that worked to elect Trump and other Republicans in 2016.

...If confirmed, Wheeler’s work will almost certainly intersect with the environmental issues he worked on as a lobbyist. The EPA is currently involved in a complicated effort to unwind the carbon dioxide limits imposed on coal-fired power plants...

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/07/coal-lobbyist-andrew-wheeler-epa-deputy-conf...

Denied security clearance on account of abuse accusations, Rob Porter nonetheless handled all written communications going to and from Trump...

White House knew of abuse allegations against aide Rob Porter
Major Garrett CBS News February 7, 2018

...he's resigning. Staff secretary Rob Porter, who handled paperwork going to and from the president's desk, has been accused of abuse by two of his ex-wives. Porter says the accusations are false.

At first, the White House aggressively defended Porter, with chief of staff John Kelly calling him "a man of true integrity and honor." Press secretary Sarah Sanders said Porter "has been effective" and retained "the full confidence" of the president.

...(Feb 7, Kelly)"I was shocked by the new allegations released today against Rob Porter.There is no place for domestic violence in our society. I stand by my previous comments of the Rob Porter that I have come to know since becoming Chief of Staff, and believe every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation. I accepted his resignation earlier today, and will ensure a swift and orderly transition."

...On Wednesday's press briefing, Sanders said Porter is "going to be leaving the White House."

"It won't be immediate," Sanders said. "He is resigning from the White House but is going to stay on to ensure that there is a smooth transition."

...As staff secretary, Porter was one of Mr. Trump's closest aides, acting as the conduit for all written information given to the president.

... the FBI informed the White House in November about the domestic abuse allegations against Porter.

...White House communications director Hope Hicks, who CBS News has confirmed is dating Porter, played a significant role in drafting the statements by Kelly and Sanders in response to the allegations.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-rob-porter-resigns-abuse-allegations/

Hired to head Superfund clean-ups, Albert Kelly (former OK banker, now banned by FDIC from banking industry for life)...
Pruitt apparently has higher ambitions--AG, Senator, even President...

How the EPA's Scott Pruitt Became the Most Dangerous Member of Trump’s Cabinet
Alexander Nazaryan | 2/8/18

...(Scott Pruitt, EPA Director) has been Trump’s drama-free Energizer bunny of a Cabinet appointee—his “most adept and dangerous hatchet man,” The Los Angeles Times deemed him—channeling the president’s wants without arousing his anger.

...In early January, the agency published a list of 67 environmental safeguards Pruitt has either fully rolled back or is in the process of undoing. These include ​the ​2015 Waters of the United States rule, which expanded the protections afforded by the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Power Plan, which established nationwide carbon emissions standards for power plants. It’s the regulatory equivalent of the German blitzkrieg across Poland: so extensive, and effective, that no front is safe. The ban on chlorpyrifos, an insecticide EPA scientists say may cause neurodevelopmental problems in children, has been lifted, to the delight of Dow Chemical. An Obama administration rule curbed power plant emissions of mercury and arsenic, among the most destructive elements to human health. Despite scientific consensus about how harmful those emissions are, Pruitt has ordered the rule under “review,” thus indicating that he intends to weaken it.

...Pruitt was a vocal supporter of Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions; with Syria having joined the accords this past fall, the U.S. is the world’s lone holdout. Climate change has been scrubbed as a topic on the agency’s website at Pruitt’s personal direction. An investigation by Rachel Leven of the Center for Public Integrity published last fall found that the vast majority of Pruitt’s 46 political appointees at the EPA “previously worked for climate change doubters or industry,” including with the powerful lobbying group the American Chemistry Council, as well as energy companies Hess and ExxonMobil. Leven also noted that a dozen undersecretary positions that would need Senate confirmation remain empty.

...Pruitt has vowed to speed clean-up of the Superfund sites, leading his critics to wonder what, exactly, he has in mind. The man he has hired to head the program is Oklahoma banker Albert Kelly, whom the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has banned from the banking industry for life for making improper loans. Kelly is friend and political contributor to Pruitt, as well as a three-time mortgage lender...

http://www.newsweek.com/2018/02/16/scott-pruitt-most-dangerous-member-trump-cabi...

ETA______________________________________________________

Mr. Pruitt comes to Washington...

EPA data reveals dramatic decrease in enforcement of polluter fees
Miranda Green - 02/08/18

Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has fined far fewer polluters for breaking emissions rules than the Obama administration.

Numbers released Thursday by the EPA in its annual enforcement report revealed that polluters were fined a total of $1.6 billion in penalties in fiscal year 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2017) — about a fifth of the $5.7 billion EPA penalties collected the year prior, under President Obama.

...The drop in the EPA's enforcement of regulations is even more stark when looking specifically at the agency's actions on injunction relief — the monetary commitments polluters pledge to spend in order to remediate their pollution and keep it from reoccurring.

The EPA report shows that injunctive relief in 2017 stood at $20 billion, compared to 2016's $13.7 billion, but $15.9 billion of the recent total come from the landmark Volkswagen settlement. When the settlement is taken out of the calculation, injunctive relief payments in fiscal year 2017 totaled just $4 billion — less than a third of 2016’s numbers and less than half of 2015’s.

...the drop in EPA's recommendations (to DOJ) for prosecution was the most noticeable change in the 2017 enforcement report. The number of cases recommended in 2017 was 110, compared to 152 the year before.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/373054-epa-data-reveals-dramatic-de...

“Who Needs a Controversy Over the Inauguration?”: Reince Priebus Opens Up About His Six Months of Magical Thinking
Chris Whipple | February 14, 2018

Months after his chaotic resignation as chief of staff, and with his successor on the hot seat, Priebus comes clean about everything: the inauguration crowd-size fiasco, the decision to fire Comey, the Mooch, the tweets, how he helped saved Jeff Sessions’s job, and his mercurial former boss. “I still love the guy,” he says...

(Adapted from The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple, to be published in paperback on March 6, 2018)

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/reince-priebus-opens-up-about-his-six-mo...

Another aide bites the dust

White House aide quit after he was told he wouldn't get full security clearance because he had smoked pot

I'd feel bad for him, but
George David Banks had been one of the key figures in developing the Trump administration's policy on the Paris climate accord.

Good riddance.

Robert M. Weaver, nominated to head the Indian Health Service, appears to have greatly exaggerated his credentials:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/05/trump-pick-for-indian-health-service-under-fire-...

•Several former top officials at that hospital said they do not recall Weaver's name.

It appears he worked in clerical positions and eventually supervised a few other patient-registration workers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/indian-health-service-nominee-robert-weaver-face...

•A former boss of Weaver reportedly said he would not recommend him for another job unless he was closely supervised.

The latest list of ethics waivers

What swamp? Lobbyists get ethics waivers to work for Trump

Trump, standing alone...

Watchdog: Social Security acting head hasn't been authorized to serve for months
John Bowden - 03/10/18

...The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent a letter to President Trump this week saying that Nancy Berryhill is in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which generally bars acting agency chiefs from serving in the post for more than 210 days.

Berryhill was appointed to her position on Jan. 23, 2017...

"Specifically, we are reporting that the service of Nancy A. Berryhill as Acting Commissioner at SSA after November 17, 2017, is in violation of the Act," GAO general counsel Thomas Armstrong wrote to the White House.

“We have previously determined that using the acting title of a position during the period in which the position should be vacant violates the time limitations in the Vacancies Reform Act,” the letter continued. “Therefore Ms. Berryhill was not authorized to continue serving using the title of Acting Commissioner after November 16.”...

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/377765-social-security-acting-head-ha...

>41 margd: It amazes me that we get anyone appointed to serve in this age of partisan politics. I don't know if it's been as been as bad as this in the past. Just seems a black eye. I suppose one way to "drain the swamp" is just fail to appoint personnel -- or Congress not to confirm them.

“I’m More Scared by a Factor of 10”: Wall Street Is Terrified to Be Left Alone with Gary Cohn’s Understudies
As one former Goldman Sachs partner put it, Peter Navarro “is missing a few strings on his banjo.”
Bess Levin | March 7, 2018

...The former Goldman Sachs partner, on the other hand, said Cohn’s departure has left him more worried about the state of the economy “by a factor of 10.” Gary, he said “was a formidable intellect. He believed in having the economy stable, and having him as a voice was good. If you look at the people they’re thinking of replacing him with, they don’t have the half to counter what’s going on there. There’s good reason to be scared,” the former partner added. “If you go back to Obama, if Larry Summers had quit, it would have been fine, you had good people at Treasury, there were adults in the room who went to class.” As for what we’re left with? “Steve Mnuchin is simply a sycophant. Wilbur Ross is only about self-interest. And Peter Navarro’s missing a few strings on his banjo.” (Incidentally, we were reminded today Navarro made his way to the White House after Jared Kushner basically googled “people who can find China on a map” and offered him the job.)...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/wall-street-is-terrified-to-be-left-alon...

Our top diplomat, as Trump plans meeting with Kim Jong-un... God help us.

Meet Mike Pompeo, Trump's New Hardliner Secretary of State
Haaretz | Mar 13, 2018

...(Mike) Pompeo, served three terms in the U.S. Congress from conservative Kansas, was a member of the House intelligence committee and has served as the director of the CIA since. During the 2016 presidential election Pompeo was an outspoken critic of former President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, Hillary Clinton's handling of the Benghazi attack and has said former National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is a traitor who deserves a death sentence.

...November (2017)...Pompeo declared on Twitter, with regards to the Iran nuclear deal, "I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism."

...As a lawmaker Pompeo supported restoring the National Security Agencys bulk collection of telephone metadata

...September 2017, Pompeo said in his official capacity as CIA director, apparently inaccurately, that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Russian interference did not affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

...Pompeo graduated top of his class in from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1986 and went on to earn a degree from Harvard University where he edited the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/meet-mike-pompeo-trump-s-reported-new-hardliner-...

New DCI nominee: torturer and war criminal. Hurrah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Haspel

On the other hand, Haspel's nomination will oblige some people to revisit the actions of that era. The conversation about torture remains incomplete.

Trump taps Kudlow to be top economic adviser: reports
Reuters Staff | March 14, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump has picked television commentator and economic analyst Larry Kudlow to replace Gary Cohn as the top White House economic adviser...director of the National Economic Council

...a Republican who served as an economic adviser to former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and also worked on Wall Street

...an informal advisor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign...criticized steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, saying they would harm steel-consuming producers.

But Trump said on Wednesday that Kudlow had “come around” to view tariffs as a useful tool for renegotiating trade deals. (I thought tariiffs were imposed for national security reasons--go get him, WTO!)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-kudlow/trump-taps-kudlow-to-be-top-...

ETA_____________________________________________

"Kudlow, like Trump, spent years on TV—a stamp of approval in Trump’s simple mind—talking about the economy."...
" Kudlow left Reagan’s employ because he was unhappy that Reagan was jacking up the deficit with tax cuts...(he was) right: the national debt tripled during the 1980s" OTOH:

Opinion: Kudlow’s history of bad economic calls
Paul Brandus: Mar 15, 2018

(1)...Just this week Kudlow) told his former employer CNBC that “the United States could lead a coalition of large trading partners and allies against China,” and that would show Beijing that Washington means business. You know what that coalition’s called? The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP...

(2)...In the fall of 2007 when housing and the stock market were collapsing, he downplayed it, writing in National Review that “Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead quarter after quarter, year after year, defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth.” Looking ahead to 2008—when the entire U.S. economy came crashing down and millions of Americans lost their jobs, and banks, automakers and mortgage lenders had it be bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars—he said “we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.” Anyone who thinks otherwise, he added with flair, “are going to wind up with egg on their faces.”

(3)...1993: “There is no question that President Clinton’s across-the-board tax increases on labor, capital and energy will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy’s long-run potential,” Kudlow wrote. What happened next? The U.S. economy began an eight-year expansion, creating 21 million jobs—and the federal budget was balanced...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kudlows-history-of-bad-economic-calls-2018-03-...

ETA_____________________________________________

Trump names cocaine TV pundit Larry Kudlow as chief economic advisor
Rhys Blakely | March 15 2018

...once fired from Wall Street after taking cocaine...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trump-names-cocaine-tv-pundit-larry-kudlow-as...

>45 davidgn:

Correction: Trump’s Pick to Head CIA Did Not Oversee Waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah

“The story said that Haspel, a career CIA officer who President Trump has nominated to be the next director of central intelligence, oversaw the clandestine base where Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods that are widely seen as torture. The story also said she mocked the prisoner’s suffering in a private conversation. Neither of these assertions is correct and we retract them.”

>48 Carnophile: Ah. So she didn't oversee the black site during the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. In fact, she oversaw that black site after Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded, and her tenure instead included oversight of the waterboarding of al-Nashiri. Her relation to the Abu Zubaydah case was limited to effecting the destruction of the incriminating interrogation tapes produced under her predecessor.

You see, that makes all the difference in the world! How could we have maligned such a magnificent public servant?

>47 margd: Trump names cocaine TV pundit Larry Kudlow as chief economic advisor... once fired from Wall Street after taking cocaine...

"Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it." - Barack Obama, in his autobiography Dreams From My Father

>49 davidgn: The evidence destruction thing:

Is it unethical or illegal for government employees to destroy evidence? In light of the last couple of years, leftists should be extremely careful how they answer this one!

Anyway, the only assertion I know of at the moment for her involvement in destruction of videotapes is this passage from the NYT:

“In 2005, Jose Rodriguez, then the head of the agency’s clandestine service, ordered the destruction of videotapes of the waterboarding sessions. Ms. Haspel, serving as Mr. Rodriguez’s chief of staff, was a strong advocate for getting rid of the tapes, former C.I.A. officers said.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/gina-haspel-cia-director-nominee-...

Ah yes, the ole “anonymous sources claim...”

>49 davidgn: Ah. So she didn't oversee the black site during the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah... her tenure instead included oversight of the waterboarding of al-Nashiri.

According to... one anonymous alleged source by the NYT.

From the ProPublica link:

“The New York Times, which also reported last year that Haspel oversaw the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and another detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, published a second story this week making the same point. It quoted an unnamed former senior CIA official...”

