Executive Departments 3

[Xan]

2 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Find a honest Trump official. 

Isn't "honest Trump official" an oxymoron?  ?

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Howl]

She's out! #ETTD! 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Um, Nikki, you shouldn't forget your password to secure systems. This isn't your Macy's password.

 

Edited November 20, 2019 by GreyhoundFan

[fraurosena]

In their eagerness to deport foreign students (who arrived legally on student visas), DHS created a fake university to entrap them, raking in their tuition fees in the meantime. Seven of the eight recruiters were actively attempting to recruit students who have been criminally charged have been sentenced.

ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan

Quote

About 90 additional foreign students of a fake university in metro Detroit created by the Department of Homeland Security have been arrested in recent months.

A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials. 

Many of those arrested have been deported to India while others are contesting their removals. One has been allowed to stay after being granted lawful permanent resident status by an immigration judge.

The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials. 

Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, "nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States," the Detroit office of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday. 

Out of the remaining 20%, about half of them have received a final order of removal; some of them were ordered removed by an immigration judge, and others "were given an expedited removal by U.S. Customs and Border Protection," said HSI Detroit. 

The remaining 10% "have either filed for some sort of relief or are contesting their removals with Executive Office for Immigration Review," said HSI Detroit. 

ICE said in March that 161 students had been arrested, which has now increased to about 250.

Meanwhile, seven of the eight recruiters who were criminally charged for trying to recruit students have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced in Detroit, including Prem Rampeesa, 27, last week. The remaining one is to be sentenced in January. 

Attorneys for the students arrested said they were unfairly trapped by the U.S. government since the Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate. 

There were more than 600 students enrolled at the university, which was created a few years ago by federal law enforcement officials with ICE. Records filed with the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) show that the University of Farmington was incorporated in January 2016. 

Many of the students had enrolled with the university through a program known as Curricular Practical Training (CPT), which allows students to work in the U.S through a F-1 visa program for foreign students. Some had transferred to the University of Farmington from other schools that had lost accreditation, which means they would no longer be in immigration status and allowed to remain in the U.S. 

Emails obtained by the Free Press earlier this year showed how the fake university attracted students to the university, which cost about $12,000 on average in tuition and fees per year. 

The U.S. "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. "They preyed upon on them."

The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. An email from the university's president, named Ali Milani, told students that graduate programs' tuition is $2,500 per quarter and the average cost is $1,000 per month.

"They made a lot of money," Reddy said of the U.S. government. 

No one has filed a lawsuit or claim against the U.S. government for collecting the money or for allegedly entrapping the students. 

Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location. Some CPT programs have classes combined with work programs at companies.  

"Their true intent could not be clearer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for Rampeesa, one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. "While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."

In the memo, federal prosecutor Baker said the case raises questions about the U.S. "foreign-student visa program."

Baker wrote that "immigration and visa programs have been hot-button topics in the United States for years and national scrutiny has only been increasing. Fairly or unfairly, Rampeesa’s conduct casts a shadow on the foreign-student visa program in general, and it raises questions as to whether the potential for abuse threatens to outweigh the benefits."

Reddy said, though, that in some cases, students who transferred out from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested. 

Rampeesa was sentenced Nov, 19 to one year in prison by Judge Gershwin Drain of U.S. District Court in Detroit. With time already served of 295 days, he should be out in about two to three months, and will then be deported to India, said his attorney Wanda Cal. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harbor aliens for profit. 

Detroit ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls said the other recruiters sentenced so far are Barath Kakireddy, 29, of Lake Mary, Florida, 18 months; Suresh Kandala, 31, of Culpeper, Virginia, 18 months; Santosh Sama, 28, of Fremont, California, 24 months; Avinash Thakkallapally, 28, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 15 months; Aswanth Nune, 26, of Atlanta, Georgia, 12 months; Naveen Prathipati, 26, of Dallas, Texas, 12 months. 

Phanideep Karnati, 35, of Louisville, Kentucky, is to be sentenced in January.

