Executive Departments 3

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Really? I see Trump's place as more like that of a cockroach or a mosquito. They may have some purpose, but no one has figured out what it is.

Trump’s purpose is to highlight how egocentrical, nasty, self-serving, bigotted, patriarchal, rascist, supremacist, and destructive humans can get. And as such, he serves as an example to others of how not to be. 

(Btw, cockroaches have a very important role in nature, as they are cleaners of all sorts of rubbish and dead stuff. They’re like garbage men of nature. People aquate their presence with uncleanliness and filth, but they aren’t the cause, they’re the result. Mosquito’s serve as a food source for a great variety of other beings: birds and bats eat the adults, fish and amphibians eat the larvae. Only the females of some species bite, and it’s not to eat, but to get certain nutricients they need to lay eggs that are only found in the blood of certain mammals and birds. A nasty side effect— other than the irritating itchiness some species’ numbing saliva causes — is that they can spread diseases from one human to another.)

[Howl]

80 + days without a Secretary of Defense -- January 1 - March 22.

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course he is

[Howl]

Yeah, Shanahan may be headed for #ETTDville.  Had he kept a low profile and continued keeping on, nobody would have dug into his doings.  Of course, corruption may not block his ultimate confirmation.  While probably kinda OK at #2 Assistant SecDef, what should block his confirmation is a complete lack of relevant experience for the #1 position.  

Anyway, on to sometime else, which I'll plug in here, since it's kinda executive level.  Trumpy has nominated a crack-pot, wing-nut eejit economist for the Federal Reserve Board.  He's one of the guys that devised a "stimulus" plan helped tank the entire state economy of Kansas.  One Kansas paper began refusing to print anything he wrote because it was always riddled with errors. 

Donald Trump Just Picked A Laughingstock For A Huge Federal Reserve Job  Stephen Moore is a joke in the economics profession.

So yeah, he's happy to tank any economy, anywhere, at any time to own the Democrats Libs. 

I recall that there is at least one fj-er who lived through the Brownback years; please chime in! 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Stephen Moore could inflict more long-term damage than any of Trump’s other nominations"

Spoiler

President Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve Board.

Moore’s many economic claims over the years have revealed him to be, shall we say, easily confused.

A decade ago, as the Fed was battling deflation (that is, price  declines ) during the financial crisis, Moore preposterously fearmongered that hyperinflation (that is, out-of-control price increases ) was nigh: Americans could soon be carting “wheelbarrows full” of cash a la Weimar Germany. Moore has also repeatedly predicted that tax cuts would pay for themselves — both at the federal level, and in Kansas — despite all evidence to the contrary.

It’s not only his forecasts for the future that have proved chronically incorrect; it’s his characterizations of past and present, too.

A newspaper banned him from its pages because of his struggles in getting basic statistics right. During the dozens of times I’ve debated him on TV, he has persistently misstated easily Google-able facts. These include whether the country is experiencing deflation, whether Canada’s tariffs are “twice as high as” ours, and whether the Fed predicted that Trump would crash the stock market. (Nope, nope, and huh ? )

Now, somehow, Moore has been nominated to the Fed. To understand why this is concerning, consider a brief primer of what the Fed does.

Congress gave the Fed, the world’s most powerful central bank, a dual mandate: maximum employment and stable prices. For decades — beginning with former chairman Paul Volcker — it has also worked to achieve a reputation for political independence, which is crucial to its ability to achieve these dualobjectives.

 Why? As I’ve written before, politicians pretty much always have an incentive to reduce interest rates and print money, especially (ahem) heading into an election. Easier money can juice the economy in the short run, after all, boosting growth and reducing unemployment.

The trade-off is that easy money, particularly during a hot economy, can lead to inflation. And that inflation can be caused not just by recklessly printing money today, but by the perception that the central bank might do so in the future. When a central bank looks politically compromised — as has happened in places such as Argentina and Venezuela — people don’t believe it will make the unpopular choices needed to stamp out inflation. So, firms start jacking up prices and wages in anticipation of more money flooding the economy.

Moore has lately been agitating for looser money. And to be clear, reasonable people can disagree about whether that’s the right policy to pursue right now.

The question is why  Moore supports this policy.

Today, while the economy is strong and has been growing above-trend, he wants both monetary and fiscal stimulus. But a decade ago, when the financial crisis threatened to throw the United States into a deflationary spiral and another depression, he called for rate hikes and austerity, because those wheelbarrows full of cash were supposedly around the corner.

How do you explain this sudden metamorphosis from inflation (and deficit) hawk to dove? In short: A Democrat was president then; a Republican is president now.

Moore is a political operative: His policy choices appear to be determined by what’s best for his party, not what is best for the economy. You can see that in the way he cherry-picks or misstates economic numbers in TV debates; or in the fact that he once gleefully nicknamed the Trump tax cuts he helped design “death to Democrats,” predicting the law would hurt unions, colleges, Obamacare and blue states writ large.

And look, it is fine for presidents to install political operatives into most  executive branch jobs. Secretaries of commerce, transportation, labor, etc., are there to execute the president’s agenda.

But the Federal Reserve is different. To work, it needs to be independent, both in practice and perception. Which is why the norm has been that once the Senate confirms a president’s preferred Fed nominees, he leaves them alone.

Trump, by contrast, has thrown hissy fits when his choice for Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, refused to do the White House’s bidding. Moore has encouraged these destructive, market-roiling outbursts, publicly urging Trump to fire not just Powell but everyone at the Fed.

None of this bodes well for the future of central bank independence — not just for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, but for either the five or 11 years Moore would serve if he is confirmed by the Senate, depending on which vacancy Trump ultimately nominates him for. Who knows what damage he might be tempted to inflict over that time to make a Republican president look good — or (based on his recommendations during Barack Obama’s presidency) a Democratic one look bad?

The Fed has spent decades cultivating its reputation for political autonomy. But reputations are hard won, and easily lost.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

On 3/22/2019 at 4:40 PM, Howl said:

80 + days without a Secretary of Defense -- January 1 - March 22.