Not only is this not credible, it violates the standard journalistic dictum about having at least two independent sources of each claim. Including the NYT’s own dictum, LOL:

“The New York Times’s minimal standard for reporting a fact not otherwise attributed to a single speaker is that it be verified by at least two independent sources.”

>52 Carnophile: Your skepticism is admirable in principle. On the other hand, Haspel's link to CIA's extraordinary rendition and torture activities is otherwise well-attested, most notably in the Senate torture report from 2014. So take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/378687-publisher-offers-senate-...

Walter Shaub Retweeted Daniel Lippman |18 Mar 2018
If only there had been some way they could’ve known they were walking into chaos or that their complicity might have career consequences. Let us now commence the weeping and the gnashing of all the teeth for their tragic plight.

The mood at the White House these days — a former Trump WH official texts me: “I’ve been trying to find jobs for some people still inside and nobody wants to hire a White House person. It’s toxic ... Everyone inside is broken. ... Everyone is resigned to the worst.”
-Daniel Lippman @dlippman

Has anyone heard/seen a follow-up on the
McMaster firing? e.g. potential replacements or
controversies? I saw a routine notice of the firing some days ago. What Iʻve seen since then puts it
back in the rumor stage, saying that Trump is "now ...comfortable" with firing McMaster. (I hadnʻt heard of his being formerly in "discomfort".)

John Bolton appointed to replace McMaster as NSA Director--a post that requires no Senate confirmation.
Just the sort of blowhard who would accept appointment in this WH...
Had enough, Republicans in Congress?

John Bolton’s Incompetence May Be More Dangerous Than His Ideology
Heather Hurlburt | March 23, 2018

...argue(s) that the Iraq War wasn’t really a failure, calling for U.S.-led regime change in Iran and preventive war against North Korea, and writing the foreword for a book that proclaimed President Obama to be a secret Muslim. He is a profoundly partisan creature, having started a super-PAC whose largest donor was leading Trump benefactor Rebekah Mercer and whose provider of analytics was Cambridge Analytica, the firm alleged to have improperly used Facebook data to make voter profiles, which it sold to the Trump and Brexit campaigns, among others.

..Bolton’s statements have grown more extreme, alarming centrist and conservative national security professionals along with his longtime liberal foes. He seemed to say that the United States could attack North Korea without the agreement of our South Korean allies, who would face the highest risk of retaliation and casualties; just two months ago he called for a regime change effort in Iran that would allow the U.S. to open a new embassy there by 2019, the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the taking of Americans hostage in Tehran. His hostility toward Islam points toward a set of extreme policies that could easily have the effect of abridging American Muslims’ rights at home and alienating America’s Muslim allies abroad.

... seems likely to leave us with Muslim ban-level incompetence, extreme bellicosity, and several very loud, competing voices – with Twitter feeds – on the most sensitive issues of war and weapons of mass destruction.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/boltons-ineptitude-may-be-more-dang...

___________________________________________________

Nobody Is Left to Save the World From Trump Now
Jonathan Chait | March 22, 2018

...Trump is breaking through the protective cordon. The people who joined the government to save Donald Trump from himself, or to save the world from Trump, are leaving. Gary Cohn and Rex Tillerson are gone. Trump is reorganizing his legal team, mobilizing for war against the special counsel. And now he has finally cast off his most important minder, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and replaced him with John Bolton.

Bolton is in some ways the foreign policy analogue of his domestic counterpart, Lawrence Kudlow, the incoming head of the National Economic Council.

...The difference, however, is that Kudlow’s kooky ideas have little chance of enactment given the tenuous Republican control of Congress. Bolton’s foreign policy notions can be quickly operationalized, given the near-total command the executive branch has over foreign policy. What’s more, those ideas have the potential to kill large numbers of people...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/nobody-is-left-to-save-the-world-fr...

__________________________________________________

Scary read...

It’s Time to Panic Now
Fred Kaplan | March 22, 2018

John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser puts us on a path to war.

...Trump gave Bolton the job after the two held several conversations (despite White House chief of staff John Kelly’s orders barring Bolton from the building). And there was this remark that Trump made after firing Rex Tillerson and nominating the more hawkish Mike Pompeo to take his place: “We’re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things I want.” ...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/john-bolton-named-national-security-...

Thanks, margd, for your answer to (55).

I see you are an optimist: you call the GOPʻs hold on The House "tenuous"!?

Or does your view of the future of foreign policy--minus Tillerson and McMaster and WITH
Bolton & Pomeo - - qualify you as a pessimist?

Oh, those are excerpts from news articles and analyses.

I hope and I pray that our environmental, political, and economic systems will survive, but Trumpian volleys are increasing with time, and there are fewer adults in the room these days. We may yet see Bannonegeddon, I fear. In near term, only Republicans can stop the madness. Midterm, Mueller and the Blue Tide. (A girl can hope.)

‘My first reaction was OMG’: Trump’s VA pick is new to all this
JOANNE KENEN | 03/28/2018

Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the telegenic White House doctor named Wednesday as Donald Trump’s choice to run the VA, is a career Navy physician who served in Iraq. But he has never run anything approaching the sprawling Veterans Affairs bureaucracy or been caught in Washington’s crossfire.

Jackson is the doctor who gave Trump a glowing physical and mental health assessment in a televised briefing in January. He declared the overweight 71-year old in excellent physical and mental health — and predicted he would remain that way throughout this term, and into the next one, should he get reelected.

...His cool handling of the hour-long grilling by White House reporters endeared him to his boss. But the VA is a lot bigger and more complicated than the White House physicians unit or, for that matter, a combat trauma team. It’s the second biggest federal department; only the Pentagon is larger. It runs 170 medical centers and 1,061 outpatient clinics serving more than 9 million veterans and it’s been caught up in political struggles over how much of its health system should be privatized. There’s also bitter controversy about its $10 billion Cerner contract for a new computerized health record system.

...Jackson’s views on some of the most heated issues about the VA’s future are not publicly known. The raging debate over how much of the VA should be turned over to private health practitioners has split lawmakers and veterans organizations. The American Legion opposes privatization. The Koch brothers-backed Concerned Veterans of America wants a much larger private role...

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/28/veterans-affairs-jackson-trump-shulkin...

Here’s How You Can Use Trump Town
Derek Kravitz and Al Shaw, ProPublica, and Alex Mierjeski for ProPublica | April 4, 2018

...Trump Town is a searchable database of 2,684 Trump administration political appointees, including their jobs and offices, employment history, lobbying records, government ethics documents and financial disclosures. We made the data available and easy to use so journalists and researchers can use it in their work (https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/)...

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-you-can-use-trump-town

ETA: Coal lobbyist Wheeler confirmed #2 At The EPA (https://www.buzzfeed.com/zahrahirji/andrew-wheeler-epa)

As if Pruitt wasn't bad enough...We can hope, though, that a lobbyist might not have the bureaucratic smarts of a state AG? Although Pruitt may have done the heavy lifting already... In his TV appearances, coal CEO Robert Murray, for whom Wheeler lobbied, looked to me like a stereotypical tycoon from the gilded age... He only needed a cigar...

The Next Head of Trump’s EPA
A climate-denying coal lobbyist is close to becoming the agency's deputy administrator. Why aren't Senate Democrats sounding the alarm?
Emily Atkin | February 7, 2018

...who takes over if Pruitt leaves? The leading contender to date is Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, EPA bureaucrat, and aide to the snowball-wielding Senator Jim Inhofe. President Donald Trump nominated Wheeler, who is currently an energy attorney, to be the EPA’s deputy administrator in October, and Wheeler faced a full Senate hearing in November. Because the Senate never voted on Wheeler’s nomination, his nomination was sent back to committee at the start of the new legislative session in January.

Wheeler’s nomination is now moving again.

...Pruitt may have worked closely with the fossil fuel industry before taking office, but Wheeler worked for the fossil fuel industry...Pruitt indirectly raised money from conservative dark money groups to stop the EPA regulations he’s now in charge of. But Wheeler directly raised money for the same Republican Senators who are evaluating his nomination

...Pruitt worked with polluters...to advance his own political career; when Wheeler did it, he helped advance the career of Inhofe, the Senate’s most outspoken denier.

...Pruitt hasn’t decided whether to challenge...the EPA document that deems carbon dioxide a pollutant that should be regulated under the Clean Air Act...Wheeler “could be the man to lead that assault,” because the document was based on a scientific report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

...like Pruitt, Wheeler has criticized Trump harshly in the past...Also like Pruitt, Wheeler’s concerns about Trump have suddenly vanished.

...If and when Pruitt leaves the agency, he’ll have a perfect successor in place to (to accomplish what his bosses at Murray have wanted for years: the swift destruction of the environmental regulatory state)

https://newrepublic.com/article/146971/next-head-trumps-epa-andrew-wheeler

>61 margd: I am so very depressed by this state of affairs. It reeks of conflict of interest.

The Leadership Conference
‏Verified account @civilrightsorg
11:27 AM - 11 Apr 2018

WATCH: During her confirmation hearing this morning (yes, this morning – in 2018), judicial nominee Wendy Vitter refused to say whether she agreed with the result in Brown v. Board of Education. #UnfitToJudge

https://twitter.com/civilrightsorg/status/984135758440263702

Trump nominee for (lifetime) federal judgeship had rejected Texas lawsuit against Trump University
Nicole Cobler | April 12, 2018

...President Donald Trump named former Texas Deputy Attorney General David Morales on Tuesday to a trial bench in Corpus Christi. Morales had been recommended to the White House by Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

Morales made headlines during the presidential campaign when news outlets learned that in May 2010 the state’s consumer protection division had sought permission to pursue what it believed was a strong case against Trump and Trump University. Investigators asserted that Texas taxpayers had been bilked out of more than $2.6 million, and sought to file a $5.4 million lawsuit.

Morales rejected the recommendation. Texas dropped its investigation. Trump University voluntarily ceased operations in Texas...

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/04/11/trump-nominee-federal-judge-...

Trump’s next NASA administrator is a Republican congressman with no background in science
Brian Resnick | Apr 19, 2018

Jim Bridenstine’s confirmation has been controversial — even among members of his own party.

The US Senate on Thursday confirmed Jim Bridenstine, a Republican Congress member from Oklahoma, to be the next administrator of NASA.

Typically, NASA administrators are chosen from within NASA’s ranks, come up through the military, or have a background in science. Bridenstine has none of that. His qualifications: He’s former Navy pilot who once ran the Air and Space Museum in Tulsa. He also sits on the House Committee that oversees NASA. The third-term representative is now the first member of Congress to hold the administrator job.

...As a politician, Bridenstine has hedged on climate change, an issue NASA scientists study and track in many different ways...

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17253560/nasa-administrator-jim-bridenstine-confir...

The Senate just confirmed Kyle Duncan -- a 45-year-old lawyer who built a career out of fighting abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights -- to be a lifetime judge on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals...

Jennifer Bendery @jbendery
12:34 PM - 24 Apr 2018

Funny, but telling, John Oliver's 15 minute bio on Rudy Giuliani:
https://news.google.com/news/video/mXQuto1fMp4/dF5WW_cEZMltyKMBXWvKavdO3U69M?hl=...

Why, oh why, in his moment of peril would Trump hire Rudy Giuiliani to represent him??

>68 margd: I'm going to watch John Oliver's show tonight with my dinner.

Why, oh why, in his moment of peril would Trump hire Rudy Giuiliani to represent him??

A realistic answer to that question, I think, is that Trump likes to hire people he knows. A humorous answer, though, would be no one else wanted the job!

Trump Treasury nominee withdraws amid concern over finances

Adam Lerrick has withdrawn as President Donald Trump’s nominee for assistant Treasury secretary for international finance, after languishing for more than a year without Senate confirmation.

No reason was given for Lerrick’s withdrawal, but a person familiar with the matter said Senate Finance Committee members had raised concerns about his ties to the Argentine Bond Restructuring Agency, the largest group of foreign investors in Argentina’s debt when the country defaulted.

WHAT is this?? Attempt to embarrass McConnell? to secure nomination? the usual, ham-handedness in nominees?

Trump’s pick to run Labor’s pension agency: Mitch McConnell’s brother-in-law
Alex Horton | May 16, 2018

...Gordon Hartogensis...is the brother-in-law of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Chao’s sister Grace is married to Hartogensis

...nominated to direct the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a Labor Department agency that collects insurance premiums from sponsors of defined-benefit plans and pays out benefits (to 1.5 million people) when companies cannot meet their obligations

...His current position is managing his family’s trust

...the White House said Hartogensis’s recent experience as an investment manager makes him uniquely qualified to run the agency. He is expected to turn around the office’s growing problems, including a deficit that has doubled since 2013

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/05/15/trumps-pick-to-run-la...

Tom Wright thomaswright (Brooking's Institution) - 3 Jun 2018
Bombshell interview to Breitbart by Ric Grenell, US Ambassador to Germany. He says he will personally intervene in internal politics of Europe to empower anti-establishment conservatives. Directly contradicts State Dept line that Trump admin is neutral

Trump’s Right Hand Man in Europe Rick Grenell Wants To ‘Empower’ European Anti-Establishment Conservatives
Chris Tomlinson | June 3, 2018

Trumpian U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell... said: “There are a lot of conservatives throughout Europe who have contacted me to say they are feeling there is a resurgence going on.”

“I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders. I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left,” he added.

“There’s no question about that and it’s an exciting time for me. I look across the landscape and we’ve got a lot of work to do but I think the election of Donald Trump has empowered individuals and people to say that they can’t just allow the political class to determine before an election takes place, who’s going to win and who should run.”

The U.S. ambassador spoke of the small circle of political and media elites saying, “That’s a very powerful moment when you can grasp the ability to see past the group-think of a very small elitist crowd telling you you have no chance to win or you’ll never win, or they mock you early on.”...

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/06/03/trumps-right-hand-man-in-europe-wants...

ETA____________________________________________________________________

New US ambassador to Germany under fire for rightwing support
Politicians accuse Richard Grenell of breach of protocol after interview in Breitbart
Philip Oltermann | 4 Jun 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/04/new-us-ambassador-to-germany-under...