In court, Rampeesa's attorney, Cal, said his client had no criminal record and came from a rural background in India. 

He was trying to "help his family back home," Cal said before Judge Drain. "My client is very remorseful. He is really a good person caught up in a bad situation."

Rampeesa arrived in the U.S. legally a few years ago on a student visa and earned in 2016 a master's degree in computer science at Northwestern Polytechnic University. But the university later lost its accreditation, which put his immigration status in jeopardy. He had spent $40,000 in tuition and fees for his studies at the university. 

"He was desperate to find a way to stay in the United States," Rampeesa's attorney, Cal, wrote in his sentencing memo. He wanted to get a Ph.D. in computer science, she said. 

Rampeesa then met Sama, who recruited him to attend the University of Farmington and told him he could get tuition credits if he recruited other students, Cal said.

Sama and Rampeesa were working with people they thought were university officials, but were actually undercover agents for the Department of Homeland Security. 

"My client has no other criminal history, not even a traffic ticket," Cal said in court last week. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Baker said in court that Rampeesa was "aware it was completely fake," that "it was just for maintaining status."

"He chose the University of Farmington for a reason," Baker said of Rampeesa.  

In calling for a sentence of 24 to 30 months, Baker said: "It's important to send a message ... this type of crime will not be tolerated."

Accompanying Baker in the court last week was Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet, who helped prosecute the case. 

Judge Drain sentenced him to 1 year, but he will be released in two to three months because of time served, and then deported.  

Drain said of Rampeesa: "You don't have any criminal history. ... I don't think you're a danger to the public."

Rampeesa received a shorter sentence than Sama because he was not recruiting other students for cash, but for tuition credits provided by the university, Judge Drain said.

Rampeesa wrote a letter to the court pleading for leniency that was read before the judge. A Telugu-speaking translator was at his side in court, translating the courtroom proceedings. Most of the students were from Telugu-speaking regions of India in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

He said he was trying in the U.S. after his previous university's loss of accreditation made his master's degree "worthless."

"I am ashamed," Rampeesa wrote. "I made a very bad decision" to recruit students that "bought shame to my family name."

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I guess Miller and Cuccinelli have to pay for more baby cages, so they're upping fees for accessing records: "The genealogy boom has hit a roadblock. The Trump administration plans huge fee hikes for immigration records."

Spoiler

At a time when researching family history is booming, the nation’s immigration and citizenship agency has proposed dramatically hiking fees to access records from the first half of the 20th century. The move has outraged professional and amateur genealogists, who argue that the increase would effectively put valuable immigration information out of reach for many.

The fees would nearly triple, and, in many cases, they would rise nearly 500 percent, from $130 to $625 to obtain a single paper file. The little-known Genealogy Program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allows genealogists, family historians and other researchers to obtain citizenship and alien registration files, visa applications and other records documenting the lives of deceased immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.

The waves of western and southern Europeans who came through Ellis Island at the turn of the century are included in records, as are Jews who sought refuge from Nazi Germany before World War II and Mexican guest farm workers who helped stem the labor shortage during the conflict. They were followed by Holocaust survivors and those fleeing Communist rule in Central Europe and the Soviet Union.

The files sometimes include hundreds of pages, documenting long waits at Ellis Island or in the case of Japanese, Italians and Germans who lived in the U.S. during WWII, FBI reports about the immigrant’s friends, family, and political activities.

The fee increase "has to be very important to anyone who does hobbyist genealogy. It would make it impossible for most average people to access” the files, ” said Rich Venezia, a Pittsburgh-based professional genealogist who teaches courses on how to access the USCIS records.

Venezia is spearheading a public campaign to persuade the agency, now under the leadership of Acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, to withdraw the fee hikes before the window for public comment closes on Dec. 16.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials declined to explain exactly how they arrived at the new fee amounts. But the agency has said that it must increase fees across the board – including substantial hikes for green card and citizenship applications – to avoid a $1.26 billion annual budget shortfall. By law, USCIS must fund itself through fees.

