Executive Departments 3

[AmazonGrace]

Bill Barr also wants to spend more time with his family 

 

[Howl]

Is there a specific word for this specific kind of nepotism? 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Is there a specific word for this specific kind of nepotism? 

I would think it would be covered under "Trumpism".

[Howl]

Whitaker also is not leaving, he's just been reassigned within DoJ, I'm assuming as a head pat for stonewalling in his hearing, which in Trumpworld is "job well done."  He's now a senior counselor in the Office of the Associate Attorney General.  I can't find out the name of the current Associate Attorney General, unless it's Jesse Panuccio, the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General of the United States, or maybe the office is vacant. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mel Watt attempted to ‘coerce’ relationship with employee while FHFA director, IG report says"

Spoiler

Former congressman Mel Watt misused his position as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency by attempting to “coerce or induce” a relationship with a female employee seeking a promotion, according to a previously unreleased inspector general’s report.

The inspector general’s investigation was completed in late November and sent to the White House, but President Trump took no action against Watt. He retired at the end of his term in January and Trump has nominated a replacement. The results of the IG investigation, released to The Washington Post after a Freedom of Information Act request, have not been previously disclosed.

Watt implied he could use his position as head of a powerful financial regulator to help Simone Grimes obtain an executive position, the report found. He was also not “candid” with investigators and attempted to explain away his conversations with Grimes, some of which were recorded, as jokes or part of an attempt to mentor her, according to the report.

Investigators were not convinced by Watt’s explanations and accused him of two counts of misconduct. “We find that there are no circumstances under which it would be appropriate for the head of FHFA to induce a subordinate female employee to meet with him alone, in his apartment, for a conversation in which he professes his attraction for that employee and holds out opportunities for the employee to serve in specific executive positions over which he exercises total control,” the report says.

Watt, a Democrat, spent 21 years in Congress before taking over leadership of FHFA under President Barack Obama. The agency oversees two housing giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Watt and his attorney couldn’t be immediately be reached for comment.

Watt has denied the allegations and told investigators that “this is in a sense a wake up call, it’s a depressing wake up call,” particularly since men at the agency had stayed at his home in Charlotte and maintained a closer relationship with him than Grimes. “In my view, it’s time for me to ride off into the sunset because the standards have become so confused that it’s difficult to operate in them,” he said, according to a transcript of his interview with investigators.

Grimes said in an emailed statement to The Post that she was satisfied with the results of the IG report. “Standing up for myself ... has not been an easy thing to do,” Grimes said. “I hope all of this will make future complaints against high powered officials easier for the next employee (male or female) that finds themselves in a similar position.”

Grimes dismissed Watt’s explanation that he was attempting to mentor her as “clearly false.”

Employees should not “have to tell their boss more than once that they do not want a relationship with them other than professional, should not have to hear persistent references of attraction to their physical appearances, or be made to meet in compromising locations to discuss receiving equal pay owed under the law,” she said.

Grimes, 44, filed a federal complaint last year, alleging that Watt blocked her from receiving a promised raise and promotion when she rejected his advances. Over more than two years, Watt repeatedly asked Grimes to meet him outside the office, including inviting her to his vacation home in North Carolina, restaurants, the jazz club Blues Alley and his home, she has said.

Watt acknowledged the meetings, but disputed their significance. “I’ve done nothing with [Grimes] that I believe is improper,” he told investigators. “Ms. Grimes knows in her heart that there was no effort to pursue any kind of romantic relationship with her.”

But the report lays out several instances in which Watt told Grimes she was “gorgeous” and that he was “guilty” of having an attraction to her. He explained to investigators that he had called other people gorgeous and that it reflected a “friendship attraction.” But no other women Watt mentored had come to his D.C. apartment, investigators noted.

In an exchange with investigators, Watt stumbled as he attempted to justify his out-of-office meetings with Grimes. “So you have this conversation where you talk to her about the chief of staff position and other positions alone with her in your apartment with soft music in the background, and then tell her that she’s gorgeous, you’re attracted to her, and you can draw the line. I don’t get it,” the investigator said.

“Look, look, look, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Watt responded. Later he said, Grimes walked in while the music was playing. “What am going to do? Cut the music off and have a conversation with her.”

Mentoring employees has “gotten more and more difficult over the years,” Watt said, “which is one reason I’m glad my term as a supervisor of anybody is about to end because it’s gotten more and more difficult to mentor people.”

Watt also told investigators “he did not have a romantic attraction to” Grimes. Rather, he was concerned that she was attracted to him. Grimes often visited his office, and “the odd times at which the visits started to occur raised [his] suspicion that [Grimes] could be developing an attract to [him] that would be inappropriate,” the report says.

Watt suggested they meet outside of the office and after work to eliminate his suspicions about Grimes’s intentions, he told investigators. On the way to a D.C. restaurant, Rosa Mexicano, Watt told Grimes that there was an attraction between them that needed to explored, but only to ascertain her reaction, he said.

“Given the Director’s stated concerns about the interests of [Grimes], the Director should have been especially scrupulous about conducting meetings with [Grimes] in FHFA’s offices,” the report says.