So much for this U.S. diplomat being diplomatic. I don't see his comments advancing America's interests. Just a narrow sector of politics.

Report: Trump’s IRS Nominee Failed to Disclose Trump-Linked Property Ownership
6/27/2018

President Trump’s nominee to run the Internal Revenue Service, tax lawyer Chuck Rettig, did not disclose that he owned properties at the Trump International Hotel Waikiki and Tower... Rettig disclosed his 50 percent stake in two Honolulu units but failed to mention that the units were in a Trump-branded location—an important detail considering Trump often profits off those sales through licensing fees. Rettig reportedly bought the units in 2006. The location of the units was revealed in a Senate Finance Committee memo Wednesday, and Rettig will face the committee on Thursday for a hearing on his nomination—where he will likely be asked about the properties and his disclosures.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-trumps-irs-nominee-failed-to-disclose-trump...

U.N. migration agency rejects Trump nominee Ken Isaacs as leader
Reuters | June 29, 2018

....American Ken Isaacs was eliminated in the ongoing contest to elect the next director-general of the International Organization of Migration.

The race was so far led by Antonio Vitorino, a Portuguese Socialist, ahead of IOM deputy director-general Laura Thompson of Costa Rica.

U.N. migration officials are distressed by U.S. policy and sources told CBS News that Mr. Trump's candidate did not stand a chance...

...Isaacs' candidacy had been clouded by U.S. policies like travel bans and migrant family separations - and his own comments that critics have called anti-Muslim.

An intergovernmental body that became a U.N.-related agency in 2016, IOM has had only one director-general who wasn't American since its creation 67 years ago.

...Playing in Isaacs' favor along with tradition, however, was money: The United States is the single biggest donor to the IOM, followed closely by the European Union.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-n-migration-agency-rejects-trump-nominee-ken-isaa...

>75 margd: Well I don't expect any reputable foreign government power or international organization to accommodate the tradition of American inclusion when our own President seems intent on destroying every established agreement we have.

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh...

McConnell Tries to Nudge Trump Toward Two Supreme Court Options
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin | July 7, 2018

...Mr. McConnell is concerned about the volume of the documents that Judge Brett M Kavanaugh has created in his 12 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as well as in his roles as White House staff secretary under President George W. Bush and assistant to Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton.

The number of pages is said to run into the millions, which Mr. McConnell fears could hand Senate Democrats an opportunity to delay the confirmation vote until after the new session of the court begins in October, with the midterm elections looming the next month. And while Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial opinions are publicly known, Mr. McConnell is uneasy about relitigating Bush-era controversies, the officials briefed on his discussions with Mr. Trump said.

With Senator John McCain’s absence because of brain cancer, Republicans have just 50 votes, and Mr. McConnell does not want to draw the ire of his libertarian-leaning Kentucky colleague, Senator Rand Paul, who opposed hawkish Bush policies. Aides to Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell declined requests for comment.

...Judge Kavanaugh, who has been seen as the front-runner, has inspired a broad campaign among supporters, but also a round of criticism from some Republicans, who have called his decisions in abortion and health care cases insufficiently conservative. His supporters have scoffed at the notion he is not conservative enough.

Mr. Trump’s hurdles with Judge Kavanaugh have been less about his judicial rulings than his proximity to the Bush family, of whom the president remains deeply skeptical, according to two people who have spoken with him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/us/politics/trump-mcconnell-supreme-court.htm...

____________________________________________________________________

Jim Acosta (CNN) Acosta | 9:36 AM - 9 Jul 2018

Trump SCOTUS team has looked at Kavanaugh's past comments on indicting a sitting president, we've confirmed. In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote: "The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government...

Separation of Powers in the 44th Presidency and Beyond
Brett M Kavanaugh 2009
33p
http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Kavanaugh_MLR.pdf
__________________________________________________​

Matthew Miller (MSNBC) @matthewamiller | 6:06 PM - 9 Jul 2018

The president’s criminal defense attorney present for the appointment of a justice who could hear appeals relating to the criminal investigation into the president. They don’t even try to hide it.

Matthew Miller Retweeted Manu Raju @mkraju
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s outside counsel, in the East Room of the WH for Trump’s SCOTUS announcement. Heller just swung by to pay his respects

Trump taps pesticide company exec to be USDA's chief scientist
John Bowden | 07/18/18

President Trump this week named a former Dow Chemical Company executive who worked in the company's pesticide division to be chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the third major hire of a Dow alumnus in his administration.

...(Scott) Hutchins received a Ph.D. in entomology from Iowa State University in 1987 and has since worked for the Dow Chemical Company in its crop protection division, which includes the production of pesticides. Hutchins previously served as the global director for the company's crop protection services division.

...Dow Chemical Company, which is headquartered in Midland, Mich., contributed more than $1 million to Trump's 2016 campaign...The Environmental Protection Agency later reversed a plan passed by the Obama administration to ban a pesticide called chlorpyrifos, which Dow manufactures...

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/397606-trump-nominates-pesticide-comp...

Ryan Bounds, nominated to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

GOP Senator Sinks Trump Judicial Nominee With History of Racist Writing

Bounds appeared to be coasting to an easy confirmation until the liberal group Alliance for Justice uncovered bigoted statements he made as a Stanford student in the 1990s...Bounds did not disclose his past racist statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee...Bounds is the first Trump judicial nominee to fail to get approval on the Senate floor.

Conservative plan, years in the making, is occurring as Trump fills federal bench
Matt Viser | July 21, 2018

Trump has appointed 44 judges since taking office — including more appellate judges than any president in American history at this point in his tenure. He has another 88 nominees currently pending before the US Senate; and with an aging federal bench, future opportunities will assuredly arise. If Trump is able to fill just the current vacancies alone, he will be responsible for installing more than one-fifth of the sitting judges in the United States.

...It is testament to the organizational plotting and planning, which has been going on for years if not decades, as conservative groups vetted and maintained lists of judicial candidates for the moment when the GOP held the White House and Senate majority. It is also the result of intransigence by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who ensured that President Obama’s judicial nominees were reviewed at a snail’s pace, delivering to Trump a large bucket of vacancies he could fill once he took office.

...McConnell appears to be preparing for the possibility of losing control of the Senate, by rushing through as many nominees as possible in the months ahead.

He has canceled much of the Senate’s traditional August recess, which could allow for more judicial nominees to gain confirmation...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/07/21/isn-just-his-supreme-court-no...

While federal employment shrinks in D.C., government contractors are on a hiring spree
Aaron Gregg | July 22, 2018

...Eighteen months after Donald Trump came to Washington promising to “drain the swamp,” his presidency is proving to be a mixed bag for the regional economy. Far from gutting Washington’s biggest economic asset — the federal government — the direction of federal spending under a Republican-controlled Congress is creating winners and losers on different sides of the Potomac.

Job growth has softened in the District and suburban Maryland as some agencies are being drawn down. But in the outlying suburbs of Northern Virginia — where defense and intelligence contracts are a major source of business — the promise of new defense spending is breathing life into a once-stagnant job market.

...Federal employment in the D.C. area has shrunk by about 7,000 jobs over the past year — the largest decline of any job category — as the Trump administration has drawn down certain civilian agencies. The District was hit hardest by that decline, with about 4,200 federal jobs lost in the past year. Suburban Maryland experienced stagnant growth as well after construction wound down on MGM National Harbor, with no project of that size to take its place.

...Northern Virginia added about 12,800 jobs in the one-year period that ended in June, about 5,700 of them coming in the professional and business services category that includes federal contractors. About 80 percent of the new jobs created here in the past year came in Northern Virginia, according to the Fuller Institute...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/while-federal-employment...

Former Fox News Exec Bill Shine Oversees White House Crackdown on Press

on banning Kaitlin Collins:

Two MSNBC anchors, Chris Hayes and Stephanie Ruhle, similarly placed the blame on Shine and drew a line to his time at Fox News. "Wait, Bill Shine did something creepy and bullying to a woman who works for a cable news network? How shocking," Hayes wrote on Twitter. Ruhle said that Shine "bullied a female journalist doing her job," adding, "If you can’t teach an old dog new tricks-consider putting a cat in charge."
...
Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican Party strategist, said the incident "reads as a kind of petty, ass-kissing to make the boss happy. His obsession with CNN is famous, and Bill and Sarah know it."

Trump’s pick to head White House science office gets good reviews
David Malakoff | Jul. 31, 2018

...he intends to nominate meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, a university administrator and former vice-chair of the governing board of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The OSTP director traditionally, but not always, also holds the title of the president’s science adviser...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/trump-s-pick-head-white-house-science-off...

>83 margd: A meteorologist named Kelvin. I like that.

Good catch!

>34 margd: contd.

The Energy 202: Acting EPA chief Andrew Wheeler’s lobbying ties under increasing scrutiny
Juliet Eilperin | July 30, 2018

...Andrew Wheeler’s lobbying ties have come under increasing scrutiny now that he is at the top of the Environmental Protection Agency.

But the acting administrator has more latitude to meet with some of his former clients compared to others, federal ethics officials say.

Under the Trump administration’s ethics pledge, a political appointee cannot meet with anyone he or she has provided services for during the two years prior to joining the federal government — except under specific circumstances. That two-year window defines which companies and groups count as a “former client” in the eyes of federal ethics officials and which do not.

Since joining the EPA on April 20, Wheeler has met with multiple organizations and businesses that retained him in his capacity as a principal at Faegre Baker Daniels LLP. The list includes biodiesel producer Darling Ingredients; agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, all of which ended their financial relationship with Wheeler’s firm before April 2016.

...In Wheeler’s May 24 letter outlining his ethics obligations regarding former clients, he identified eight ones from which he needed to recuse himself when it came to EPA matters. Those included the nation’s largest privately owned coal company, Murray Energy; Sargento Food Co.; Underwriters Laboratories; Energy Fuels Resources Inc.; Growth Energy; International Paper; Martin Farms; and Xcel Energy.

...But the ethics pledge allows for federal officials to meet with a former client if the session is on subject that is “a matter of general applicability” and is “open to all interested parties.” Both the Trump and Obama administrations have defined an “open” session as one where at least five people are present, and the attendees represent a diversity of perspectives.

Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the environmental advocacy group Sierra Club, said in a statement that even if Wheeler was complying with the law, the recent meetings show that it took him “less than a month as acting EPA administrator to prove he can’t and won’t let go of his corporate polluter past.”

Wheeler has estimated that he represented about 20 clients with business before the federal government during his time in private practice. That portfolio included the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Domestic Fuels Solutions Group, Whirlpool Corp. and the chemical manufacturer Celanese Corp.

...Despite the fact that ethics rules allow appointees to meet with clients they had outside a two-year window, Democrats are still pressing for a probe. Reps. Don Beyer Jr. of Virginia, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jamie Raskin of Maryland on Friday wrote a letter to the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics seeking a review of Wheeler's meetings with former lobbying clients.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/07/30/t...

New Details About Wilbur Ross’ Business Point To Pattern Of Grifting
Dan Alexander | Aug 7, 2018
Forbes Staff

...Over several months, in speaking with 21 people who know Ross, Forbes uncovered a pattern: Many of those who worked directly with him claim that Ross wrongly siphoned or outright stole a few million here and a few million there, huge amounts for most but not necessarily for the commerce secretary. At least if you consider them individually. But all told, these allegations—which sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 million. If even half of the accusations are legitimate, the current United States secretary of commerce could rank among the biggest grifters in American history...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/08/06/new-details-about-wilbur-ro...

ETA___________________________________________________________________________

European Parliament Report Accuses Wilbur Ross of Insider Trading
Hannah Levintova | Dec. 12, 2017

Lawmakers have been scrutinizing his 2014 sale of shares in the Bank of Ireland.

...a report on the 2008 eurozone banking crisis. The final version of this report, written by two Irish financial analysts, was presented in Brussels last week to a group of 52 European Parliament members affiliated with left-leaning parties. And it included a section covering Ross’ investment in the Bank of Ireland, in which he was a major shareholder and a member of the board of directors. The report alleges that when Ross sold off his holdings in the bank for a massive profit in 2014, he possessed inside information that the bank was relying on deceptive accounting practices to mask its losses and embellish its financial position...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/european-parliament-report-accuses-...

77 contd. (Kavanaugh)

Is Trump About To Be Able To Say 'You're Fired' To A Lot More People?
Nina Totenberg | August 7, 20185:00 AM ET

Neil Gorsuch and...(Brett)Kavanaugh...have long believed that presidential powers have been unconstitutionally weakened over most of the last century.

They believe in something called the "Unitary Executive"...the idea that the president should be able to, for any reason, fire the heads of various departments that have executive powers

...include(s) quasi-independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

...Justice Department has issued guidelines, allowing the firing of administrative law judges who "fail to follow agency policies, procedures, or instructions."

...Columbia Law School professor Gillian Metzger. "Does it go to the civil service?"...Administrative law judges have always been seen as "more on a par with civil service employees," she observed. "So it really does start to raise a question of whether the civil service protections might also be at risk."...

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/07/636108610/is-trump-about-to-be-able-to-say-you-re...

There's also the question of whether or not Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath to the Senate in order to get that last judgeship.

Maddow Blog @MaddowBlog
6:30 PM - 9 Aug 2018
https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1027728766947282944
__________________________________________________

Email exposes Kavanaugh to questions about role in terrorism response
ELIANA JOHNSON | 08/09/2018

Democrats are likely to question Supreme Court nominee’s involvement in legal case for torture and whether he misled Congress.

...2001...email, part of a tranche of documents that the White House turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the run-up to Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, indicates that Kavanaugh, then a White House lawyer, helped to prepare then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to testify before Congress on the federal government’s monitoring of communications between federal inmates with ties to terror networks and their attorneys.

...Kavanaugh’s involvement in the George W. Bush administration’s treatment of detainees became a flashpoint in his 2006 confirmation hearing when Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont pressed him on whether, in his capacity as White House counsel or later as White House staff secretary, he helped make the legal case for torture or recommended a candidate to the federal bench who had.