“USCIS is required to examine incoming and outgoing expenditures, just like a business, and make adjustments based on that analysis," the agency said in a statement. A date has not been set for the new fees to go into effect.

The increases come at a time when millions of Americans are discovering a passion for family genealogy, spurring the growth of web sites and services that cater to them. Ancestry.com, one of the most popular, now has more than three million paying subscribers perusing its databases of documents and DNA connections.

These amateur genealogists and their professional counterparts extol the value of the USCIS files in unraveling family histories and, in some cases, revealing long-buried secrets.

Jennifer Mendelsohn’s request for an alien registration file in 2017 revealed one such family secret, which the Baltimore journalist and genealogist found oddly amusing. Mendelsohn’s great-grandfather, Myer Stanger, had been among a group of men arrested for grand larceny after fencing $36,000 in dungarees and aprons stolen from the factory where he worked, according to a news report from the time surfaced by Mendelsohn. Not exactly the crime of the century, she noted.

Much more consequentially, Mendelsohn said she never would have known her great-grandmother’s hometown were it not for a USCIS file she obtained in 2018.

“Her life defied genealogical inquiries,” Mendolsohn said. “She never did anything in the U.S. that yields information.” Yetta Cushman, who immigrated around 1890, never became a U.S. citizen and died before Social Security existed. “There was absolutely no trail.”

Mendelsohn discovered the existence of Cushman’s brother, who lived in Brooklyn, through a DNA test and later obtained his alien registration form. Listed there was the family’s hometown: Savran, Russia, now part of Ukraine. The discovery was important to her family’s sense of identity, she said, and has inspired her to dig deeper.

Mendelsohn’s penchant for genealogical research extends well beyond her own family, as founder of the viral “Resistance Genealogy” project that unearths the family histories of pundits and politicians who target immigrants.

While Mendelsohn doesn’t request USCIS files for those genealogical digs due to long wait times, she said the fee hikes underscore her sense that the Trump administration takes “an antagonist stance” toward immigration, both present and past.

“What's frustrating to me is that we have no other recourse,” but to pay the price USCIS sets for the files, said Mendolsohn. “There is no other way to get this information…If they can do this to these records, they can do this to any records. It's incumbent upon us to speak up and try to stop this."

Alex Calzareth, a family historian in Long Island City, N.Y., is an especially heavy user of the genealogical program, having obtained more than 550 files from USCIS, many through the Freedom of Information Act, before the agency started charging for the files in 2008.

After securing a naturalization, or C-file, in 2002, Calzareth discovered precisely why his divorced great-grandparents had remarried after escaping the German invasion of Czechoslavakia and immigrating to the U.S. in 1940.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service recommended denying the co-habitating couple’s petition for citizenship in 1945 due to “poor moral character,” Calzareth said. Felix and Grete Rafael decided to call as a witness their rabbi, who testified that they were still married under Jewish law.

As it turned out, the presiding judge was a celebrated Jewish lawyer, Simon Hirsch Rifkind, and he happened to know the Rafaels’ rabbi during WWII, Calzareth said. The Rafaels retied the knot, and Rifkind green lighted their citizenship, he said.

“My grandmother knew Judge Rifkind was involved, but not exactly how,” and no one in the family knew what had exactly had prompted the Rafaels to remarry, Calzareth said.

Because a chunk of the file fee is due before the requester even knows if a file exists, Calzareth said he considers himself fortunate to have already obtained so many records. The proposed new fees would be prohibitive, he said.

“Family stories aren’t always reliable,” Calzareth said. “…There’s often a kernel of truth in a family story, but without the documentation all you have is ‘People say this happened but I don’t know if it was true.’”

Old photos contained in the file can serve as important clues or provide the only image a family will ever have of an ancestor.

Venezia told the story of a colleague descended from Holocaust survivors who had lost all family photos during the war. The USCIS file contained a photograph of the client’s grandfather as a young man that is now treasured by the whole family.