“Instead, by his own admission, he treated [Grimes] differently from other female mentees. A reasonable conclusion is that he did so because he was seeking an inappropriate relationship with her,” the report says.

Both Grimes and Watt were subpoenaed as part of the investigation and 20 other witnesses were interviewed. In addition to being sent to the White House, the results were referred to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Bring back our #ChildHoodDiseases,’ White House official’s wife says as she criticizes vaccines"

Spoiler

Darla Shine, the outspoken wife of White House communications director Bill Shine, has been tweeting about childhood diseases, claiming that illnesses such as measles, mumps and chickenpox “keep you healthy & fight cancer.” Health experts warn that the claim is not true and adds to misinformation that could cause harm.

Darla Shine, who has been known to tweet out stories with anti-vaccination claims, wrote Wednesday on Twitter that “The entire Baby Boom population alive today had the #Measles as kids."

She added: “I had the #Measles #Mumps #ChickenPox as a child and so did every kid I knew — Sadly my kids had #MMR so they will never have the life long natural immunity I have. Come breathe on me!”

Shine’s Twitter account has not been verified, but it notes that she is the wife of Bill Shine, “assistant to #POTUS.” The White House declined to comment about the tweets.

Shine’s tweets made the rounds as a grim report emerged from Madagascar: More than 900 children and young adults have died from measles over the past four months, Reuters reported.

The numbers came from the World Health Organization, which said Thursday that measles cases around the world almost doubled between 2017 and 2018 “amid rising severe and protracted outbreaks all over the planet, in poor and rich countries alike.”

In its announcement, WHO also addressed the myth that the measles vaccine has been linked to autism.

Katherine O’Brien, director of immunization, vaccines and biologicals at WHO, said in the bulletin that the myth, which stems from a study based on “erroneous data,” has been debunked.

Len Lichtenfeld, interim medical director of the American Cancer Society, told The Washington Post on Thursday there is no evidence that contracting measles makes a person healthier later in life or helps prevent cancer.

In addition, Lichtenfeld said, “It’s easy to forget the disease burden that came with measles when we were young.

“It is a real illness with real consequences,” he said. “Fortunately, for most people, those consequences were not serious, but it is an infection, and it can cause life-threatening events. It can cause pneumonia, and it can cause meningitis. Fortunately, those complications are rare but do occur — and children did die as a result of measles infections.

“I think over time, it becomes part of our past, and it tends to become less relevant and less important as we move along in time, and we forget how serious a problem it was for those who grew up in that generation.”

Researchers are increasingly concerned about a potentially deadly neurological disorder that can develop as a delayed complication of measles after the virus has been dormant in people’s bodies for numerous years.

Measles is highly contagious.

Before the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, most children did contract the illness — an estimated 3 million to 4 million patients each year in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of those, 48,000 were hospitalized, 400 to 500 died and 1,000 others suffered from a severe complication known as encephalitis, a condition in which the brain swells because of an infection.

In 2000 — almost four decades after parents began vaccinating their children — measles was declared eliminated in the United States.

CDC data shows that from 2000 to 2018, there was an average of 140 measles cases per year in the United States. And there were three reported fatalities during that time — one in 2002, one in 2003 and one in 2015.

But there have been numerous outbreaks in recent years, amid an anti-vaccine movement that has been sustained, in part, by fraudulent research from 1998 that purported to show a link between a preservative used in vaccines and autism. In the measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest, where anti-vaccine groups have long been active, nearly 60 cases have been reported in Washington and Oregon.

Numerous studies have provided conclusive evidence that vaccinations do not cause autism.

WHO recently named “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the “Ten threats to global health in 2019”:

The reasons why people choose not to vaccinate are complex; a vaccines advisory group to WHO identified complacency, inconvenience in accessing vaccines, and lack of confidence are key reasons underlying hesitancy. Health workers, especially those in communities, remain the most trusted advisor and influencer of vaccination decisions, and they must be supported to provide trusted, credible information on vaccines.

Amid backlash, Shine said on Twitter on Wednesday that she’s “Not sure why what I tweet is so interesting, I’m not a politician, I have no influence.”

Shine shared a CNN article about how doctors at the Mayo Clinic had given a cancer patient “a highly concentrated, lab-engineered measles virus similar to the measles vaccine,” and then the patient went into remission.

Lichtenfeld, with the American Cancer Society, said that the measles virus alone is not being used to treat cancer but, rather, a version that has been manipulated to specifically invade certain cancer cells.

“It’s far different in any way, shape or form from giving patients an illness in order to try to treat a cancer,” he said. “That is simply not what we do.

“Measles doesn’t protect us from cancer. Chickenpox doesn’t protect us from cancer,” Lichtenfeld added. “These are diseases that kill. These are diseases that used to affect millions upon millions of people, and it’s very easy to forget the lives that were lost or the lives that were impacted significantly as a result of the measles epidemic, because we tend for forget. We didn’t live through or we don’t remember it, or we weren’t aware of it. Let me assure you, it was a very serious disease, and we don’t need to see it come back.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Heather Nauert withdraws from consideration as UN ambassador"

Spoiler

(CNN)State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday she has withdrawn from consideration as UN ambassador.