Kavanaugh denied any contemporaneous knowledge that the Bush administration was secretly waterboarding terrorist suspects, telling the senators he learned about the now infamous “Bybee Memo” that laid out a legal justification for torture years later through the “news media.”

...Kavanaugh...denied involvement “in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants.”

Durbin and Leahy pointed to a 2007 Washington Post report indicating that Kavanaugh had participated in a conversation about whether Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court’s swing vote, would uphold the constitutionality of the Bush administration’s decision to deny legal counsel to Americans deemed enemy combatants to a charge that Kavanaugh had perjured himself.

...The newly released email, a forwarded message from Kavanaugh to then-associate White House counsel Brad Berenson, is likely to spark another round of debate about the judge’s involvement in the Bush administration’s terrorism policies and a new set of accusations from Democrats, including Durbin and Leahy, that he misled them a dozen years ago.

...In the 2006 hearing...Kavanaugh (told) the (Sewnate)panel that he was “not aware of any discussions” about “the legal justifications or the policies relating to the treatment of detainees.”

“This was not part of my docket, either in the counsel’s office or as staff secretary,” he told Leahy.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/09/email-exposes-kavanaugh-to-questions-a...

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

New Kavanaugh documents prompt partisan debate over vetting
Robert Barnes | August 9, 2018

...Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote on Twitter: “Take note: Unless it was produced by the National Archives, every document you see from Judge Kavanaugh’s White House tenure was selectively chosen for release by his former deputy, Bill Burck. This is not an objective process.”

Durbin was referring to lawyer William Burck, who is heading a team of about 50 lawyers reviewing the documents. In a letter, Burck said his team has stepped in because National Archives staff members were busy working on the official committee request for documents.

...Democrats have complained about two aspects of the document research. One is the decision by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, to ask only for papers from Kavanaugh’s service in the White House counsel’s office from 2001 to 2003. Grassley said it is not relevant to examine documents from Kavanaugh’s longer service as staff secretary to Bush.

Kavanaugh served as staff secretary from 2003 to 2006, when he was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The other is the role of Burck, who served as Kavanaugh’s assistant during part of his White House years. Besides representing Bush, Burck has also represented former White House staffers Stephen K. Bannon and Reince Priebus in Russia-related investigations, as well as current White House counsel Donald McGahn.

...The released documents contained holes in the record, including an absence of emails in the critical days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

One email, from Oct. 24, 2001, shows that Kavanaugh had a hand in formulating “Anti-Terrorism law,” a set of talking points apparently to be used by Bush at the signing ceremony of the USA Patriot Act.

The emails also show that Kavanaugh was in the loop on discussions about how to prepare then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft for congressional hearings about the government’s actions after 9/11. A senior Justice Department official specifically asked Kavanaugh to help out...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-kavanaugh-documents-prompt-partisan-...

Kathy Kraninger, Trump's nominee to head Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--
a “mid-level budget staffer lacking expertise, chosen to leave one of the most powerful agencies in the government”.

Democrats gear up for a fight over the next head of the CFPB
Emily Stewart | Jul 19, 2018

Trump announced plans to nominate (Kathy) Kraninger, 43, to head the agency on June 18, replacing acting director Mick Mulvaney. Kraninger is currently the associate director for general government programs at the Office of Management and Budget, where she oversees a $250 billion budget across seven Cabinet departments, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. (In addition to his role at the consumer protection agency, Mulvaney is director of the OMB.)

Kraninger’s nomination was a bit of a head-scratcher: She doesn’t have much discernible experience or known interest in consumer protection or financial services. She wasn’t on anyone’s radar before her nomination, although multiple names with more applicable experience were floated as potential nominees, including Ohio lawyer Jonathan Denver and National Credit Union Administration chair J. Mark McWatters.

...There has also been some speculation that Kraninger’s nomination is simply a way to keep Mulvaney in charge of the CFPB on a temporary basis for longer. Her nomination resets the clock on his time as acting director of the agency, and if she isn’t confirmed by the Senate, he gets to stay in. Either way, the confirmation could take months...

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/19/17587346/kathy-kraninger-elizabeth-warren-cfpb-hea...

(Meanwhile, as posted in Trump-screws-his-base thread,Mulvaney, who as congressman accepted donations from pay-day loan companies, proposes to weaken young soldiers' protection from such predators: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/us/politics/mulvaney-military-lending.html . It's really bad, a young relative of mine was sold a time-share in what sounded like hi-pressure sales targeting young soldiers in training... )

Difficult to weigh, but any announcement on Friday before long weekend warrants suspicion:

Trump to withhold 100,000 pages of Kavanaugh’s White House records
Seung Min Kim | September 1, 2018

...(attorney Bill Burck, who serves as Bush’s presidential records representative) who has led a team of attorneys reviewing Kavanaugh’s papers confirmed that lawyers have finished going through the records and have turned over about 415,000 pages to the committee, although about 147,000 of those pages are being withheld from public view.

...attorney Bill Burck, who serves as Bush’s presidential records representative, wrote to the committee...that 101,921 pages are not being given to the committee because the White House considers them to be protected by presidential privilege...

...“Judge Kavanaugh, an associate and senior associate White House counsel, dealt with some of the most sensitive communications of any White House official,” Burck wrote. The major portion of the documents withheld for privilege “reflect deliberations and candid advice concerning the selection and nomination of judicial candidates, the confidentiality of which is critical to any president’s ability to carry out this core constitutional executive function.”

...Senate Democrats have been infuriated that Republicans have requested documents just from Kavanaugh’s two years as associate White House counsel as the Senate reviews the nominee’s record. Democrats have also pushed for records from Kavanaugh’s three years as Bush’s staff secretary, but Republicans say that demand is excessive and that those papers are irrelevant to Kavanaugh’s nomination.

...Democrats believe this would be the first time a sitting president exerted privilege under the records law to prevent disclosure of presidential documents to Congress, citing their conversations with National Archives officials.

...“Republicans in the Senate and the president of the United States are colluding to keep Judge Kavanaugh’s records secret and trying to hide their actions from the American people by doing it on the Friday night of a holiday weekend,” (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “What are they trying so desperately to hide?”

Presidential documents would typically be reviewed by the National Archives...so far, the Archives has agreed with the “vast majority” of how Burck’s team has categorized Kavanaugh’s documents.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-withhold-100000-pages-of-kavana...

An impeachment-worthy hire, IMO:

Trump’s newest hire thinks science is like Nazi propaganda
Joe Romm | Sep 5, 2018

Will Happer now oversees emerging technologies at National Security Council. He says more carbon pollution "would be a benefit" to humanity.

President Donald Trump just appointed William Happer for the key job of “senior director for emerging technologies” at the National Security Council.

But Happer literally believes that more carbon pollution “would be a benefit” to humanity, as he wrote in a widely mocked 2013 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.”

...Happer, a Princeton theoretical physicist is one of the most extreme climate science deniers, and someone who directly compared the overwhelming scientific consensus that carbon dioxide causes global warming to Nazi “propaganda.”

“This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,” Happer told The Daily Princetonian in 2009. “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.”

In 2014, he told CNBC, “The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews.”...

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-hires-denier-who-compared-climate-science-to-naz...

Below is editorial on Trump's nominee to chair the US-Canadian agency that regulates levels and flows in the St Lawrence R and L Ontario--sounds like yet another nominee unconstrained by facts?

Epic flooding in St Lawrence River and Lake Ontario in 2017 damaged properties in NY and Ontario, and downstream in Montreal, which also received floodwater from the Ottawa R. New Yorkers who were allowed to build very close to the water--on the lee side of L Ontario--were affected perhaps more than Ontarians, who have long been zoned further from flood plains after Hurricane Hazel. Water managers, who did not see the flood coming, were left juggling interests of upstream property owners, navigation, and downstream property owners. According to editorial, nominee does not appreciate the (ten years?) of intensive binational study and modeling and consultation that went into Plan 2014, itself adjusted as a result of NY property owners' concerns. I think Canada has to approve any adjustments at this time. Navigation and downstream property owners--including NY-ers on the St Lawrence River--will have perspectives different than those on south shore of L Ontario.

Misguided priorities: IJC prospect doesn’t grasp work that went into Plan 2014
SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 AT 5:15 AM

President Donald Trump last month nominated (Ms. Jane L.) Corwin to take over as chair of the U.S. section of the commission. The former state assemblywoman is a seasonal resident of Clarence in Erie County. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she would succeed Chairwoman Lana Pollack (from Michigan)...

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/opinion/misguided-priorities-ijc-prospect-doe...

>61 margd: >86 margd: Wheeler, EPA (contd.) Not just aberration or history...

EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler Engaged With Racist, Conspiratorial Posts On Social Media
Alexander C. Kaufman | Oct 9, 2018

Exclusive: The agency head brushed off his interactions with a Pizzagater and said he doesn’t remember liking a racist picture of the Obamas.
headshot

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/epa-andrew-wheeler-social-media-conspiracy-...

Trump taps ex-Monsanto executive to lead wildlife agency (US Fish & Wildlife Service)
MATTHEW DALY | 10/24/2018

President Donald Trump says he is nominating a former executive at agribusiness giant Monsanto to head the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Aurelia Skipwith of Indiana is currently deputy assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

A biologist and lawyer, Skipwith spent more than six years at Monsanto and has worked at the Agriculture Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

If confirmed by the Senate, Skipwith would be the first African-American to head the wildlife agency, which has 9,000 employees and a $2.8 billion annual budget.

...Skipwith has been at Interior since April 2017. She helps oversee policy planning and regulatory actions for the wildlife agency and the National Park Service.

She said in a statement that she shares Zinke’s goals to “protect our species, increase public access and ensure science is at the forefront of our decisions.”

Chris Saeger, executive director of the liberal, Montana-based Western Values Project, called Skipwith “a darling of corporate special interests” and said her nomination was “business as usual for an administration that has sought to reward its allies at the expense of public lands and wildlife.”

https://apnews.com/aa701b585b98463ba7558cf2dfb7d701

Lana Marks appears to be Trump's token South African friend. Her nomination does make an odd amount of sense. She at least speaks the language and knows an aspect of the country from the inside.

Other than that, does she have any diplomatic skills beyond knowing how to schmooze other rich people?

Trump picks handbag designer, Mar-a-Lago member to be envoy to South Africa

Justices Asked to Rule on Legality of Acting Attorney General’s (Matthew Whitaker) Appointment
Adam Liptak | Nov. 16, 2018

...The request for a ruling on Mr. Whitaker’s appointment came in the unusual context of a pending Second Amendment challenge to a federal law banning gun ownership by people convicted of felonies. Lawyers for Barry Michaels, who was convicted of securities fraud in 1998 and wants to buy a gun, filed a motion asking the justices to rename his case.

It had earlier been called Michaels v. Sessions, and it was renamed Michaels v. Whitaker after Mr. Whitaker was appointed to succeed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure on Nov. 7.

Such substitutions of government officials sued in their official capacities in court cases are ordinarily automatic.

...Mr. Michaels asked the Supreme Court to call the case Michaels v. Rosenstein, arguing that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein is the rightful acting attorney general because Mr. Whitaker’s appointment violated federal statutes and the Constitution. Legal scholars are divided on whether Mr. Whitaker’s appointment was lawful. On Wednesday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said it was...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/supreme-court-whitaker-attorney-g...

#61, 86, 94

Trump Says He’ll Nominate Andrew Wheeler to Head the E.P.A.
Lisa Friedman | Nov. 16, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday said he intends to nominate Andrew R. Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, to be the permanent administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The E.P.A. has been at the center of the Trump administration’s agenda to reduce the regulations on industry, and Mr. Wheeler has been instrumental in seeing through rollbacks of major environmental policies. The changes include proposals to weaken the Obama administration’s signature policies to combat climate change, including a sweeping regulation on emissions from coal-fired power plants and a rule reining in pollution from vehicle tailpipes.

...joined the E.P.A. in April as deputy administrator. After Mr. Pruitt’s departure, Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the agency on an interim basis.

Since then, Mr. Wheeler has distinguished himself among top officials in the Trump administration for his low-key, under-the-radar style, even as he has worked diligently and methodically to advance Mr. Trump’s deregulatory agenda...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/climate/trump-andrew-wheeler-epa.html

HEIGHT? Height is a criterion for nomination? (Must be taller than 5'3'' apparently?)

Trump slams Fed chair, questions climate change and threatens to cancel Putin meeting in wide-ranging interview with The Post
Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Damian Paletta | November 27

...(Janet Yellen) impressed (Trump) greatly during an interview, according to people briefed on their encounter. But advisers steered him away from renominating her, telling him that he should have his own person in the job.

The president also appeared hung up on (Janet) Yellen’s height. He told aides on the National Economic Council on several occasions that the 5-foot-3-inch economist was not tall enough to lead the central bank, quizzing them on whether they agreed, current and former officials said...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-slams-fed-chair-questions-climate-...

Neal Katyal @neal_katyal (https://twitter.com/neal_katyal) | 8:18 PM - 28 Nov 2018

For those following the fake AG Whitaker appointment, Tom Goldstein just filed an impt Supreme Ct brief.
"The President never in history forced out a Cabinet Secretary&replaced him with a hand-picked,nonconfirmed appointee from outside the Dept’s chain"

(For exact quote, see 5th page of)
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5317223-Reply-Final.html

Trump picks William Barr as next US attorney general
12/7/2018

If confirmed, (William) Barr, who served as attorney general under George HW Bush, will oversee Mueller's Russia investigation.

...previously attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under the late President George HW Bush, has defended Trump's controversial decision to fire then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 when Comey was leading the Russia probe.

...Barr has said there is more reason to investigate potential wrongdoing by Trump's campaign opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, than there is to probe any potential collusion.

...Barr has said political donations show Mueller's team of professional prosecutors tilt uncomfortably to the left. On Twitter, Trump calls them "17 Angry Dems".

...Barr's comments on Mueller and Clinton could stir opposition from Senate Democrats, but the nomination will almost certainly not come up for a vote until next year. Republicans will control the chamber with a 53-47 majority in the new Congress convening in January...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/trump-picks-william-barr-attorney-general...