The files are often necessary for people who want to obtain ancestral dual citizenship, he said; Venezia used them himself to secure Italian citizenship.

Some of the files are scheduled to transfer to the National Archives where they can be accessed by the public in person for free, but the vast majority of the information contained in the files is not available outside of the USCIS program, he said.

Venezia said he is puzzled by the jump in fees, especially given that the program nearly tripled fees in 2016, explaining at the time that the new fees would fully cover the program’s costs, he said.

"What could possibly have changed in three years to warrant such a huge increase?” he asked.

 

[Smash!]

Didn't know where to put this, but I love Devin Nunes' Cow!

 

[Smash!]

This goes under "Growing your twitter following 101"

[fraurosena]

Although I could revive the last Russian connection thread, or the Mueller investigation thread for that matter, I’m putting the discussion of the IG report here, as the FBI falls under the DOJ.  Earlier I posted a link to the report in the impeachment thread, because they entered it into the record at today’s hearing.

(thread)

 

Well said. How unusual indeed.

 

[fraurosena]

All that spinning is making them so confused.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"After bipartisan pushback, Trump ditches effort to kill major federal agency"

Spoiler

President Trump has abandoned his administration’s faltering effort to dissolve a key federal agency, a major setback in his three-year battle to keep his campaign promise to make government leaner and more efficient.

The Office of Personnel Management will remain the human resources manager of the civilian workforce of 2.1 million employees, and its functions will not — for the foreseeable future at least — be parceled out to the White House and the General Services Administration.

The White House hoped that shuttering the agency of 5,500 employees could serve as a blueprint for eliminating other federal offices as Trump tries to contain the size and scope of a bureaucracy he targeted as duplicative and inefficient — and rein in a workforce he views with skepticism.

But an 18-month effort by a top Office of Management and Budget official to eliminate the government personnel office left the plan on life support, despite a bipartisan consensus that the operation is deeply troubled.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans whose support was essential to disbanding the agency dismissed the plan as ill-conceived and unlikely to save money or shrink the federal workforce. A sweeping defense authorization bill that appeared to be headed for approval on Capitol Hill on Wednesday relegates the breakup to an independent study committee, a common face-saving solution for ideas that tend to be going nowhere.

The agency would have been the first stand-alone federal department of its size to be eliminated in decades.

In recent weeks, Trump soured on continuing the fight after seeing an obscure Washington-area television program about government, according to White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. WJLA’s “Government Matters” has aired several segments about the OPM proposal. Top budget office and other White House officials were rushed to meet with Trump the following day.

The president told his top advisers that with a win unlikely, the already unpopular plan would bring him poor reviews. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and acting budget director Russell Vought, along with Margaret Weichert, the White House official leading the effort, tried to persuade Trump to keep going in line with conservative principles of shrinking government, the officials said.

But the president stood firm. He has soured on other plans that his aides said he once embraced, including a public-private push for infrastructure, and has sometimes been skeptical of budget-cutting ideas from Mulvaney and his allies in the budget office.

“The president has been very clear that the reforms to make government more efficient shouldn’t have a negative implication for federal workers in that agency,” Rep. Mark Meadows, (R-N.C.), a founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a Trump ally, said of the proposal.

Meadows acknowledged that “there’s a lot of distrust related to any effort to rearrange, reform and redirect a federal asset.”

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s subcommittee on government operations, which blocked the plan, said the Trump administration never provided a good rationale for it.

“The goal of shrinking government is neither good nor bad, but it has to be tied to something,” he said. “If the goal is to make government more efficient, they didn’t make a pretense at a rationale.”

Mulvaney, Connolly said, “saw this as a point on the scoreboard to say, ‘I abolished a federal agency and the consequences be damned.’ For once, Trump’s political instincts are better than Mulvaney’s.”

Rachel Semmel, a spokeswoman for the OMB, said it welcomed the study. “This Administration remains committed to reforms — including organizational improvements — that will increase the service and stewardship of the Government for the American people,” she said in an emailed statement.