Remember that Sarah Kendzior, Ph D studies authoritarian regimes and her dissertation studied what happened during the breakup of the USSR: 

From Sarah Kendzior tweeting on March 5: 

Quote

We don't have a Secretary of Defense. We haven't had a Secretary of Defense since 2018.  The fake "national emergency" Trump declared is only the second in US history to authorize the use of armed forces. The other was 9/11. The Secretary of Defense is critical to determining how such forces are deployed. We have no Secretary of Defense. We have a lie and a void.

We have a sociopathic nuke fetishist Russian asset as POTUS cozying up to the world's worst dictators as his warmonger lackeys seek to exploit vulnerable states and partner with hostile states for their own personal profit. But we don't have a Secretary of Defense.

I wonder if the new Secretary of Defense will work for the United States or for Donald Trump.

She has been shouting from the rooftops about Trump as an authoritarian and a part of a transnational crime syndicate and how profoundly dangerous this is.  

And by the way, acting SecDef Shanahan has just approved 11 billion for Trump's wall.  This is a bigger issue than robbing funds from the military -- it has to do with Congress' foundational role in approving appropriations and Democratic senators are rightly pissed. 

Bloomberg covers it here: 

Shanahan Approves $1 Billion in Pentagon Funds for Trump's Wall

Shanahan is working hard to show that he'll be Trump's  loyal foot soldier slavering lap dog, so his chances of staying on are good. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Howl]

How weird is this?  Predictable, but weird: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Key Trump health official spends millions on GOP-connected consultants"

Spoiler

The Trump appointee who oversees Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare quietly directed millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts to Republican communications consultants during her tenure atop the agency — including hiring one well-connected GOP media adviser to bolster her public profile.

The communications subcontracts approved by CMS Administrator Seema Verma — routed through a larger federal contract and described to POLITICO by three individuals with firsthand knowledge of the agreements — represent a sharp break from precedent at the agency. Those deals, managed by Verma’s deputies, came in some cases over the objections of CMS staffers, who raised concerns about her push to use federal funds on GOP consultants and to amplify coverage of Verma’s own work. CMS has its own large communications shop, including about two dozen people who handle the press.

Verma, a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence, has become a lightning rod for pushing work requirements in Medicaid and spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally unwind pieces of Obamacare. She previously worked as a consultant to conservative states seeking to reshape health care programs for the poor.

Her agency’s use of outside contracts and subcontracts is legal, but experts and current officials say it is not transparent and raises ethical questions.

“Outsourcing communications work to private contractors puts the agency's ability to protect ‘potentially market-moving’ information from premature disclosure at considerable risk,” said Andy Schneider, a Medicaid expert who worked at CMS during the Obama administration and is now a researcher at Georgetown University.

And whether the issue was Medicare, Medicaid or Obamacare, prior heads of the agency were often quoted, profiled and in the news, so current officials said they’re puzzled why so much work is being outsourced.

“The head of Obamacare doesn't need outside consultants to get reporters to talk to her,” said one CMS official, who asked for anonymity. “The job pitches itself.”

The subcontracts are part of a $2.25 million contract administered by Porter Novelli, an international public relations firm that performs a wide variety of government services. CMS’ new top communications official Tom Corry confirmed the arrangement. Two other individuals said CMS also spent at least $1 million on earlier contracts with GOP communications consultants.

One subcontract is with Pam Stevens, a longtime GOP media adviser who specializes in setting up profiles of Republican women. A second subcontract is with Marcus Barlow, whom Verma worked with in Indiana and considered hiring as a top communications official in 2017 before he was blocked by the White House.

As contractors, Stevens and Barlow are paid between $185 and $200 per hour, said two individuals with knowledge of their contracts — a far higher pay rate than the majority of high-level government officials.

A third contract is with Nahigian Strategies, a firm run by a high-profile pair of brothers. Keith Nahigian consulted with several GOP presidential campaigns; Ken Nahigian briefly led President Donald Trump’s presidential transition team in 2017. Nahigian Strategies staff have supported and advised Verma on messaging strategy for nearly two years, including accompanying Verma to Denver on Tuesday for meetings with digital health experts and CMS staff. One individual familiar with the relationship said Nahigian Strategies was paid at least $2 million for its work with CMS over the past two years.

Stevens, Nahigian Strategies and Porter Novelli referred questions to CMS. Barlow declined to comment for this article.

In an interview with POLITICO, Verma’s newly installed communications director Corry couldn’t specify how much CMS had spent on GOP communications consultants, but stressed that he planned to cut them back now that the agency had personnel in place — after a slow start early in the Trump administration.

“Now that we’re fully staffed up, contractor resources are going to be used less than they were,” said Corry, who ran a health care consulting firm before joining CMS on March 4 to head its 200-person communications office. Their work includes running consumer-facing websites.

“We use our resources judiciously,” Corry said. “We’re not wasting the taxpayer dollar.”

While Corry said he wasn’t sure about overall spending on communications consultants, “it’s a small number compared to all the contracts we have,” he said.

Federal agencies are not required to proactively disclose arrangements with subcontractors, or even that those subcontractors exist — a gray area that gives them broad leeway to bring on individuals and outside firms under the cover of vague public contracts. For instance, public spending records describe the Porter Novelli contract simply as “strategic communications.”

But some career CMS staff have voiced their concerns to political appointees within the agency about routing taxpayer dollars to GOP consultants and helping a federal official like Verma improve her personal brand, said two individuals aware of those conversations. Oversight groups also have raised concerns, saying the behavior, as described to them by POLITICO, would appear to cross ethical lines.

"There are a host of ethical and contractual problems with appointees steering contracts to political allies and subcontractors, and possibly a violation of the ban on personal services contracts if the work is being performed at the direction of the appointee,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, told POLITICO. “Contracts are supposed to be above reproach, with complete impartiality, and without preferential treatment, and the HHS Inspector General should review this [Porter Novelli] contract and the activities under it to ensure they are proper."

In her two years leading CMS, Verma has drawn attention for regularly criticizing Obamacare — a law she administers — as well as trading Twitter barbs with Democratic lawmakers and mocking progressive ideas like “Medicare for All.” She also has battled with health experts, including the committee created to advise Congress on Medicaid, which broadly has warned the administration’s push to shrink government health programs will reverse coverage gains made under Obamacare.