Heather Nauert cited D-Day as the height of U.S.-German relations. Now she’s headed to the U.N.
Isaac Stanley-Becker | December 7, 2018

From Fox News journalist to diplomat: Nauert to be nominated as next U.N. ambassador

...The D-Day comment raised eyebrows over the summer, when some suggested it demonstrated a lack of historical understanding from the former “Fox & Friends” presenter who gained prominence on television during the Monica Lewinsky scandal but has no diplomatic experience. This critique is emerging again as she prepares to move to New York as the American ambassador to the United Nations, a role to which President Trump plans to nominate her.

...Raised in Rockford, Ill., as the daughter of a prominent insurance executive, she earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Mount Vernon College and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia.

Heather Nauert joined the State Department as a spokeswoman last year after serving as an anchor and correspondent for Fox News. She is President Trump's pick for U.N. ambassador.

She got her start in journalism in 1996, joining Fox News two years later. She jumped to other big-name outlets, including ABC News, before eventually returning to Fox in 2007. She has also worked as a health insurance lobbyist, as well as for her family’s financial services company. Her State Department biography indicates that she served as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, part a program for “promising young leaders ... to participate in a sustained conversation on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy.” Some of her work has taken her abroad. In 2006, she was nominated for an Emmy for the ABC special series “13 Around the World.”

...her big break came when the Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998.

“The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal created full employment for pundits of all stripes, but in particular it gave wide visibility to a subset of young, female conservatives — Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Barbara Olson, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick. And Heather Nauert,” The Post profile recounted. “With cable networks filling the air with talk about sex and sexual harassment, the ‘pundettes,’ as they came to be known, filled a market need: a telegenic group of women who were predictably anti-Clinton. And in their own way, they were breakthrough figures.”

...She toed the party line, calling on the president (Clinton) to “tell the truth” and defending Kenneth Starr’s probe.

...as she expanded her role at Fox, including as a presenter for “Fox & Friends.” She has broadcast just about every right-wing talking-point under the sun...

...Even as a loyal aide, Nauert hasn’t always stayed on message...

In a notable contrast to the president’s denigration of journalists as “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” as he wrote on Thursday night, the State Department spokeswoman celebrated the work of journalists. “They shine a light on abuses and corruption, expose threats posed by transnational criminal organizations, and counter disinformation and propaganda that spread false narratives,” she wrote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/07/heather-nauert-cited-d-day-heig...

____________________________________________________________________________

...In an administration rife with internal conflict and deeply distrustful of the UN, Nauert's nomination would place a less senior person at the international agency than Haley, who reportedly sparred with other administration officials.

...Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told aides he wants the UN position downgraded from the Cabinet-level job Haley had insisted on...National security adviser John Bolton has been said to want the role downgraded as well, according to people familiar with his thinking. A former UN ambassador himself, Bolton has taken an interest in some UN matters, such as the International Criminal Court.

The shift means Nauert would wield less clout than her predecessor, both at the UN and within the administration, and as a result, would pose nowhere near the challenge to Bolton or Pompeo...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/heather-nauert-un-ambassador-donald-trum...

A Top Aide’s Exit Plan Raises Eyebrows in the White House
Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos | Dec. 20, 2018

President Trump is said to have soured on Zachary D. Fuentes, the 36-year-old deputy White House chief of staff (since Mr. Trump came under sharp criticism for canceling his appearance at an American military cemetery near Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, a move that was ostensibly made because of rainy weather.)

Mr. Fuentes told colleagues that after his mentor, John F. Kelly, left his job as chief of staff at the end of the year, he would “hide out” at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, for six months, remaining on the payroll in a nebulous role. Then, in July, when he had completed 15 years of service in the Coast Guard, Mr. Fuentes — an active-duty officer — would take advantage of an early retirement program.

The program, referred to as temporary early retirement authority, had lapsed for Coast Guard officials at the end of the 2018 fiscal year, and, according to people briefed on the discussions, Department of Homeland Security officials began pressing Congress in November to reinstate it. Administration officials said they had been told that Mr. Fuentes discussed the program with officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and after reporters raised questions with lawmakers of both parties, a provision to reinstate it was abruptly pulled from a House bill on Wednesday.

The White House declined to answer questions about whether Mr. Fuentes had pressed to have the program restarted, saying only that he planned to remain on for a time as a senior adviser to aid in the transition to a new chief of staff. But in interviews, nearly a dozen White House and administration aides, none of whom would speak on the record, raised concerns about how they believed Mr. Fuentes planned to use government resources in the coming months...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/politics/zachary-fuentes-coast-guard-retir...

Wells Griffith, climate advisor:

https://grist.org/article/watch-trumps-new-climate-adviser-run-away-from-amy-goo...

He actually did only work at grandpa’s gas station prior to his DOE appointment. But he’s a loyal GOP operative and a quick study:

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060077493

> 101 contd.

Matthew Miller @matthewamiller | 5:38 PM - 9 Jan 2019:

.@amyklobuchar just said to @chrislhayes that Barr refused to meet with her before his hearing next week, supposedly because of the shutdown. I have never heard of an AG nominee refusing meetings with Judiciary members before. Incredibly disrespectful.

ETA________________________________________

Amy Klobuchar @amyklobuchar | 4:56 AM - 10 Jan 2019:
Memo To Whoever Is In Charge: Last time I checked, AG nominee Barr was not a furloughed worker. Why was shutdown given as reason for him not meeting w/me before hearing like every other nominee has done w/judiciary Senators? I even met w/head of patents once. Will serve coffee.

Amy Klobuchar @amyklobuchar | 7:30 AM - 10 Jan 2019:
Thanks everyone. My meeting is now set for this afternoon with AG nominee Barr. Coffee will be hot. ☕️

Quietly, without fanfare, Trump nominated Andrew Wheeler, of Virginia, to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency--one of six nominations sent to Senate on Jan 9, 2019. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/six-nominations-sent-senate-2/

___________________________________________________________

Unlikely that Senate will have the information it should to review the nomination:

Court orders EPA to release Andrew Wheeler’s contacts with outside groups within 10 months
Dino Grandoni | January 7, 2019

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in a Dec. 26 ruling, ordered the release of about 20,000 emails exchanged between industry groups and 25 Trump officials (at EPA) within the next 10 months. The timeline will start as soon as the federal government fully reopens.

The environmental group Sierra Club filed the public-records request for the documents from EPA officials responsible for the rollback of dozens of rules put in place by the previous administration to combat the emissions of climate-warming gases and other pollutants.

When the agency failed to fulfill the Freedom of Information Act request on time, the group sued. It successfully argued in court that documents concerning Wheeler, a onetime coal lobbyist whom President Trump said he wants to nominate to run the agency permanently, should be made public as soon as possible.

...The court rejected arguments from the EPA that it is too overwhelmed with FOIA requests to respond by the legal deadlines. The agency had initially asked the court to have until 2022 — halfway into the next presidential term — to complete the requests.

...U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte cited Pruitt’s departure — and Wheeler’s subsequent elevation to the top of the agency — as among the “persuasive reasons for the urgency” of the Sierra Club’s requests for documents pertaining to him...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2019/01/07/court-orders-epa-re...

__________________________________________________________

The last nomination for EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, was championed by a dark-money group--illegally, it sounds like:

Pro-Pruitt group took big checks in secret
ALEX GUILLÉN | 01/09/2019

A dark-money group supporting Scott Pruitt's confirmation as EPA administrator raised nearly a half-million dollars from at least one oil company and other donors who did not have to identify themselves, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

Protecting America Now, a nonprofit incorporated in Delaware the day after President Donald Trump announced Pruitt's nomination, is only now revealing basic information about itself, two years after the former Oklahoma attorney general was successfully confirmed to lead EPA and seven months after he resigned under a cloud of ethics scandals. POLITICO received the documents through a records request.

Pioneer Natural Resources, a Texas-based oil and gas company, voluntarily disclosed that it contributed $100,000 — the largest single contribution and more than 20 percent of the group's total haul in 2017 — but the group’s remaining donors remain secret. A few weeks after he was confirmed, Pruitt halted work on a methane rule that Pioneer had identified as a threat to its business, although it’s unclear whether the company’s support influenced that decision.

Critics say the group’s laser-like focus on lobbying for Pruitt’s confirmation after raising money from companies he would regulate illustrates concerns about the lack of disclosure required by such organizations, known as 501(c)(4) groups after the relevant section of the tax code.

...A few weeks before Pruitt was confirmed, Pioneer identified EPA's methane regulations among a list of rules that could "adversely affect demand" for its products, according to its 2016 annual report to the SEC. Once he was in place at EPA, Pruitt halted work on that rulemaking.

It is unclear if Pruitt ever became aware of the group’s donors. Pruitt’s lawyer did not respond to questions about his knowledge of Protecting America Now. But in January 2017, before his confirmation, Pruitt told Congress that he was “not affiliated in any way” with the group and had “no knowledge” of any donors at that time.
Boxes of tomatoes and watermelons

...According to its tax filing, the group's mission is “ensuring environmental regulations protect the environment and create jobs,” and it spent nearly $390,000 in 2017 working “with the U.S. Senate, state officeholders and interested parties” to get Pruitt confirmed. The Lobbying Disclosure Act typically requires companies or interest groups to report such outreach to Congress, but Protecting America Now never submitted any lobbying registration, according to a separate search of the LDA database.

...Karl Sandstrom, a former Democratic member of the FEC, suggested the group should have organized itself under a different section of the tax code. So-called 527 organizations are formed “primarily for the purpose” of trying to influence "the selection, nomination, election, or appointment" of anyone to public office, according to federal law, but they must disclose their donors.

“It seems if that’s what you’re organized to do, you’re a 527, not a (c)(4),” Sandstrom said. But he cautioned that the IRS has shown little interest in policing nonprofits' disclosure issues...

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/scott-pruitt-epa-secret-money-1088721

Isolated in Berlin Trump's Ambassador Finds Few Friends in Germany
Konstantin von Hammerstein | January 11, 2019

Since arriving in Berlin as U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell has flouted diplomatic conventions and attempted to interfere in domestic politics. He has since become politically isolated in the German capital.

...The powerful avoid him. Doors have been shut. Few politicians to the left of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AFD) and the populist-conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), want to be seen with him...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/u-s-ambassador-richard-grenell-is-isol...

Exclusive excerpt: Chris Christie torches Jared
1/16/2019

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie settles scores in "Let Me Finish," a memoir out Jan. 29 from Hachette Books, writing that President Trump "trusts people he shouldn’t, including some of the people who are closest to him."

What he's saying: Christie asserts that Trump has a "revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia."...

https://www.axios.com/chris-christie-book-excerpt-jared-kushner-b05286c8-cf93-40...

Not a nominee or hiree, Mitch McConnell HAS engaged with the tar baby.
Below, a long-ish article on what makes the Senate Majority Leader tick:

Mitch McConnell Got Everything He Wanted. But at What Cost?
Charles Homans | Jan. 22, 2019

The president whom the Senate Republican leader helped elect has turned out to be the one thing he can’t control...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/magazine/mcconnell-senate-trump.html

NBC News @NBCNews | 8:24 AM - 23 Jan 2019:

NEW: House Oversight Cmte., now led by Democrats, is launching an investigation into White House security clearance process; plans to review the clearances for Trump aides Flynn, Kushner, Gorka, Bolton and others.

House Democrats probe how Jared Kushner got security clearance
Ken Dilanian | Jan. 23, 2019

The probe was launched "in response to grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump administration," said Rep. Elijah Cummings...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/house-democrats-probe-how-jared-kus...

Stephen Miller:

*An Obscure White House Staffer’s Jaw-Dropping Trump Tell-All
Elaina Plott | Jan 28, 2019

In Team of Vipers, Cliff Sims recounts his year and a half in a West Wing “out of control.”

...He credits Stephen Miller’s survival to the speechwriter’s ability to play both sides of the “globalist/nationalist” divide in the White House. While then–chief strategist Steve Bannon viewed Miller as his “right-wing protege,” his ideological ally against the so-called globalists, Miller was cultivating a close relationship with perhaps the globalist in chief, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Sims writes of listening in on Miller “plunging the knife” into Bannon’s back and “twisting it with relish” during a conversation with the president. “Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won’t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared,” Miller said, according to Sims. “If Steve wasn’t doing that, I bet you’d be ten points higher.”

...He writes about his struggle to reconcile his Christian faith with working for a president who, for example, “totally lacked nuance” in his attitude toward refugees—particularly “persecuted Christians,” whom Trump “promised” to help but “never did.” Sims writes that he took this concern at one point to Stephen Miller, who, he writes, told him, “I would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America’s soil.”...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/obscure-white-house-aide-wr...

if I may add "...and fire-ees & forced, or other resignations"
momentarily to the thread title:
Does anyone know if Ben Carson has become any
of the above?

>112 rolandperkins: Ben Carson is still listed as Secretary of HUD: https://www.hud.gov/about/Secretary. Haven't heard much of him recently.

Thanks, margd.

>110 margd:, contd. Kushner et al. security clearances

'Whistleblower' in White House security clearance office gets suspended
Laura Strickler and Peter Alexander | Jan. 31, 2019

Tricia Newbold...A White House security specialist has been suspended (two weeks) without pay for defying her supervisor Carl Kline, less than a week after NBC News reported Kline approved Jared Kushner for top secret clearance over the objections of career staff.

The specialist, Tricia Newbold, had filed a discrimination complaint against Kline three months ago.

...Wednesday's notice is signed by ( Security office chief Crede Bailey) and mentions that in Newbold's 18-year career she has not faced any "prior formal disciplinary action." The document also harshly criticizes Newbold for her "defiance" and notes that Newbold said she would "continue to do what is best for the Executive Office of the President."

...Newbold's lawyer, Ed Passman, considers her a whistleblower and said he believes the administrative charges were brought as payback for her (earlier) decision to file (EEOC) complaint against Kline.