The administration had argued that the OPM, created in 1978 to oversee the civil service and coordinate hiring policy, retirement benefits, health insurance and other policies for the federal workforce, was failing at its mission.

It is widely viewed as slow and ineffective, with antiquated technology systems that make personnel data vulnerable to cyberattacks and risk-averse leadership that hasn’t responded to calls for faster hiring and recruiting.

Even as the plan is shelved, Weichert, deputy director for management at the budget office, has continued to make the administration’s case. On Wednesday, she hosted a White House summit with state government leaders from across the country to discuss best practices for consolidating government offices.

The backtrack underscores the challenge for any president calling for smaller government, but particularly for Trump, who campaigned on a promise to “cut so much your head will spin.”

His budgets to Congress have proposed major spending cuts at such agencies as the State Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, eliminated thousands of line-item programs and purging dozens of small agencies.

But the plans have largely been dead on arrival as Congress rejected the proposed cuts, even when Republicans controlled the House. Earlier this year, the president himself reversed his administration’s plan to wipe out almost $18 million in funding for the Special Olympics after his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, defended the unpopular proposal to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

An ambitious government reorganization plan Mulvaney released last year when he was budget office director has languished without buy-in from Congress.

However, the administration has moved forward with three relocations, moving two economic research agencies at the Agriculture Department out of Washington to Kansas City and the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colo. Both moves will reduce real estate costs and shrink the offices, because a fraction of their employees are moving.

The administration was forced in June to backtrack on killing a U.S. Forest Service program that trains disadvantaged young people for rural jobs after bipartisan outcry from Congress. The Forest Service had planned to begin layoffs of 1,110 employees by September, believed to be the largest number of cuts to the federal workforce in a decade.

“I don’t think I can say with confidence that I can point to a major restructuring of government the administration wanted to achieve at the outset,” said G. William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican staff director for the Senate Budget Committee.

He described the agencies moving out of Washington as “an asterisk in terms of the overall federal government.” He blamed spending disputes between the White House and Congress that have left agencies operating under temporary budgets that maintain spending at current levels rather than allowing cuts.

The OPM was an inviting target for the White House. Its massive background investigation operation was in the process of migrating to the Defense Department under an Obama-era initiative.

The proposed breakup would have divided OPM among three departments. The White House budget office would have taken over high-level policies governing federal employees. That plan was decried by federal employee unions as a backdoor ploy to politicize the civil service by installing political appointees close to the White House.

Weichert asked Congress for $50 million this fiscal year to carry out the reshuffling. She said the workforce would shrink through retirements and unfilled vacancies. although one plan, quickly shot down on Capitol Hill, included layoffs.

But critics panned the plan’s basic premise and execution. The administration did not conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Officials could not estimate the short- or long-term savings of the closure.

It was unclear whether GSA, the government’s real estate agency, was equipped to handle personnel policy. Morale at OPM plummeted.

The OPM’s inspector general weighed in against the idea multiple times, just weeks ago telling Congress that the White House had no documented plan or identified legal authority to move forward.

Besides countless hours of staff time, there were other casualties: Trump’s first personnel director, Jeff Pon, was abruptly shown the door last year because he openly opposed the breakup and asked the Justice Department how it could be legally carried out.

“You can’t look at it and say, here are the 20 great reasons to do it and the 20 bad reasons,” said Jeffrey Neal, former personnel chief at the Department of Homeland Security and now a senior vice president at ICF, a global consulting company. “It was more like, there were 20 bad reasons and one good reason.

“This wasn’t going to shrink government,” Neal said. “If you spend time tilting at windmills rather than carrying out your mission, you could argue the time has been wasted.”

 

[Smash!]

What the freaking hell? I'm at loss for words what's been happing in the last few days. https://twitter.com/rvawonk/status/1205800390924623873?s=21

[Smash!]

I'm wondering what is their intent pardoning criminals? This is not the first time, (looking at 45) and it's looking like a pattern. ?

[Becky]

Does a pardon negate the conviction?  