Verma recently completed several interviews, arranged by Stevens, that focused on emphasizing her personal life and her role as a prominent Republican woman. The cover profile in this month’s AARP bulletin, which went to more than 24 million people, included a sidebar on Verma’s husband’s experience in the health system.

Consultants help shape CMS strategy

Before the Trump administration, communications consultants were used mostly for sweeping agency priorities, like raising awareness of Medicare open enrollment or encouraging sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act, five current and former officials said.

CMS’ current use of communications contractors has gone well beyond the norm, those five sources said, and comes at a time when Verma has made cuts elsewhere, such as reducing advertising for Obamacare enrollment by tens of millions of dollars. The outside consultants frequently handled Verma’s media calls, joined her on promotional trips and wrote her speeches.

Those functions historically were performed by career civil servants in the CMS Communications Office.

"We have no idea who some of these people are and why they're in meetings with the administrator," said one senior CMS official, who asked for anonymity. "They're not introduced … It's become a guessing game for us."

The GOP consultants also brought a political edge to the agency’s communications.

In a February 2018 incident, contractor Brett O'Donnell barred a Modern Healthcare reporter from a media call for refusing to alter a story that had rankled Verma. CMS officials walked back that threat within days and said a week later that Porter Novelli’s subcontract with O’Donnell, a longtime GOP consultant, would not be renewed. But CMS never provided any explanation of O’Donnell’s role or responsibilities. O’Donnell declined to comment for this article.

Corry said Porter Novelli handled finding consultants including O’Donnell, Barlow and Stevens and the finer details of their contracts. “We have no idea what they’re paid per hour,” he said.

Stevens — a former Condoleezza Rice aide who did two short stints in the Trump administration in 2017 — pitched Verma to media outlets like Fox News, CBS and NBC, as well as for events hosted by the Milken Institute and other organizations. Widely known for her extensive Rolodex, Stevens generally has avoided the health journalists who regularly cover CMS in favor of brokering conversations with media executives or lifestyle reporters, and shepherding Verma to after-hours networking events with prominent journalists.

She also came to CMS with a reputation for securing flattering profiles of Republican women, an effort she developed as a House GOP strategist and continues to cultivate as a consultant. “Proud to have made this great piece happen,” she posted on Facebook on Feb. 20, linking to a Glamour magazine article about Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) effort to recruit more Republican women to Congress.

Stevens has played a similar role securing opportunities for Verma to showcase her work within the administration. In recent weeks, her outreach led to Verma’s appearance on POLITICO’s “Women Rule” podcast, which profiles women leaders, and she worked on Verma’s appearance on a panel hosted by Woman’s Day magazine. (Verma’s interview at a POLITICO policy event last July predated Stevens’ involvement with CMS.)

CMS’ Corry said Stevens was used to book interviews for Verma but is being phased out. “Her time is getting less and less anyway,” he said. Corry also noted that he has his own network after 25 years in the field, including being friendly with the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section and other reporters, and could fill Stevens’ role.

Nahigian Strategies, a GOP-aligned public relations firm, has managed a wide variety of CMS communications functions for nearly two years. Its consultants have set up meetings and accompanied Verma around the nation to promote her key projects, like a March 2018 trip to a Las Vegas health technology conference to unveil Verma’s digital health initiatives aimed at giving patients easier access to their own medical records.

“Check out this op-ed placed in Recode on how the @RealDonaldTrump admin is leading in giving patients their health info,” the Nahigian Strategies Twitter account posted a week after the Las Vegas trip.

CMS’ Corry said the Nahigian Strategies team helped Verma with travel, planning and other logistical issues. “It’s pretty basic stuff,” he said.

Verma also relied on subcontracting to bring aboard longtime associate Barlow — after the White House blocked him from a permanent job leading CMS communications. Barlow, who served as a spokesperson for Verma's health care consulting firm in Indiana, had run afoul of the White House for writing a column critical of Trump, POLITICO reported at the time.

Nahigian Strategies hired Barlow instead in March 2017, which helped the firm strengthen its relationship with Verma. When Barlow left Nahigian Strategies in August 2018 to return to his own consulting firm, he continued to work for CMS under a separate subcontract that remains in effect, according to two individuals with knowledge of the arrangement.

Barlow helped write some of Verma’s most high-profile speeches, including a November 2017 address in which she signaled the Trump administration’s plan to require some Medicaid enrollees to work to keep their coverage for the first time — a controversial policy that a federal judge blocked for the second time on Wednesday.

“Believing that community engagement requirements do not support or promote the objectives of Medicaid is a tragic example of the soft bigotry of low expectations consistently espoused by the prior administration,” Verma said in the speech that Barlow helped write. “Those days are over.”

Advocates panned Verma’s remarks, contending she misrepresented the patients that she was appointed to serve. The speech “was rife with offensive rhetoric about the Medicaid program and individuals enrolled in it,” the National Women’s Law Center said.

Verma’s remarks also stunned Schneider, the former Obama appointee — who called them “reprehensible” at the time. But Schneider said he’s more surprised to learn that Verma and her staff don’t always write their own speeches, like CMS did when he worked there in 2016.

"I actually thought that her [Medicaid] speech was in her own voice," he said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Who are all the political appointees in Donald Trump’s administration?"

Spoiler

Who are all the political appointees in President Trump’s administration?

No one knows because a Government Accountability Office report says that “there is no single source of data on political appointees serving in the executive branch that is publicly available, comprehensive, and timely” for Trump’s and at least the previous two administrations.

Why do we need to know?

“The public has an interest in knowing the political appointees serving and this information would facilitate congressional oversight and hold leaders accountable,” GAO said. “As of March 2019, no agency in the federal government is required to publicly report comprehensive and timely data on political appointees serving in the executive branch.”

GAO issued the report after members of Congress asked the agency how well political appointees are identified and agencies implement their ethics programs. Those questions point to problems on both those fronts in Trump’s administration. He has run through top level appointees at a dizzying pace and came into office doused by an ethical rain that has only grown heavier at the White House and in the agencies.

“Providing a simple list of who the President has appointed to senior positions in the government would make it easier to hold those officials accountable for policy decisions and compliance with ethics and transparency laws,” said House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who requested the report along with Democratic Sens. Gary C. Peters (Mich.) and Thomas R. Carper (Del.).