Kline was the subject of an NBC News article last week that revealed he had approved Kushner's top-secret clearance after it was rejected by two career White House security specialists. The pair had made the decision to deny Kushner the clearance after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

In her EEOC complaint, Newbold, who has a rare form of dwarfism, accused Kline of discriminating against her because of her height...Kline had moved files out of Newbold's reach.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/whistleblower-white-house-sec...

>111 margd: Watching him on the news channels gave me the impression he was a flash-in-the-pan weasel. I, for one, will not be wasting any time or money on his book.

Scientist Who Rejects Warming Is Named to EPA Advisory Board
Scott Waldman | February 1, 2019

...John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, Hunstville, was one of the first to push the federal government to conduct a “red team, blue team” debate on climate science. That was a decade ago. Now he wants to use his new perch on the agency’s (45-member) Science Advisory Board to challenge climate science consensus...

...EPA officials asked him to apply, he said.

...When asked what his first priority would be as a member of the SAB, Christy said he would try to convince his colleagues that nature is responsible for rising temperatures, not people...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientist-who-rejects-warming-is-name...

‘It’s way too many’: As vacancies pile up in Trump administration, senators grow concerned
Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey and Seung Min Kim | February 4, 2019

Trump says acting Cabinet officials give him 'flexibility'

From the Justice Department to Veterans Affairs, vast swaths of the government have top positions filled by officials serving in an acting capacity — or no one at all. More than two years into Trump’s term, the president has an acting chief of staff, attorney general, defense secretary, Office of Management and Budget director and Environmental Protection Agency chief.

To deal with the number of vacancies in the upper ranks of departments, agencies have been relying on novel and legally questionable personnel moves that could leave the administration’s policies open to court challenges.

The lack of permanent leaders has started to alarm top congressional Republicans who are pressing for key posts to be filled...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/its-way-too-many-as-vacan...

Former Fox News reporter named to lead counter-propaganda efforts at State
Kylie Atwood, Michelle Kosinski and Jennifer Hansler | February 7, 2019

(CNN)The State Department on Thursday announced that a former Fox News reporter would lead its agency in charge of efforts to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.

Lea Gabrielle will become the special envoy and coordinator of the Global Engagement Center

Lea is a former CIA-trained human intelligence operations officer, defense foreign liaison officer, United States Navy program director, Navy FA-18/C fighter pilot, and national television news correspondent and anchor at two different networks

Gabrielle was a general assignment reporter for "Shepard Smith Reporting," according to her Fox News biography, and was previously a military reporter.

...the choice demonstrates the administration sees the job as more a public affairs role than a policy heavy one.

Obama's pick for director of the GEC, Michael Lumpkin, had served as the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict and as the acting under secretary of defense for policy, the third-highest civilian job at the United States Department of Defense.

Current acting director Daniel Kimmage has served in several State Department roles, including being principal deputy coordinator of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. Kimmage, who is fluent in Russian and Arabic, according to his biography, was also a senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute. His writings include reports on extremist media strategies...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/07/politics/lea-gabrielle-gec-state/index.html

More of #119: "Trump says acting...officials (no Senate confirmation) give him 'flexibility'"

Trump Quietly Planted a Top Koch Official Inside the E.P.A.
Bess Levin | February 5, 2019

How much cancer is too much cancer? Let Koch’s expert on water and chemical regulations decide.

...The Trump administration has placed a former Koch Industries official in charge of research that will shape how the government regulates a class of toxic chemicals contaminating millions of Americans’ drinking water—an issue that could have major financial repercussions for his former employer.

David Dunlap, a deputy in E.P.A.’s Office of Research and Development, is playing a key role as the agency decides how to protect people from the pollution left behind at hundreds of military bases and factories across the country. . .He spent the previous eight years as Koch Industries’ lead expert on water and chemical regulations, a position that typically includes helping companies to limit regulatory restrictions and liability for cleanups.

...Dunlap was hired in October, according to previously undisclosed documents. Since then, he has been extremely busy, having reportedly been involved in high-level meetings that preceded the agency’s decision not to set drinking water limits for chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which “have been linked with kidney and testicular cancer, as well as other ailments.”

...According to Politico, Dunlap has been able to avoid a Senate confirmation hearing in which his prior work experience might come up because Trump has not officially nominated anyone to run to office...Currently, Koch subsidiary Georgia-Pacific, a paper and pulp conglomerate, is facing at least one class-action suit related to chemicals now under Dunlap’s purview.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/trump-put-a-koch-official-in-charge-of-a...

Trump picks golf club, Mar-a-Lago members as ambassadors
Brad Heath | Feb. 8, 2019

...Membership rolls of Trump's clubs are not public. USA TODAY identified members through interviews, news accounts and a website golfers use to track their handicaps.

Since he took office, Trump has appointed at least eight people who identified themselves as current or former members of his club to senior posts in his administration. USA TODAY identified five of those appointees in mid-2017, prompting criticism from ethics watchdogs that the selections blurred the boundary between his public duties and his private financial interests.

Since then, Trump has appointed three other members as ambassadors in Europe and Africa. One has been confirmed by the Senate.

...Federal ethics rules don’t prohibit the president from nominating his customers or his members from accepting. Neither government ethics lawyers nor the lawmakers who must approve the nominations traditionally question whether would-be members of the administration have private business relationships with the president...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/08/donald-trump-picks...

Daughter and son-in-law of AG nominee leaving the Justice Department
David Shortell, Laura Jarrett and Pamela Brown | February 13, 2019

As William Barr, President Donald Trump's attorney general nominee, awaits a Senate vote to confirm his move to the top of the Justice Department, his daughter and son-in-law, both Justice Department employees, are on their way to different jobs.

Mary Daly, Barr's oldest daughter and the director of Opioid Enforcement and Prevention Efforts in the deputy attorney general's office, is leaving for a position at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury Department's financial crimes unit, a Justice official said.

Tyler McGaughey, the husband of Barr's youngest daughter, has been detailed from the powerful US attorney's office in Alexandria, Virginia, to the White House counsel's office, two officials said.

It's not clear if McGaughey's switch is a result of Barr's pending new role, and the kind of work he'll be handling at the White House is not public knowledge.

Daly's husband will remain in his position in the Justice Department's National Security Division for now.

The moves were by choice and are not required under federal nepotism laws, but Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, called them "a good idea" to "avoid the bad optics that could come from the appearance of them working for him."

However, Shaub added that McGaughey's detail to the White House counsel's office was "concerning."

"That's troubling because it raises further questions about Barr's independence," Shaub said.

As attorney general, Barr will oversee the special counsel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election and whether there was a conspiracy with the Trump campaign...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/13/politics/barr-family-justice-department-moves/ind...

David Bernhardt, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Interior...

Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client
Coral Davenport | Feb. 12, 2019

WASHINGTON — As a lobbyist and lawyer, David Bernhardt fought for years on behalf of a group of California farmers to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for a finger-size fish, the delta smelt, to gain access to irrigation water.

As a top official since 2017 at the Interior Department, Mr. Bernhardt has been finishing the job: He is working to strip away the rules the farmers had hired him to oppose.

Last week President Trump said he would nominate Mr. Bernhardt to lead the Interior Department, making him the latest in a line of officials now regulating industries that once paid them to work as lobbyists. Others include Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency after the resignation of Scott Pruitt amid ethics scandals. William Wehrum, the nation’s top clean-air regulator, is a lawyer whose former clients included coal-burning power plants and oil giants...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/climate/david-bernhardt-endangered-species.ht...

Trump to nominate Jeffrey Rosen to replace Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general
February 20, 2019

...President Trump intends to nominate Jeffrey A. Rosen as deputy attorney general, the White House said Tuesday. Rosen, who is currently deputy transportation secretary, will replace Rod Rosenstein, who is expected to leave his post in mid-March

...Before joining the Transportation Department, Rosen was a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP (margd: with Barr I think I read elsewhere)...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-rosen-replacing-rod-rosenstein-deputy-attor...

Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta
_______________________________________________________________

Rachel Maddow MSNBC @maddow
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1098713333421752320.html

Even if Alex Acosta were not a Trump cabinet official right now, this federal court ruling about his behavior in the Jeffrey Epstein case would/should put Acosta in headlines across the country.

Epstein Order
Source document contributed to DocumentCloud by CJ Ciaramella (BuzzFeed).
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5745926-Epstein-Order.html

Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald @jkbjournalist is the one who broke this open. Her story is the best one you'll see today summing up what has happened:

Federal prosecutors broke law in Jeffrey Epstein case, judge rules
A judge ruled that federal prosecutors including U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, a politically connected sex trafficke…
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article226577419.html

For the Epstein case itself, this is a breakthrough because for the first time, a court is confirming Epstein's serial abuse of multiple minor girls (a federal crime) in Florida, elsewhere in the US, and abroad.

That had not been established in court before in part because Acosta, as US Attorney, gave Epstein a non-prosecution agreement for all fed crimes - a deal that extended to all his potential accomplices. Acosta instead let Epstein plead on *prostitution* charges in state court.

(State prostitution charges, really? If you're a grown-ass man doing this to children, is it really the most important thing under the law to know whether or not you also gave the kids money?? Arrrrgh.) Forgive the aside.

The basis for the civil case that led to today's ruling was the Crime Victims' Rights Act, which should have *blocked* Acosta from doing this deal in secret with Epstein, without telling his potential victims.

Here, Julie Brown sums it up elegantly:

Today, as Brown sums it up, the judge ruled that, "while prosecutors had the right to resolve the case in any way they saw fit, they violated the law by hiding the agreement from Epstein’s victims."

And which prosecutors did that specifically? Was it someone just working below Alex Acosta that he might not have known about? Someone he just didn't adequately supervise on this case?

Uh, not according to the judge. Read this:

So, a federal judge just ruled that the current Labor Secretary gave a secret non-prosecution agreement to a prolific, serial child sex offender -- then broke the law by agreeing with the guy's defense team that they'd all keep it secret from the victims.

Did I mention that Alex Acosta is now a Trump cabinet official? Right now? Still?

Grand jury is examining whether former interior secretary Ryan Zinke lied to federal investigators
Juliet Eilperin and Lisa Rein | February 22, 2019

Prosecutors have begun presenting evidence to a grand jury in Washington in their probe of whether former interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lied to federal investigators...

The closed-door deliberations are focused on Zinke’s decision not to grant a petition by two Indian tribes to operate a commercial casino in Connecticut, according to these individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because grand jury proceedings are not public.

The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes’ push to run a gambling facility in East Windsor, Conn., had sparked a lobbying campaign by MGM Resorts International, a competitor that opposed the planned casino. The proposal was the subject of intense scrutiny at Interior and the White House during President Trump’s first months in office.

The tribes allege that Zinke decided not to grant their application because of political pressure, and Interior’s Office of Inspector General opened an investigation into the matter a year ago.

Investigators with the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office came to believe Zinke had lied to them in the course of that inquiry and referred the matter to the Justice Department late last year.

Making false statements to federal officials constitutes a crime, but it can be difficult to prove because it requires prosecutors to show a person “knowingly and willfully” lied, rather than simply misstated a fact.

...The tribe has questioned whether Zinke was improperly influenced by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) and then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), both of whom have received contributions from MGM Resorts International. The company ranked as Heller’s second-biggest contributor between 2011 and 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, giving him $57,450 during that period...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/grand-jury-is-examining-w...

Trump announces nomination of Kelly Knight Craft to be ambassador to United Nations
Philip Rucker and Anne Gearan | February 22, 2019

...(Kelly) Craft, 56, was a business executive and philanthropist before serving as ambassador to Canada. Her husband, Joe Craft, is president and chief executive of coal producer Alliance Resource Partners.

The couple are major Republican donors, having given about $1.5 million to GOP candidates in 2016, including $270,800 to Trump’s campaign committee or his joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee.

The Crafts also have been repeat, high-paying customers at Trump’s hotel in Washington, according to a list of “VIP Arrivals” distributed to hotel staff on June 19, 2018. That list, obtained by The Washington Post, was intended to help staff identify the Trump International Hotel’s most important customers as they checked in.

The Crafts were listed as gold-level members of the Trump Card rewards program when they checked in for a three-day stay. They were also described as “high-rate” customers, and their listing bore the notation R(20), which former Trump Hotels employees have said indicates customers who’ve stayed at least 20 times. That was an unusually high number among the hundreds of Trump hotel guests whose VIP listings have been reviewed by The Post.

Kelly Craft was sworn in as ambassador to Canada in September 2017. The job representing the United States in Ottawa is a diplomatic plum, but not as sought-after as a posting in important European capitals.

The White House search for a replacement for Haley focused on female candidates, and those who had already been confirmed by the Senate for a current or past posting, people familiar with the selection process said. Craft also possesses a current security clearance, another plus, those people said.

Craft, who is hardly a household name, would lower the public profile of the U.N. job after (Nikki) Haley, whose prominence as a former South Carolina governor and national GOP star helped project Trump foreign policy priorities but whose independence sometimes rankled other aides.

Craft made headlines shortly after assuming her post in Canada when she told Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News that she believes “both sides” of the climate change debate.

“I believe there are sciences on both sides that are accurate,” Craft told the Canadian broadcaster. “Both sides have their own results from their studies, and I appreciate and respect both sides of the science.”

Climate change is a major issue at the U.N., which sponsored the 2015 Paris climate accords that President Trump has disavowed.

In the CBC interview, Craft said the United States can work to counter climate change despite pulling out of the international compact. “We all have the same goal, and that is to better our environment and to maintain the environment,” she said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-announces-nomination-of-kelly-craf...

_______________________________________________________________

New U.S. ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft says she believes 'both sides' of climate science (2:01)
https://www.youtube.com/watch

>126 margd: Jeffrey Epstein, and by association, Alex Acosta, make my skin crawl.

U.S. ambassadors have become less qualified under Trump
Harry Stevens | Feb 20, 2019

The U.S. ambassadors appointed by President Trump have given more financial support to his election than any cohort of ambassadors in recent history, even as they demonstrated fewer qualifications for the job, according to a new study of ambassadorial appointments over the last three decades.

Why it matters: The data undercuts Trump's campaign claim that his personal fortune places him above the influence of donor cash — and shows how campaign contributions can help secure jobs for people with relatively weak diplomatic backgrounds.