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Becky said:

Does a pardon negate the conviction?  

No. If one accepts a pardon, it essentially means an admission of guilt.

However, a pardon does mean that one is set free. That is what pardon means; you are guilty of the crime(s), but you are 'forgiven', pardoned for what you did, and can live in liberty once again.

That said, the chances of a pardoned criminal ever getting a job again, or a respectable position in society are virtually nil. Because pardons are public affairs, and the public at large now knows you, and the crime(s) you were pardoned for. Just take a look at the recent pardon of two war criminals by Trump: they were set free, but all their job applications have been turned down, as their reputation precedes them. 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50849559

USA has a free trade agreement with Wakanda. 

[Flossie]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50849559

USA has a free trade agreement with Wakanda. 

Another example of the current administration being not only corrupt, but inept.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is disgusting: "CDC gets list of forbidden words: Fetus, transgender, diversity"

Spoiler

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation's top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including "fetus" and "transgender" — in official documents being prepared for next year's budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based."

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of "science-based" or ­"evidence-based," the suggested phrase is "CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes," the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, "will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans," HHS spokesman Matt Lloyd told The Washington Post. "HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions."

The question of how to address such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights — all of which received significant visibility under the Obama administration — has surfaced repeatedly in federal agencies since President Trump took office. Several key departments — including HHS, as well as Justice, Education, and Housing and Urban Development — have changed some federal policies and how they collect government information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

In March, for example, HHS dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two surveys of elderly people.

HHS has also removed information about LGBT Americans from its website. The department's Administration for Children and Families, for example, archived a page that outlined federal services that are available for LGBT people and their families, including how they can adopt and receive help if they are the victims of sex trafficking.

At the CDC, the meeting about the banned words was led by Alison Kelly, a career civil servant who is a senior leader in the agency's Office of Financial Resources, according to the CDC analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. Kelly did not say why the words are being banned, according to the analyst, and told the group that she was merely relaying the information.

Other CDC officials confirmed the existence of a list of forbidden words. It's likely that other parts of HHS are operating under the same guidelines regarding the use of these words, the analyst said.

At the CDC, several offices have responsibility for work that uses some of these words. The National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention is working on ways to prevent HIV among transgender people and reduce health disparities. The CDC's work on birth defects caused by the Zika virus includes research on the developing fetus.

The ban is related to the budget and supporting materials that are to be given to the CDC's partners and to Congress, the analyst said. The president's budget for 2019 is expected to be released in early February. The budget blueprint is generally shaped to reflect an administration's priorities.

Federal agencies are sending in their budget proposals to the Office of Management and Budget, which has authority about what is included.

Neither an OMB spokesman nor a CDC spokeswoman responded to requests for comment Friday.

The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC's work for the administration's annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial.

The reaction of people in the meeting was "incredulous," the analyst said. "It was very much, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding?' "

"In my experience, we've never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint," the analyst said.

News of the ban on certain words hasn't yet spread to the broader group of scientists at the CDC, but it's likely to provoke a backlash, the analyst said. "Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly — this hasn't trickled down to them yet."

The CDC has a budget of about $7 billion and more than 12,000 employees working across the nation and around the globe on everything from food and water safety, to heart disease and cancer, to infectious disease outbreak prevention. Much of the CDC's work has strong bipartisan support.

Kelly told the analysts that "certain words" in the CDC's budget drafts were being sent back to the agency for correction. Three words that had been flagged in these drafts were "vulnerable," "entitlement" and "diversity." Kelly told the group the ban on the other words had been conveyed verbally.

 

[thoughtful]

That article was from 2017. It seems that a change of terminology was suggested to have a better chance of getting funding (still not a happy thing, I admit), but nothing was banned.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/11/health/cdc-word-ban-hhs-document/index.html

[smittykins]

I thought it looked familiar.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is already searching for his next secretary of state"

Spoiler

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he isn’t running for Senate next year. Those close to him say he hasn’t made a final decision yet. But that hasn’t prevented a barely concealed competition from breaking out within the administration over who might replace him as the nation’s top diplomat. President Trump has fueled the fire by sounding out lawmakers and officials as he considers his options.