A list would foster accountability by providing insight into “where the channels of political influence spreads,” said Don Kettl, a public affairs professor at the University of Texas and academic director of its Washington Center. “This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be political influence on key policy decisions — that’s why we have elections. But we surely need to know where those channels flow.”

GAO urged Congress to consider legislation requiring administrations to publish the names of political appointees in the executive branch. To show what Trump thinks of that suggestion, his Executive Office of the President (EOP) ignored a GAO request for comment on its draft report.

“Only EOP did not respond in any way to our request for comments,” GAO told the Federal Insider.

That riled the members of Congress who requested the GAO examination.

“Strong ethics programs are necessary to ensure that we can trust our government. Americans have a right to know that public servants are acting in the people’s best interests and that their decisions are free from personal conflicts of interest,” said a statement from Peters, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Unfortunately, the GAO’s report makes clear that multiple agencies have failed to live up to this basic standard — including the White House, which refused to cooperate with GAO’s investigation. This Administration has allowed serious ethical violations to go unchecked, which threatens the American people’s trust in their public officials.”

GAO examined three agencies — the departments of Health and Human Services and Interior and the Small Business Administration — to determine how well their ethics programs work.

Two of the three have work to do.

“Prior to February 2019 SBA did not have written procedures for initial ethics training and did not adequately document political appointees’ training dates,” GAO reported.

Interior’s ethics program suffers because of staffing shortages in its ethics office. That was the situation in November, when according to GAO, about 29 percent of the positions, all lawyers, in the office were empty.

The high vacancy rate in the ethics office “affected its ability to properly collect and review financial disclosure forms — one of the main responsibilities of the federal ethics program,” GAO said. The office received a flood of financial disclosure forms after Trump was elected, “but was unprepared to handle them,” the report added. “Furthermore, during 2017 one official was responsible for reviewing and certifying more than 300 public financial disclosure forms. The official was unable to balance proper and timely review of forms with other responsibilities that also included reviewing and certifying more than 800 confidential disclosure forms.”

Although the 4,000 political positions, including 1,700 requiring Senate confirmation, are too many, political appointees play an established role in American government. They help form policies developed by elected leaders. But appointees come and go with the elected leaders. Civil servants, who are there from one administration to the next, are the backbone of government and implement the policies set by the elected leaders.

Good government advocates support a public list of political appointees.

Teresa W. Gerton, president and chief executive of the National Academy of Public Administration, said: “I agree with the assessment that the public has a vested interest in knowing the political appointees serving in any administration, as they are doing much of the policy development, and transparency in government is essential.”

Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, said: “Transparency plays an important role in our nation’s governance by allowing citizens to know who are making key decisions that affect our health, safety and tax dollars. Transparency is also an important part of the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches. It’s hard to provide the appropriate checks and balances when you don’t even know who to call to ask questions. Creating a real-time, up-to-date list of appointees might have been a heavy lift 20 years ago, but in this day and age should be straightforward.”

The lack of a political appointee list amounts to “a total breakdown in accountability,” said Paul C. Light, a New York University public service professor who has written extensively about political appointees. “It’s the Wild West in a world where accountability is essential.”

 

[Howl]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

This pisses me off, big time.  Texas gave a huge grant to the Heidi Group (an anti-abortion, "just keep your knees crossed" group) to manage funds for all the things that Planned Parenthood does incredibly well.  The state finally had to give up because the Heidi Group mismanaged the funds and managed to drop the ball on organizing access to obstetrical & gynecological care, STD screenings and treatment and breast cancer screenings, leaving tens of thousands of poor women without access to this critical care. 

It was a disaster, a total fluster cluck and a HUGE waste of money, but OK, they tried, and THEY ARE ANTI ABORTION, and that's all that matters.  IIRC, the Heidi Group originally was on the radar because of their abstinence-only programs, also a dismal failure. I think we're starting to see a pattern. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[smittykins]

That reminds me of a 48 Hours/Dateline type program I once saw sometime in the 90s about a California school district that switched from comprehensive sex education to an abstinence-only program(the one with the pithy little slogans like “Pet your dog, not your date” and Do the right thing, wait for the ring”—Sex Respect, maybe?), and the teen-pregnancy rate actually increased.  They also played a snippet of a film with a boy asking his teacher “But what if I have sex before marriage?” and the teacher replied “Well, you’d better be prepared to die, and you may take your wife and at least one of your children with you.” 

[GreyhoundFan]

"If I were still working at the EPA, I would resign"

Spoiler

Bernard D. Goldstein was chairman of the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the EPA assistant administrator for research and development under President Reagan from 1983 to 1985. He is dean emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

For years, the fossil-fuel industry has lobbied to weaken air pollution standards. It may now get its wish.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee met via teleconference to devise a new standard for airborne particle pollution. It’s a vitally important task: These tiny particles reach deep into human lungs, causing significant pulmonary and heart problems. And in many parts of the United States, such pollution exceeds the existing health-based particulates standard.

But EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist, has hobbled the committee’s long-standing process to the point that its members cannot provide an informed opinion consistent with the Clean Air Act’s mandate of being “requisite to protect the public health.”

I was the chair of the advisory committee, or CASAC, under Anne Gorsuch, President Ronald Reagan’s first EPA administrator, and was subsequently appointed by Reagan to head the EPA’s Office of Research and Development under Gorsuch’s replacement, the moderate Republican environmentalist William Ruckelshaus. I would have resigned either position had the agency’s overall advisory processes been subject to its current destructive alterations.

The EPA’s organizational structure necessitates a strong and unbiased external advisory process. By having its own in-house science arm, the agency’s political leadership can exert pressure to get the answers it wants. As a counterbalance, it is necessary to have external advisory processes through independent bodies such as CASAC.

Congress established this committee in 1977 to provide unbiased external scientific advice on air-pollutant standards, which are revisited every five years. Congress requires the committee to have seven members, including one from a state agency. But it soon became clear that a seven-member committee would not have sufficient in-depth expertise to make a science-based recommendation. Accordingly, for more than 40 years, the committee has drawn on the expertise of external advisory subcommittees established for each pollutant of concern. These much larger committees openly review the EPA’s own scientific analysis of the thousands of pertinent peer-reviewed papers and inform the committee’s members of their findings, which committee members then use to recommend health-based standards to the EPA administrator.