On average, Trump-appointed ambassadors contributed $96,927.98...far exceeded the previous record of $60,721.83 set by George W. Bush's ambassadors.
Meanwhile, just 58.6% of Trump's appointees were career Foreign Service Officers, a record low among presidents since Ronald Reagan.

...The big picture: Though favored by presidents, America's preference for selecting ambassadors from outside the professional diplomatic corps is rare among advanced democracies and is opposed by the U.S. Foreign Service's professional association.

https://www.axios.com/trump-ambassadors-less-qualified-campaign-contributions-b0...

_____________________________________________________

Ryan Scoville. 2019. Unqualified Ambassadors. Duke Law Journal, Forthcoming. 97 Pages Posted: 19 Feb 2019
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3333988

Abstract

In making appointments to the office of ambassador, U.S. presidents often select political supporters from outside the ranks of the State Department’s professional diplomatic corps. This practice is aberrational among advanced democracies and a source of recurrent controversy in the United States, and yet its merits and significance are substantially opaque: How do political appointees compare with career diplomats in terms of credentials? Are they less effective in office? Do they serve in some countries more than others? Have any patterns evolved over time? Commentators might assume answers to these questions, but actual evidence has been in short supply. In this context, it is difficult for the public to evaluate official practice and hold accountable those who wield power under the Appointments Clause.

This Article helps to correct for the current state of affairs. Using a novel dataset based on a trove of previously unavailable documents that I obtained from the State Department through four years of requests and litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Article systematically reveals the professional qualifications and campaign contributions of over 1900 ambassadorial nominees spanning the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, along with the first two years of Donald Trump. In doing so, the Article substantially enhances the transparency of the appointments process and exposes developments of concern: not only are political appointees on average much less qualified than their career counterparts under a variety of congressionally approved measures, but also the gap has grown along with the size of their campaign contributions to nominating presidents, resulting in a significant number of questionable appointments to ambassadorships involving major U.S. partners. In short, it appears that campaign contributions may be generating an increasingly deleterious effect on the quality of U.S. diplomatic representation overseas. The Article concludes by exploring potential legal reforms, including Senate rule amendments and statutory measures to regulate qualifications and enhance transparency.

(margd: much background in the article plus measures are suggested for improving representation to other nations.)

Justice Thomas working behind the scenes to boost Trump’s court nominee (Neomi Rao)
Ann E. Marimow and Seung Min Kim | February 28, 2019 at 4:35 PM

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is working behind the scenes to boost the prospects of Neomi Rao, one of his former law clerks, to serve on a powerful federal appeals court in Washington — speaking privately with at least two Republican senators as she faces a contentious confirmation fight.

...Thomas, famously taciturn during oral arguments at the high court, has previously worked in private in support of other judicial nominees. In the 1990s, he intervened or offered to help several stalled African American judicial candidates, including those nominated by Democrats, according to several black judges interviewed by The Washington Post in 2004.

...It is unclear how unusual it is for a Supreme Court justice to intervene in the nomination process because such conversations would not necessarily be disclosed. Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University’s law school, said the code of conduct allows judges to participate in the selection process, including responding to “official inquiries” concerning candidates.

The late justice Antonin Scalia reportedly lobbied David Axelrod, who was an adviser to President Barack Obama, to encourage his boss to nominate then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan to fill a vacancy on the high court, Axelrod recalled in a 2016 column...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trumps-court-nominee-overcomes-gop-conc...

There has been some fuss Jared Kushner getting a security clearance at the order of the President; e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/01/trumps-latest-corrupt-move-ja... . I don't see it. A President gets to choose their personal advisors; the security clearance is a bureaucratic requirement. Should Jared Kushner have a security clearance? Given his relationship to "Individual 1", probably not, but focusing on the security clearance seems misplaced; Jared Kushner is not involved in anything the President isn't. It's like complaining about President Al Capone having Paul Ricca as an advisor.

John Bolton May Save Us All
Graeme Wood April 2019 Issue

The national security adviser could be our best hope for protecting the world from Donald Trump’s impulses...

...It’s difficult to exaggerate how hard it is to earn a reputation as a dick in Washington...

Because Bolton’s other signature quality is intelligence, former colleagues wonder how he abides his boss....

Bolton at least sees the world in a way similar to Trump...(no) fondness for international agreements and obligations...

Fox News’s No. 1 fan grew used to seeing Bolton on television. “John played Trump perfectly,” says Mark Groombridge, who worked for Bolton in government and out for more than a decade. “Bolton auditioned for this position for essentially a year. And he nailed that audition.”...

“He’s fundamentally a lawyer,” John Yoo, a Bolton colleague and co-author who served in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, told me: He approaches problems with an eye for process and detail. And, as many have observed, he’s very good at getting his way. A favorite tactic is a swarming attack, heaping arguments on his enemies until they are buried and overwhelmed...

Missing from his vocabulary is any mention of collegiality, except to brag about its absence. He relishes his opponents’ frustration...

Bolton sees the UN, and fans of international law more generally, as a clutch of nattering spouses, trying to get Uncle Sam to modify his behavior...

exiting the Iran nuclear deal, exiting the INF Treaty, managing an end to the Syrian civil war, preparing countermeasures to cyberattacks...(Russia hawk, NATO)...

Bolton’s record with the North Koreans suggests that he would rather have Kim as an enemy than as the condo-developing, nuclear-armed friend Trump and Pompeo are trying to create...

like Kissinger (“but without the sentimental streak”)...

a familiar rhythm: Trump says something, Bolton says he agrees, then Bolton reinterprets Trump to mean the opposite of what he said and pushes to implement his reinterpretation, presumably with Trump’s blessing. Bolton sometimes sounds less like a national security adviser than a lawyer clawing back the utterances of an uncontrollable client...

Bolton may have mind-melded with Trump better than McMaster did, but inevitably the president and his national security adviser will disagree, both on style and on substance. One is an unreconstructed Cold Warrior; the other is an isolationist. One says nothing without precise calculation; the other speaks seemingly without consulting his own prefrontal cortex. As the differences between their personalities multiply, savvy enemies will simply cease to believe that Bolton carries Trump’s authority. Trump, flattered, will agree.

The other possibility, of course, is that Bolton will succeed in modifying Trump’s plans. He appears to have persuaded Trump to linger in Syria longer than anticipated. But to be a brakeman, trying to keep Trump from conducting his train straight off a half-built bridge, is the most thankless job in Trumpworld. “We become what we hate,” says the proverb. Bolton, who for a whole career has fumed over bureaucrats who try to stand between their elected bosses and destiny ("mattress mice"), is for now the shadow president of the deep state.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/john-bolton-trump-national-...

>133 margd: Wow. John Yoo's endorsement just makes the piece. (Remind me again how he is not disbarred)?

Measure of how bad it's become: when we think of folks like John Bolton and Jeff Sessions and--God forbid-- VP Pence as saviors holding back the deluge... :(

Matthew Whitaker is out, out, outta here. Not even going back to his old position but out of Justice altogether. Still has to return to committee hearings, though.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/432477-whitaker-out-at-justice-depa...

Donald Trump’s Climate Denial Gets More Ridiculous By The Day | Opinion
Michael E. Mann | 3/13/19

...William Happer is...the man chosen by Trump to potentially lead a panel to conduct an “adversarial” review of climate science. Happer is a former physics professor who was caught in a sting in 2015 agreeing to take money from unknown oil and gas interests in exchange for writing a report full of climate denial. As to the quality of Happer’s climate science, well that’s hard to speak to because he doesn’t actually do any climate science, and never has. What he has done, though, is say insane (and offensive) things, like comparing the treatment of carbon dioxide to the “demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.”

That’s the quality of advice Trump is seeking...

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-moore-climate-change-co2-denial-1361361

Pentagon to investigate acting defense secretary ( Patrick Shanahan) for Boeing bias
Gigi Sukin | March 20,2019

The Pentagon's inspector general announced on Wednesday it has launched an official investigation into whether acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has violated ethics rules by favoring his former employer Boeing.

...a company he worked at for 31 years...Politico reported in January that Shanahan had spoken negatively about Lockheed during a meeting at the Pentagon, while Bloomberg reported in December that Shanahan pushed the Air Force to contract Boeing for F-15X fighter planes. Shanahan was supposed to recuse himself from any decisions related to Boeing when he was confirmed by the Senate...

https://www.axios.com/patrick-shanahan-boeing-investigation-inspector-general-17...

Federal Reserve nominee Stephen Moore: too political for an independent board

Former Bush adviser: Senate should reject Stephen Moore
John Bowden - 03/23/19

...Greg Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard who served as an adviser to both Bush and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) through his 2012 presidential run, wrote on his blog Friday that senators should "do their job" and ensure (Stephen) Moore is not named as a Fed governor.

"Steve is a perfectly amiable guy, but he does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job," Mankiw wrote. "It is time for Senators to do their job. Mr. Moore should not be confirmed."

Mankiw pointed to Moore's latest book, "Trumponomics," and his support for Trump's economic policies as a reason for his opposition. Mankiw previously ripped the book's co-authors for "tribalism" in a review titled "Snake-Oil Economics."...

"Rather than suggesting coherent policies, Moore and Art Laffer seem to hope that a much more rapidly growing economy will provide the resources to address all these problems, and they seem to believe that this growth will follow ineluctably from the lower taxes and deregulation that lie at the heart of Trump’s agenda"...

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/435440-former-bush-adviser-says-the-...

Interior Nominee Intervened to Block Report on Endangered Species
Eric Lipton | March 26, 2019

WASHINGTON — After years of effort, scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service had a moment of celebration as they wrapped up a comprehensive analysis of the threat that three widely used pesticides present to hundreds of endangered species, like the kit fox and the seaside sparrow.

“Woohoo!” Patrice Ashfield, then a branch chief at Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters, wrote to her colleagues in August 2017.

Their analysis found that two of the pesticides, malathion and chlorpyrifos, were so toxic that they “jeopardize the continued existence” of more than 1,200 endangered birds, fish and other animals and plants, a conclusion that could lead to tighter restrictions on use of the chemicals.

But just before the team planned to make its findings public in November 2017, something unexpected happened: Top political appointees of the Interior Department, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, blocked the release and set in motion a new process intended to apply a much narrower standard to determine the risks from the pesticides.

Leading that intervention was David Bernhardt, then the deputy secretary of the interior and a former lobbyist and oil-industry lawyer...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/politics/endangered-species-david-bernhard...

> 139 Nominee to Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Moore, contd.

Trump Fed pick was held in contempt for failing to pay ex-wife over $300,000
Jon Swaine in New York and David Smith in Washington | 30 Mar 2019

...Stephen Moore, the economics commentator chosen by Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, was found in contempt of court (Nov 2012) after failing to pay his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars in alimony, child support and other debts.

...Moore continued failing to pay, according to the court filings, prompting the judge to order the sale of his house to satisfy the debt in 2013. But this process was halted by his ex-wife after Moore paid her about two-thirds of what he owed, the filings say.

In a divorce filing in August 2010, Moore was accused of inflicting “emotional and psychological abuse” on his ex-wife during their 20-year marriage. Allison Moore said in the filing she had been forced to flee their home to protect herself. She was granted a divorce in May 2011.

Moore said in a court filing signed in April 2011 he admitted all the allegations in Allison Moore’s divorce complaint. ...

...Moore owes the US government $75,000 according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Moore disputes the government’s claim and blames confusion over tax deductions relating to his child support and alimony payments.

...Moore created a controversial political attack group during the 2008 presidential election campaign with his friend Paul Erickson, a veteran Republican operative.

Erickson has been indicted on federal charges of money laundering and tax fraud, to which he has pleaded not guilty. His girlfriend, the Russian pro-gun activist Maria Butina, pleaded guilty to working as a Russian agent by trying to infiltrate the conservative political movement in the US. She is due to be sentenced next month.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/30/trump-stephen-moore-federal-rese...

25!!

Whistle-Blower Tells Congress of Irregularities in White House Security Clearances
Nicholas Fandos and Maggie Haberman | April 1, 2019

WASHINGTON — A whistle-blower working inside the White House has told a House committee that senior Trump administration officials granted security clearances to at least 25 individuals whose applications had been denied by career employees...

The whistle-blower, Tricia Newbold, a manager in the White House’s Personnel Security Office, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a private interview last month that the 25 individuals included two current senior White House officials, in additional to contractors and other employees working for the office of the president...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/us/politics/trump-security-clearances.html

ETA_________________________________________________________________

..."According to Ms. Newbold, these individuals had a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct," Democratic committee staff write in the memo...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/politics/security-clearances-house-oversight-comm...

ETA_________________________________________________________________

Tim Mak @timkmak | 8:29 AM - 1 Apr 2019:

The whistleblower who raised concerns about White House security clearances, Tricia Newbold, was suspended w/o pay for 2 weeks. The stated reason? Failure to follow a new policy to scan documents in separate pdf files instead of a single pdf file

This suspension was the first formal disciplinary action in her 18 year career working for Dem and GOP administrations, and came after she repeatedly raised concerns about the security clearance process in the White House

Donors to the Trump inaugural committee got ambassador nominations. But are they qualified?
Emily R. Siegel, Andrew W. Lehren, Brandy Zadrozny, Dan De Luce and Vanessa Swales | April 3, 2019

"Trump's picks are less qualified than prior presidents'," said a law professor at Marquette who has looked at the qualifications of nearly 2,000 nominees.

...While it is not unusual for a president to offer plum posts to wealthy donors, the Trump administration is nominating a greater number of political appointees to top-level slots, and is seeing a larger share stall in the Senate, according to two diplomatic experts and a senior Senate staffer.

Since the 1950s, roughly two-thirds of confirmed ambassadors have been career foreign service officials and one-third have been political appointees. Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush kept within that range, according to the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), which is comprised of current and former diplomats.

The Trump administration is different. Of its confirmed appointees, around 50 percent are career foreign service diplomats, and 50 percent are political appointees, according to AFSA.