Pompeo has plenty of time to decide whether to run before the official filing deadline in June. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is pushing him hard to jump into the Kansas senate race, several officials and GOP lawmakers told me, out of fear former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach might win the primary and then lose the general election to a Democrat. Pompeo is also mulling a run for president in 2024, and McConnell has argued the Senate would be a perfect perch from which to do that.

Trump said last month Pompeo came to him and told him he wanted to stay. But Trump also hedged by saying that, if there’s any danger the GOP could lose that seat, Pompeo might change his mind and “would win in a landslide because they love him in Kansas.” Pompeo himself, meanwhile, is sending mixed signals. This month he began posting from a new personal Twitter account with Kansas farmland in the banner photo.

All this uncertainty has caused several officials to quietly begin to position themselves for the secretary of state job. Trump, not knowing how it will turn out, has been tossing around names for Pompeo’s successor with lawmakers and officials, according to three people who spoke with him directly about it. Speculation is heating up all over the administration.

The person most often mentioned to succeed Pompeo is national security adviser Robert O’Brien. Trump really likes O’Brien, several officials told me, and has given him increased diplomatic responsibilities since he became the president’s fourth national security adviser in September. O’Brien stood in for Trump at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Thailand in October. He accompanied Vice President Pence and Pompeo to Turkey to negotiate a Syria cease-fire.

Pompeo is also a big fan of O’Brien, who worked for Pompeo as special presidential envoy for hostage affairs before he moved to the White House. O’Brien is known as a competent, polished technocrat who works well with all the various administration factions — which is rare.

The other main contender at this point is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Some officials believe Mnuchin is angling for the job, and some say he is simply in contention but not actively lobbying. Either way, he’s on the list. Mnuchin is very close to Trump personally and has been treasury secretary for almost three years.

But many national security officials are concerned that Mnuchin’s dovish position on China and his Wall Street-centered focus could undermine his fitness to lead U.S. diplomacy. He recently delivered Trump the phase one China trade deal but has consistently resisted the more hawkish China strategy supported by Pompeo, Pence, O’Brien and most of the administration.

He would have a confirmation problem, too, having only narrowly been confirmed for his current job, 53 to 47, amid concerns among Senate Democrats about his overall lack of experience. Also, though Pompeo and Mnuchin are political allies, they disagree on foreign policy. O’Brien would represent continuity, whereas Mnuchin would represent a stark departure from the status quo at State.

Trump has also asked people what they think about Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell becoming secretary of state. The German government has complained about Grenell’s aggressive style, but that’s actually a selling point for Trump. Grenell’s confirmation would also be tough; he was confirmed for his current job by a vote of 56 to 42. O’Brien and Grenell have been friends for many years. They were both acolytes of former national security adviser John Bolton.

Newly minted Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun would become acting secretary of state, at least for a while, if Pompeo departs. Depending on when Pompeo steps down, it might be too late for Trump to get someone new confirmed, leaving Biegun in charge at Foggy Bottom until the election. Biegun is said not to be seeking the job full time, but he’s on Trump’s list.

The other names often mentioned are State Department envoy to Iran Brian Hook, who has a close relationship with Jared Kushner, as well as Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Hook is seen as unlikely to ultimately get the nod because he has some detractors among Trump’s allies. Rubio and Cotton both have presidential aspirations, and a stint as secretary of state could only help them.

That brings us back to Pompeo, who is keeping us all in suspense. Does he really want to go from being secretary of state to a position as the junior senator from Kansas? If he is going to run for president on his diplomatic record, might he not want to stay another year and finish the job?

If so, this entire contest will simply be shelved until Trump’s second term (should he be reelected). But until everyone else can be convinced that Pompeo is definitely staying, the competition for his job will keep heating up.

 

[Becky]

Weasel-face Mnuchin for SOS?  ?

[GreyhoundFan]

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