That is how it is supposed to work. But last October, Wheeler suddenly and highhandedly terminated the subcommittees working to develop recommendations for the particulate standard, as well as the standard for ozone pollution (which CASAC will review next).

The full weight of providing advice now falls solely on the seven CASAC members. The science underlying particulate standards is especially complex, and the scientific discipline of epidemiology is central to understanding the health effects of both particulates and ozone. But CASAC, for the first time in memory, lacks a single epidemiologist.

Wheeler has appointed four state agency members to CASAC, an unprecedented majority. All work for Republican governors. The current chairman of CASAC is a consultant who also works for industry clients.

Moreover, Wheeler promulgated a new rule that prohibits scientists funded by the EPA from providing the agency with advice. While the ostensible justification for this rule is to root out any pro-EPA bias, the effect is to disqualify the best scientists from advising the agency. Meanwhile, industry representatives and consultants — including those from polluting industries with a clear interest in lax standards — are welcome to provide advice.

When I served at the EPA, Gorsuch was criticized for attempting to control the statements of EPA scientists and cutting the agency’s science budget, as has current EPA leadership. But she did nothing that even came close to the assault on the independence and expertise of the scientific advisory processes carried out by Wheeler and his predecessor, Scott Pruitt.

I had hoped Wheeler would reverse Pruitt’s initial policies. Instead, he has taken them well beyond the point that, were I a member of CASAC, I would have resigned. Neither my conscience, nor my concern for the respect of my peers, would have allowed me to provide advice on a complex health-related subject when I could not interact in a scientific consensus advisory process with those who have the necessary expert credentials.

I cannot ask President Trump’s EPA assistant administrator for research and development to resign. That position remains unfilled. Nor is it likely that any credible scientist would accept such a nomination. But I urge the current members of CASAC to step down rather than seemingly acquiesce to this charade. The EPA’s leadership is destroying the scientific foundation of environmental regulations, to the detriment of the health of the American people and our environment.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"After hundreds of crashes, this Britax jogging stroller faced recall. Then Trump appointees stepped in. "

Spoiler

The crashes were brutal. With no warning, the front wheel on the three-wheeled BOB jogging strollers fell off, causing the carriages to careen and even flip over. Adults shattered bones. They tore ligaments. Children smashed their teeth. They gashed their faces. One child bled from his ear canal.

Staff members at the Consumer Product Safety Commission collected 200 consumer-submitted reports from 2012 to 2018 of spontaneous failure of the stroller wheel, which is secured to a front fork by a quick-release lever, like on a bicycle. Nearly 100 adults and children were injured, according to the commission. The agency’s staff members investigated for months before deciding in 2017 that one of the most popular jogging strollers on the market was unsafe and needed to be recalled. 

“The danger that was there was just so obvious,” said Marietta Robinson, a former Democratic commissioner who was still at the agency when the injury reports surfaced. “It was appalling.”

But BOB’s maker, Britax Child Safety, refused the agency’s request in 2017 for a voluntary recall of nearly 500,000 strollers. The company said the strollers were safe when used as instructed and met industry standards for safety.  

The agency didn’t back down. It sued to force a recall in February 2018. Britax kept fighting. That was unusual. Companies normally want to avoid public clashes with safety regulators, according to past and current agency staff members.

But the leadership of the safety agency was about to change.

And that meant Britax might not have to recall the BOB after all. 

The untold story of the Britax case shows how changes in the safety agency’s leadership under President Trump influenced the handling of a product that the commission believed had injured consumers. The case was even more striking because it unfolded as Republicans assumed day-to-day control of the agency, eventually earning a majority on the agency’s oversight commission for the first time in more than a decade.

According to a review of documents by The Washington Post and interviews with eight current and former senior agency officials, the agency’s Republican chairwoman kept Democratic commissioners in the dark about the stroller investigation and then helped end the case in court. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity because of agency rules against discussing cases.

These events occurred with little notice amid other, higher-profile deregulatory moves by the Trump administration. But consumer advocates said changes at the Consumer Product Safety Commission could be a worrisome sign of regulators pulling back at an agency that oversees safety in 15,000 everyday products, from toys and dressers to lawn mowers and table saws.

The agency has historically been a leader in protecting children, passing strict limits on lead in children’s toys and ending the sale of deadly drop-side cribs. Its lawsuit against Britax ended in November with a settlement, approved by a 3-to-2 commission vote reflecting the new Republican majority. In a rare written dissent, the panel’s two Democrats called the settlement “aggressively misleading” for seeking to downplay the risks to consumers. 

Under the terms of the settlement, Britax needed to launch a public-safety campaign and offer replacement parts or discounts on new strollers to affected users who requested them. But, as the company noted in a news release, it was “pleased to announce” a resolution that didn’t include a recall or formal correction plan. Company President Robert McCutcheon explained in a statement to The Post that Britax “contested CPSC’s action to request a recall of BOB strollers because there is no defect in these products.”

“Their strategy worked,” said Rachel Weintraub, general counsel at the advocacy group Consumer Federation of America. “But the settlement is incredibly weak and fails to protect consumers.”

It fell off 'all of the sudden'

The stroller was a gift from her mom.

The BOB — as its fans call it — seemed like a perfect choice for Tess Sawyer, an avid runner and a first-time mom living outside Cleveland.

Her BOB Revolution could really move on its three air-filled tires. It looked rugged, like a stroller SUV. Marketing materials showed it being pushed along dirt trails and park paths. Baby stores and outdoor shops such as REI sold the $400-to-$600 stroller.

In September 2016, Sawyer said, she went for a run with her daughter strapped into her BOB. She was sprinting down the sidewalk with the stroller and “all of the sudden the wheel falls off,” Sawyer, now 26, recalled. “No indication. No red flag.”

The front of the stroller dipped forward. The back wheels lifted off the ground. Sawyer struggled for control. She wasn’t hurt. Her daughter, not yet a year old, was rattled but fine.

“It freaked me out,” Sawyer said.

When she returned home, Sawyer contacted Britax. The company sent her a new front wheel, Sawyer said, same as the first one. But that was it.