There are also 52 vacant ambassadorships out of about 250. Two years into their presidencies, Obama had 11 and Bush had 15. There are also a large number of vacancies in critical countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The rate of confirmation is also quite different for Trump nominees. Two years into their presidencies, Presidents Bill Clinton, Bush and Obama had 96, 84 and 89 percent of their nominees confirmed. Trump is currently at 66 percent, according to a senior congressional staffer...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donors-trump-inaugural-committee-g...

Republicans trigger ‘nuclear option’ to speed Trump nominees
BURGESS EVERETT | 04/03/2019

Senate Republicans used the “nuclear option” Wednesday to unilaterally reduce debate time on most presidential nominees, the latest in a series of changes to the fabric of the Senate to dilute the power of the minority.

The move by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) immediately paves the way for quicker confirmation of President Donald Trump’s judicial and executive branch picks and comes amid deep GOP frustration with Democratic delays. Future presidents will benefit too, though McConnell and Trump stand to gain inordinately as they seek to fill 130 District Court vacancies over the next 18 months before the 2020 election...

...The nuclear option — a change of the Senate rules by a simple majority — gained its name because it was seen as an explosive maneuver that would leave political fallout for some time to come...

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/03/senate-republicans-trigger-nuclear-opt...

lya Marritz @ilyamarritz | 2:42 PM - 4 Apr 2019:
Timely reminder: Trump appointed as IRS commissioner a tax attorney who wrote an opinion piece arguing that Trump should not release his returns

David Fahrenthold @Fahrenthold | 2:50 PM - 4 Apr 2019:
The IRS commissioner also owns units in a Trump bldg in Hawaii.

Donald Trump’s prospective Fed appointees cause deep unease
Sam Fleming | April 5, 2019

...prospective appointments of two enthusiastic Trump loyalists to the board of the US central bank are triggering deep unease among analysts and some lawmakers, particularly in light of the president’s attempts to pressure Fed chairman Jay Powell to ease monetary policy.

Herman Cain is a former Republican presidential contender who chairs America Fighting Back, a political action committee that fights what it calls “vile and uncalled for propaganda” against Mr Trump.

...Stephen Moore...advised Mr Trump’s election campaign on tax policy and co-wrote a book called Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy.

...(Trump's) vociferous personal attacks on (Fed Chair) Mr Powell — his own appointee — have been...controversial.

...Mr Moore...owes tax debts to the federal government and was held in contempt of court by a judge in Virginia for failing to pay spousal and child support to his former wife.

...Mr Cain has served within the Fed system, albeit in a non-executive role, and some analysts argue his extensive business experience will provide a welcome perspective on the board. But the former chief executive of fast-food chain Godfather’s Pizza dropped out of the 2012 race for the Republican nomination following allegations of sexual harassment and infidelity.

...Mr Moore has backed away from earlier calls for (Fed Chair) Mr Powell to be fired but his monetary policy views appear similar to those of the White House. While he has previously expressed sympathy for hard-money policies including the gold standard, Mr Moore last month called for a half-point cut in interest rates. Mr Kudlow has urged a downward move of the same magnitude.

Mr Cain’s monetary policy approach is less clear. He is a one-time advocate of the gold standard but after news of his possible candidacy emerged earlier this year, he made it clear that he was more worried about deflation than inflation...

https://www.ft.com/content/acd24b0c-5728-11e9-91f9-b6515a54c5b1

___________________________________________________________

Romney blasts Trump over Cain and Moore

Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney...“I would like to see nominees that are economists first and not partisans. I think it’s important that the Fed be a nonpartisan entity,” the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee told Politico. “The key is that someone is outside of the political world and is an economic leader not a partisan leader.”

Romney said he doubts that Trump actually will end up nominating former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, and he made a crack related to the “9-9-9” economic plan that Cain touted during the 2012 race. (9% income tax + 9% national sales tax + 9% corporate income tax)

“If Herman Cain were on the Fed, you’d know the interest rate would soon be 9-9-9,” Romney said.

Romney also declined to endorse or oppose Trump’s plan to appoint former Wall Street Journal editorial writer Stephen Moore to the Fed, saying he was still “evaluating” Moore’s nomination...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/romney-blasts-trump-over-cain-and-moore-mariju...
____________________________________________________________

David Frum @davidfrum | 6:43 AM - 5 Apr 2019:

@AdamPosen is reminding us today that in 2011 GOP Senator blocked a Nobel laureate for the Federal Reserve on grounds he was insufficiently qualified. "Being a Nobel recipient does not mean one is qualified for every conceivable position" said Senator Shelby at time

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Frum @davidfrum | 6:45 AM - 5 Apr 2019

In 2011, (GOP Senator) Shelby proposed 3 tests for a Fed governor.
1) Does he or she have any experience conducting monetary policy?
2) Does he or she have any experience in bank management or supervision?
3) Does he or she have any experience in crisis management?

Good tests actually!

Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeck (U TX Law) | 4:45 AM - 8 Apr 2019:

Three things Congress can do to disincentivize governing through “acting” agency heads:

1) Limit how long one person can serve as “acting” head;

2) Limit functions/powers of acting vs. permanent officeholders; &

3) Limit agency funding until a permanent successor is nominated.

(A Senate majority leader who cared at all about preserving that institution’s constitutional role ought to be deeply troubled by a President who so openly flouts the Senate’s advice and consent—by having so many “acting” heads of key agencies.)

>146 margd: contd. (Fed Reserve nominee Stephen Moore)

Trump Federal Reserve Nominee Admitted ‘I’m Not an Expert on Monetary Policy’
Jonathan Chait | April 9, 2019

A little over two and a half years ago, Stephen Moore appeared at a conservative panel on the election and the economy, where one questioner asked about monetary policy. “Well, you know, I’m not an expert on monetary policy,” admitted Moore, before proceeding to deliver an answer bearing out this very confession. (The question concerned “cash flow velocity,” which Moore deflected by ignoring, retreating to a generality — “We want clear rules and a stable dollar” — and then changing the subject to regulation.)

Moore could casually admit his non-expertise in the subject because, at that moment, it was impossible for anybody in the room, least of all Moore, to imagine that one day he might be nominated for a position on the Federal Reserve Board. The old “what is your greatest weakness?” interview question is one you’re supposed to answer by noting some peripheral trait or skill. You can say “monetary policy” — I’m no monetary policy expert, either — as long as the job you’re gunning for is not in central banking.

...Moore’s errors are not only grotesque and borne of near-total ignorance of the field, they follow a consistent pattern: he demands the Federal Reserve choke the economy under Democratic presidents, citing imaginary inflation, and then veers wildly to the opposite extreme under Republican ones. Republicans already follow this principle on fiscal policy, toggling between hysterical demands for immediate drastic austerity under Democratic presidents to unrestrained profligacy under Republican ones. The Fed is designed to operate insulated from political pressure. Moore and/or Cain would break the seal on turning it into a partisan body.

...Politico reports that Cain’s nomination “may have actually eased” Moore’s confirmation prospects, because “Republicans may be hard-pressed to revolt against both of Trump’s nominees.” The sadly plausible assumption here is that Senate Republican willingness to oppose Trump is a finite resource. Therefore they may wave Moore through on the grounds that he is, on the margin, less flagrantly unqualified than Cain. The least-bad pick is the one who admitted he doesn’t know very much about the subject that is soon going to be his entire job.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/trump-fed-nominee-stephen-moore-not-exper...

Another Trump selection from the swamp: Barry Lee Myers, nominee for NOAA Administrator.
Bloomberg: whoo owns the weather?

Letter details ‘severe’ sexual harassment at AccuWeather under Trump’s pick to lead NOAA
Apr 13, 2019, 1:10 pm

(Barry Lee Myers) President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ran a family company in which employees were subjected to “widespread” and “pervasive” sexual harassment, according to an investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)...

https://thinkprogress.org/severe-sexual-harassment-at-accuweather-barry-lee-myer...
________________________________________________________________________

The National Weather Service is part of NOAA:

Trump’s Pick to Lead Weather Agency Spent 30 Years Fighting It
Devin Leonard and Brian K Sullivan | June 14, 2018

A high-pressure lobbying system raises the question: Who owns the weather?

...From the get-go, AccuWeather went after the NWS...lobbying...

...prowling the halls of Congress with Barry (Lee Myers)...explained that the NWS was threatening private companies by giving away forecasts for nothing.

...Santorum bill...

...AccuWeather started trolling the NWS, says Gulley...it began using nationalweatherservice.org, which directed visitors not to the NWS, but to the company’s products and services.

In 2007, Barry...(as) AccuWeather CEO...became more of a media company, with a larger presence online and on smartphones.

...In 2008, AccuWeather named Conrad Lautenbacher, a recently departed NOAA administrator appointed by President George W. Bush, to its board. Myers was soon appointed to a NOAA working group that gave him a role in shaping policy. He helped fashion one in 2012 that restricted the organization’s ability to develop mobile apps for the public.

...in 2013, when an NWS employee spoke enthusiastically about how the service used social media to alert people during Hurricane Sandy, Myers was less excited. He complained that the NWS was enriching Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. by sharing information on their platforms—“government contracting without going through the contracting process"... At another society gathering, says a former Obama appointee to NOAA who declined to be named, Myers protested that fog forecasts for the nation’s 175 major ports—intended to prevent collisions involving large commercial ships—were yet another example of providing a service that the private sector should be doing instead.

...NOAA employees worried about...the president-elect, who famously dismissed climate change as a hoax...were mortified to discover that Myers was a candidate. It may have helped that AccuWeather spent $100,000 on Washington lobbying in 2016.

Democrats on the Commerce Committee, worried that Myers would try to reduce the role of the NWS to that of a back-end provider for AccuWeather, told the White House that he was an unacceptable choice...Nov. 29 confirmation hearing ...

The next month, three former NOAA administrators appointed by Democrats—Lubchenco, Kathryn Sullivan, and D. James Baker—told the Washington Post that they were worried about Myers’s nomination...(family) hedge fund, Weather Prophets, that makes financial bets on the weather and would benefit greatly from advance notice of pending NWS announcements...concerned that AccuWeather’s deal with China could have national security implications.

The one former NOAA administrator who actively supports Myers is...paid to be on AccuWeather’s board, and he’s likely to have business before Myers if the Senate confirms him...(former administrator) is CEO of GeoOptics Inc., a private satellite company that won a $695,000 contract in 2016 to provide data to NOAA and employs the same lobbying group...as AccuWeather does.

The White House had to resubmit Myers’s nomination in January because he wasn’t confirmed in 2017. Again, the Commerce Committee approved him on party lines. Because several Democratic senators are contesting his nomination, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must schedule as many as 30 hours of debate before the full Senate can vote on him...

...Myers had more to say in early February when AccuWeather itself was in the news again. On Feb. 6 users on the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean got an early morning alert that a tsunami was headed their way. The NWS took to Twitter to say it wasn’t true—and later, without naming AccuWeather, said a test warning had been mistakenly forwarded...

https://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek

#124 contd. ONE WEEK after confirmation:

Interior Dept. Opens Ethics Investigation of Its New Chief, David Bernhardt
Coral Davenport | April 15, 2019

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department’s internal watchdog has opened an investigation into ethics complaints against the agency’s newly installed secretary, David Bernhardt.

Mr. Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and agribusiness industries, was confirmed by the Senate last week to head the agency, which oversees the nation’s 500 million acres of public land and vast coastal waters. He has played a central role in writing policies designed to advance President Trump’s policy of “energy dominance” and expanding fossil fuel exploration. He has been dogged by allegations of ethics violations since joining the Trump administration as the Interior Department’s deputy secretary in 2017.

Eight senators, all Democrats, and four government ethics watchdog groups have requested that the Interior Department’s inspector general open formal investigations into various aspects of Mr. Bernhardt’s conduct. Among the chief complaints have been allegations, revealed by three separate New York Times investigations, that Mr. Bernhardt used his position to advance a policy pushed by his former lobbying client; that he continued working as a lobbyist after filing legal paperwork declaring that he had ceased lobbying; and that he intervened to block the release of a scientific report showing the harmful effects of a chemical pesticide on certain endangered species.

In a letter sent Monday to the senators who filed the ethics complaints, Mary L. Kendall, the deputy inspector general of the Interior Department, wrote that she had received seven complaints from “a wide assortment of complainants alleging various conflicts of interest and other violations” by Mr. Bernhardt, adding that she had “opened an investigation to address them.” ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/climate/bernhardt-interior-department-ethics-...

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr
James Comey | May 1, 2019

...Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.

Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room.

I must have agreed that he had the largest inauguration crowd in history because I didn’t challenge that. Everyone must agree that he has been treated very unfairly. The web building never stops.

From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does — you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him.

Sure, you notice that Mr. Mattis never actually praises the president, always speaking instead of the honor of representing the men and women of our military. But he’s a special case, right? Former Marine general and all. No way the rest of us could get away with that. So you praise, while the world watches, and the web gets tighter.

Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear — things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.

You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.

You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.

And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html

Stephen Moore withdraws from Fed consideration, Trump says
Dan Mangan and Mike Calia | May 2, 2019

Stephen Moore, a conservative pundit, withdrew from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board, President Donald Trump said on Twitter.

Moore had came under fire for his economic and political views, messy divorce and past statements, including columns in which he belittled women and his former wife. Several Republican senators said he would have difficulty winning confirmation.

Herman Cain, the businessman and former GOP presidential candidate, dropped out of contention for the Fed in late April...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/02/stephen-moore-has-withdrawn-from-fed-considerati...

David Frum @davidfrum | 4:46 AM - 20 May 2019:
If Trump doesn't borrow from non-DB banks because he "doesn't need money" - then why did he borrow $11 million from a small FL bank to finance purchase of a house from his sister? And why was CEO of that bank promptly rewarded with appointment to his local Federal Reserve board?

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump:
The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me. WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. Very old

....fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money. Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist)......

The Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today. FAKE NEWS is actually the biggest story of all and is the true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! That’s why they refuse to cover the REAL Russia Hoax. But the American people are wise to what is going on.....

....Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there...and DeutscheBank......

.....was very good and highly professional to deal with - and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere....there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!