“They gave us no reason to believe that something was wrong with the stroller,” Sawyer said. “It was like it was just a crazy accident.”

But BOB’s wheel problems were well documented by then. Even BOB’s corporate site carried a review by a mother claiming her stroller’s wheel fell off while she was running with her son. Her post’s headline: “Scary moment.”

BOB had produced a special online video in 2013 to instruct users on the wheel’s use. A few months later, it added a hang tag to its strollers that warned about the dangers of incorrectly using the device.

But the front-wheel accidents kept happening — and, according to the agency’s later lawsuit, the company failed to disclose many of these incidents to regulators. This prevented the agency from learning early on about the scale of the problem, according to two people familiar with the agency’s thinking. 

Britax said in a statement it “complied with all legal and regulatory reporting requirements.”

The quick release is a metal skewer with a curved handle on one end and a metal nut on the other that tightens the wheel to the stroller fork. The stroller’s instructions told parents that “less than a half turn” of the quick release can be “the difference between safe and unsafe clamping force.”

Problems with other quick-release mechanisms have led to voluntary recalls by other companies, including 18 different bicycle brands recalling more than 2 million bicycles in 2015.

In 2016, Pacific Cycle agreed to recall its jogging stroller, telling consumers to stop using the stroller until the quick release was replaced with a screw attachment.

That same year, Britax announced that it had redesigned the BOB’s quick release “for added safety and usability,” according to a news release.

The new design had a closed stroller fork and modified quick release, so the wheel couldn’t fall out as easily.

But that left nearly 500,000 BOBs with the original design.

And they were continuing to cause problems.

As recently as October, a father reported to the agency’s consumer complaint database that his BOB double-seat stroller lost its wheel while he was jogging, causing his two children to fall face first to the ground as he flipped over the stroller and landed on top of them. 

'A little birdie' told him

The most powerful position at the Consumer Product Safety Commission is the agency’s chair. The chair — filled by presidential appointment and confirmed by the Senate — heads the agency’s five-person commission, in which the president’s political party often holds a voting majority.

Trump’s election meant the commission would swing to the Republicans for the first time in more than a decade.

Ann Marie Buerkle, a Republican, was named acting chairwoman in February 2017. Trump has nominated her to take on the role permanently. 

Buerkle, who has served on the commission since 2013, was the only commissioner to oppose proposed portable-generator rules aimed at reducing carbon monoxide poisoning in 2016. She was again the lone vote that year against a then-record $15.45 million penalty for a company accused of making humidifiers prone to catching fire. 

Buerkle declined to be interviewed by The Post.

In Buerkle’s first two years as chairwoman, the number of companies fined for misconduct declined to five in 2017-2018 from 12 in 2015-2016. Public voluntary recalls fell about 13 percent during the same period, resulting in approximately 80 fewer recalls, according to agency data. Last year, the number of public recalls fell to its lowest level in a decade, consumer advocates say.

One month into Buerkle’s tenure as chairwoman, in March 2017, agency staff members took the first step toward recalling the BOB with a preliminary determination that the stroller’s front wheel constituted a “substantial product hazard.” 

They had been studying the issue for nearly a year. They compiled in-depth injury reports. They collected epidemiological data. They ran engineering tests, even taking the stroller out in the Washington area to understand why the wheel failed, according to two people familiar with the agency’s findings. 

The agency’s health sciences division determined children could suffer “potentially life-threatening injuries” from front-wheel detachments, according to the same two people.

Staff members tried for months to get Britax to agree to a voluntary recall. But the company declined. Months passed with no action, with Britax insisting the steps it had taken to inform consumers about the quick release were adequate to ensure the strollers were safe.

“The case was not moving and hit a roadblock,” one senior agency official said.

Ordinarily, at this point, staff members might seek to pressure a reluctant company into agreeing to a voluntary recall, but Buerkle refused to allow staff members to do this, according to the eight officials who spoke to The Post.

Buerkle disputed that. “The chairwoman sees her role as helping staff do the best job that they can and not standing in their way,” added agency spokeswoman Patty Davis.  

While Buerkle had the power to direct the staff, the Democratic commissioners still held a 3-to-1 voting majority — with one vacancy — as two Republican replacements waited for Senate confirmation.

But Buerkle had considerable control over the flow of information about what staff members were investigating. Democratic commissioners, who are less involved in day-to-day activities, did not know about the stroller inquiry. 

That changed when longtime Democratic Commissioner Robert Adler found out about it in late 2017. He told others that “a little birdie” had informed him, according to five officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Adler seemed alarmed because it appeared the investigation had been hidden from him and the other commissioners, said these same officials. 

Buerkle disputed that she did not tell the other commissioners about the inquiry. Davis added that staff members give commissioners regular briefings on cases. But two people familiar with the briefings said staff members never mentioned the stroller case.

Adler then approached the two other Democratic commissioners, Elliot Kaye and Robinson. They ­demanded Buerkle arrange a ­commission-wide briefing on the stroller investigation, according to five officials familiar with the commissioners’ thinking. Buerkle also disputed this without elaboration.

On Jan. 10, 2018, a closed-door hearing to discuss “a compliance matter” was held at the agency’s headquarters in Bethesda, Md., according to the agency’s public calendar.

The agency’s compliance staff members were “unanimous and unequivocal” about the need for a BOB recall, said Robinson, who at the time had only a few months remaining on the commission. 

The agency scheduled a vote on whether to file a recall lawsuit.

The next month, the commission voted 3 to 1 in favor of suing Britax. The three Democrats voted for it. Buerkle was the lone “no” vote.

But the commission’s makeup was about to change.

'There is no defect'

The agency’s lawsuit filed in administrative court said that “children and adults were injured because the defective design of the Strollers allowed the front wheel to detach suddenly while the Stroller was in use.”

The agency wanted the defective strollers to be repaired or replaced at Britax’s cost and for the company to launch a campaign to warn the public about the stroller’s dangers. This is how recalls are typically handled.

The lawsuit was the agency’s first in six years.

But Britax was not backing down.

“There is no defect in these products,” Britax said in a statement on the day the lawsuit was filed. 

Britax — the U.S. subsidiary of Britax Childcare, which bought BOB, originally called Beast of Burden, in 2011 — also spent $40,000 to hire a lobbyist last year to make its case on Capitol Hill and at the safety agency, according to disclosure documents. It was the first Washington lobbyist it had hired in recent history, the documents said.

The heart of Britax’s defense was that the stroller met the agency’s safety standards, so it could not be defective. The company was right about the standards. The BOB had passed a test that required the removable front wheel to stay on after a strong pull.

The company argued that a product defect required the violation of a safety standard.

That was the point Britax’s attorney, Timothy Mullin, made during a prehearing meeting in May about the litigation, according to a transcript obtained by The Post. The tires didn’t come off during testing, even with the quick release unlocked, Mullin told a judge, because of small indents that create a secondary retention system. 

That’s correct, replied assistant general counsel Mary Murphy, the agency’s attorney. The stroller passed a test in the lab. But, she said, “it does not replicate what happens in real life, which is what we’re seeing when we have these defect scenarios.”

Murphy continued, “The fact that there is a standard is not a bar to a defect finding.”

Other companies have voluntarily recalled products that didn’t violate a product standard, said Nancy Cowles, executive director of Kids in Danger.

“They passed the standard, too,” Cowles said. “The standard simply didn’t keep up.”

Soon after that meeting with the judge, the balance of power on the commission swung to the Republicans.

Robinson was replaced by Dana Baiocco, a Republican attorney who joined the commission from a Boston law firm where she defended companies against product liability claims.

The commission was now split 2 to 2 by political party.

That change proved critical when the agency’s attorneys tried to subpoena three former BOB employees to discuss the quick release.

The subpoena needed the commission’s approval.

Kaye and Adler, the two Democrats, voted for it. Buerkle and Baiocco voted against it.

“I just didn’t think it complied with the federal rules. Period,” Baiocco said in an interview with The Post. She said the subpoena was an undue burden.

A tie vote meant the subpoena was denied.

The decision appeared to sink the agency’s case, according to several agency officials.

'Good for consumers'

The last vacancy on the commission was filled in September by Republican Peter Feldman, a former Senate staffer.

Two months later, just two days before Thanksgiving, Britax and the agency announced an end to the recall lawsuit with a settlement , which required the company to run a public-safety campaign and offer replacement parts or discounts on new strollers to some users in what was clearly not a traditional safety recall. The commission voted 3 to 2 along party lines to accept it.

Feldman said in an interview he doubted going to trial “would have been able to bring back anything nearly as strong.”

“I think it was good for consumers,” Baiocco added.

Buerkle said in a statement that she recognizes that it’s a compromise, but that the deal “advances consumer safety.”

Adler and Kaye, who voted against the deal, wrote a dissent that questioned why Britax felt so strongly about avoiding the term “recall.” They also worried the agreement would become a model for settling future product disputes.

Robinson, the former commissioner, said the deal was a sign of what Britax had anticipated all along.

“The only way this can be explained,” she said, “is they knew they could do whatever they wanted once the majority changed.”

“We fully respect the CPSC and its mission and we strive to work collaboratively with them, but we could not agree to recall a product that is not defective,” McCutcheon, Britax’s president, said in his statement to The Post.

In January, the company launched its information campaign instructing users how to correctly operate the quick release. At the heart of it was a safety video that runs more than nine minutes. Britax also offered consumers different ways of securing the front wheel — a bolt or a modified quick release — or a 20 percent discount on a new stroller. The offer was limited to certain strollers made before October 2015 and was available for a single year, features that consumer advocates say make safety efforts less effective.

By the end of March, the Britax YouTube video had 195 views.

Kaye was not surprised.

“Information campaigns are usually garbage,” Kaye said. “When one is genuinely seeking to protect consumers and the public, you almost never rely on an education campaign to do the job.”

Kaye worried more companies would want to avoid recalls with information campaigns. Already he detected companies were taking a harder line with the safety agency, and staff members were having a harder time getting their calls returned.

'The trust is gone'

Sawyer, the mother in Ohio, didn’t know about the BOB’s quick-release problems until a Post reporter contacted her in February.

She didn’t know about Britax’s information campaign.

She didn’t know about the potential fixes being offered.

Now, she’s afraid to use her BOB. She doesn’t want to take it out for a run. She doesn’t want to put her daughter in it, and she can’t imagine selling the stroller to someone.

Britax won its fight against a recall, she said.

But it lost something, too. 

“The trust,” she said, “is gone.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Pork industry soon will have more power over meat inspections"

Spoiler

The Trump administration plans to shift much of the power and responsibility for food safety inspections in hog plants to the pork industry as early as May, cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees.

Under the proposed new inspection system, the responsibility for identifying diseased and contaminated pork would be shared with plant employees, whose training would be at the discretion of plant owners. There would be no limits on slaughter-line speeds.

The new pork inspection system would accelerate the federal government’s move toward delegating inspections to the livestock industry. During the Obama administration, poultry plant owners were given more power over safety inspections, although that administration canceled plans to increase line speeds. The Trump administration in September allowed some poultry plants to increase line speeds.

The Trump administration also is working to shift inspection of beef to plant owners. Agriculture Department officials are scheduled next month to discuss the proposed changes with the meat industry.

These proposals, part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to reduce regulations, come as the federal government is under fire for delegating some of its aircraft safety oversight responsibilities to Boeing, which developed the 737 Max jets involved in two fatal crashes over the past six months. Federal Aviation Administration certification of the two aircraft involved in the crashes took place under Trump, but the major shift toward delegating key aspects of aviation oversight began during the George W. Bush administration.

Pat Basu, the chief veterinarian with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service from 2016 to 2018, refused to sign off on the new pork system because of concerns about safety for both consumers and livestock. The USDA sent the proposed regulations to the Federal Register about a week after Basu left, and they were published less than a month later, according to records and interviews.

“Look at the FAA. It took a year or so before the crashes happened,” Basu said. “This could pass and everything could be okay for a while, until some disease is missed and we have an outbreak all over the country. It would be an economic disaster that would be very hard to recover from.”

Basu’s top concern is with giving plant workers the responsibility for identifying and removing live diseased hogs when they arrive at the plants. He said that job should remain with trained USDA veterinarians so they can identify contagious diseases like foot-and-mouth disease, which can maim and destroy livestock, creating profound effects on the economy. One analysis by Kansas State University researchers determined such an outbreak could cost producers and the public $188 billion and state and federal governments $11 billion.

The National Pork Producers Council, the association for the $20 billion pork industry, said the new system will create a more symbiotic relationship with USDA workers who will “partner with the pork industry to better ensure safe products are entering the marketplace,” according to an issues paper the trade group distributed on Capitol Hill.

USDA officials declined interview requests, saying they would not speak publicly about the new regulations until they are final.

In the past, officials in the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service have defended their efforts to transfer more control of food safety oversight to the pork industry. They said federal inspectors will spend less time assessing the quality of the pork, which will give them more time to look for disease and contamination.

Foodborne illnesses, they said, typically come from microscopic pathogens that are best detected through testing.

“More emphasis will be placed on preventing contamination rather than reacting to it afterwards,” said William James, the head veterinarian in the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service from 2008 to 2011, who helped develop the regulations.

“These [inspection] systems have evolved since the ’80s, and they will continue to do so,” he said. “We cannot do things the same ways we’ve always done them.”

However, USDA officials confirmed they have no plans under the new system to test for salmonella — for which the USDA once tested. The agency will rely heavily on pathogen testing by plant owners, but those results will not have to be publicly disclosed. The hog plants also will no longer be required to test for E. coli, records show.

Joseph Ferguson is a former USDA hog inspector who retired in 2015 after working 23 years under the traditional inspection system as well as with a trial program that created the new proposed system. He said federal regulators lost control when plant workers supplanted them. Hog carcasses whizzed by him and the plant-paid inspectors at speeds so fast that fecal contamination — an important indicator for E. coli and salmonella — could not be detected.

“All the power gets handed over to the plant,” Ferguson said. “I saw the alleged inspections that were performed by plant workers; they weren’t inspections. They were supposed to meet or exceed USDA standards — I never saw that happen.”

The proposed hog slaughter rule is based on a study that began 20 years ago, ultimately including five large plants. Efforts to expand the program have sputtered under past administrations, but Trump administration officials have told industry trade groups that they expect the proposed regulations to soon become final. They say 40 of the 612 hog plants not already using the new system will begin using the program. Collectively, agriculture officials say, these plants will produce 90 percent of the pork produced in the United States.

Shrinking staff

An analysis by the USDA of 35 of the 40 plants estimated that the number of federal inspectors would shrink from 365 to 218. That same analysis estimated that the new system will save $6 million annually and that large plants — by increasing their line speeds by more than 12 percent — will increase their profits annually by more than $2 million dollars. The current cap on line speed is 1,106 hogs per hour, or 18 hogs per minute.

Food safety advocates say giving more control to plant owners is a step away from the overhauls that gave federal inspectors authority over food safety in slaughterhouses in the first place. In 1906, Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” was published, describing the high rate of rotten and contaminated meat being processed in a Chicago meatpacking plant. Public outrage fueled the passage of a federal law that year requiring meat to be slaughtered under sanitary conditions and under the supervision of federal inspectors.

Although there have been huge advances in food safety in meatpacking plants, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about a half-million people become ill and 82 die each year from consuming pathogen-laced pork products. Hog plants produce about 11 million tons of pork products annually, with 75 percent of it eaten in the United States, according to industry statistics.

The proposed inspection program has faced harsh criticism by government auditors and investigators.

In May 2013, the USDA’s inspector general issued a report that found three of the five plants in the trial program had numerous health and safety violations. Safety records at those three plants were worse than those at hundreds of other U.S. hog plants that continued to operate under the traditional system, auditors found.

A separate September 2013 Government Accountability Office report determined that the five-plant trial program was too small to “provide reasonable assurance that any conclusions can apply more broadly to the universe of 608 hog plants in the United States.”

No independent government assessments of the program have been done since the 2013 inspector general and GAO reports.

Worker safety

When it comes to worker safety, the USDA said in its proposed regulations that the plants in the trial program — which use the faster line speeds — experienced a drop in worker injuries.

The National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for worker safety, questioned those findings. Meat slaughter and meat-processing jobs have high injury rates that occupational experts attribute to the fast, repetitive motions workers perform throughout an eight- to 10-hour shift.

Illness rates for people who work in the meatpacking business — including carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis — are 16 times as high as for workers in other industries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The USDA did not make its analysis or data public. The National Employment Law Project obtained it through a public information request. Two Texas State University researchers who specialize in quantitative methods and statistics analyzed the data and concluded that “it is impossible for FSIS to draw any statistically valid conclusion about worker injury rate differences.”

The analysis by Texas researchers got the attention of Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the second-ranking Senate Democrat. Durbin recently sent a letter signed by 16 other Democrats to the USDA inspector general’s office, asking for an investigation. Especially egregious, Durbin said, is that it appears that the USDA intentionally kept the analysis out of public view until they were forced to disclose it, and only after the public comment period had passed for the proposed inspection system.

“Using flawed data, the USDA is rushing to approve a rule concerning slaughter rates on hog farms, and it could jeopardize worker safety for a job that already comes with considerable risks and dangers,” Durbin said in a statement to The Washington Post. “The safety of tens of thousands of workers in pork processing plants should be USDA’s priority, and right now it clearly isn’t.”

The Food Safety and Inspection Service responded that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, not FSIS, has the “statutory and regulatory authority to promote workplace safety and health.”

 

[fraurosena]

We have a saying in Dutch that seems to be invented especially for this: "you can't have a butcher who inspects his own meat". 

I don't know whether to eye-roll, puke or scream. All three are applicable in this instance. 

 

[smittykins]

I love that saying, @fraurosena!

[Howl]

The Good: Kirstjen Nielson has resigned/got a boot in her bum, depends on who you talk to.  The CNN article linked below was not entirely clear. 

At least she didn't get fired by tweet. 

The Bad: Someone more malleable and closely aligned with Trumpy's goals (is that possible?) will take her place -- Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary. 

From CNN: Trump says DHS Secretary Nielsen leaving

Yet another "Acting" in a Cabinet level position. 

Sadly, it sounds as though even more insanely draconian immigration policies will be instituted soon. 

Edited April 7, 2019 by Howl