President Donald Trump had previously announced he was picking Nauert, but the formal nomination had not been sent to the Senate.

"I am grateful to President Trump and Secretary Pompeo for the trust they placed in me for considering me for the position of US Ambassador to the United Nations. However, the past two months have been grueling for my family and therefore it is in the best interest of my family that I withdraw my name from consideration. Serving in the Administration for the past two years has been one of the highest honors of my life and I will always be grateful to the President, the Secretary, and my colleagues at the State Department for their support," Nauert said in a statement from the State Department.

The State Department said Trump will make an announcement about a new nominee soon.

Hmm. They already scraped the bottom of the barrel with her nomination, I shudder to think who Dumpy will nominate next.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Heather Nauert withdraws from consideration as UN ambassador"

  Reveal hidden contents

(CNN)State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday she has withdrawn from consideration as UN ambassador.

President Donald Trump had previously announced he was picking Nauert, but the formal nomination had not been sent to the Senate.

"I am grateful to President Trump and Secretary Pompeo for the trust they placed in me for considering me for the position of US Ambassador to the United Nations. However, the past two months have been grueling for my family and therefore it is in the best interest of my family that I withdraw my name from consideration. Serving in the Administration for the past two years has been one of the highest honors of my life and I will always be grateful to the President, the Secretary, and my colleagues at the State Department for their support," Nauert said in a statement from the State Department.

The State Department said Trump will make an announcement about a new nominee soon.

Hmm. They already scraped the bottom of the barrel with her nomination, I shudder to think who Dumpy will nominate next.

I was just coming here to post this having read in on wtop.com. When I first saw her pic I thought oh fuck yet another chick with Fox News hair and lo and behold she was a bubble head on that very network.

Edited February 17, 2019 by onekidanddone

[Howl]

Apparently there was a looming Nannygate issue, and maybe Heather realized she was in over her head and the job involved a lot of W-O-R-K,  so she wanted to spend more time with her family, which she will if the nanny is deported. 

Is your nanny here legally?

Yes, of course she is, but there's this kinda minor problem with her paperwork. 

[AmazonGrace]

She was a State Dept spox without any background check?

[Cartmann99]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I shudder to think who Dumpy will nominate next

 Tomi Lahren? Judge Jeanine? Kaitlin Bennett?

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Tomi Lahren? Judge Jeanine? Kaitlin Bennett?

Princess Treason

[AmazonGrace]

Trump needs sycophants 

 

[Howl]

What's going on with Coats? Is he caught in the slowly tightening Trump loyalty vise?  Does Trump think that Coats might be weakening and getting ready to release damning information? 

I posted this item from EmptyWheel.net in another thread, but worth a look: 

DAN COATS STILL REFUSING TO PROVIDE THE EVIDENCE THAT RUSSIA DIDN’T AFFECT THE ELECTION

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course he did 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course they did 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

We all knew it already. Still good to see it confirmed by a court of law.

 

[formergothardite]

From that link

Quote

He gave the government and victims 15 days to confer with each other to come up with a resolution. It’s unclear what that resolution would be.

Edwards conceded that Epstein’s sentence isn’t likely to be overturned. He was released in 2009.

But victims’ rights advocates say that other charges can still be brought against Epstein if more victims come forward in other jurisdictions. There has been no statute of limitations for sex trafficking since 2002

Sadly I think he and all the men who participated in his sex trafficking ring will probably get away with it. IMO the men are just too powerful and there are going to be a lot of strings pulled to protect them. 

[AmazonGrace]

Because of course they did

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump administration bars clinics that provide abortions or abortion referrals from federal funding"

Spoiler

The Trump administration took aim at Planned Parenthood Friday, issuing a rule barring groups that provide abortions or abortion referrals from participating in the $286 million federal family planning program — a move expected to redirect millions from the women’s health provider to faith-based groups.

Under the long-expected change, federally funded family planning clinics can no longer refer a patient for abortion and must maintain a “clear physical and financial separation” between services funded by the government and any organization that provides abortions or abortion referrals. Groups receiving money under the Title X program, which serves an estimated four million low-income women, were already prohibited from performing abortions with those funds.

The changes, which opponents vowed to challenge, were celebrated by social conservatives who oppose abortion and helped elect Trump. Health and Human Services Department officials have said they were necessary to ensure transparency and the legal and ethical use of taxpayer funds.

The move represents “decisive action to disentangle taxpayers from the big abortion industry led by Planned Parenthood,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group, said in a statement.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said Planned Parenthood and other abortion centers now have to choose between shuttering their abortion services and moving them if they want to continue to receive federal funds. “Either way, this will loosen the group’s hold on tens of millions of tax dollars,” he said.

Critics, including 15 governors and the American Medical Association, decried the change as a “gag rule” that would undermine the physician-patient relationship and threatened legal action to block it from taking effect. They have also described it as an indirect way to defund Planned Parenthood, which has long been a target of antiabortion activists as the nation’s largest provider of reproductive care services, including abortions.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) tweeted that the new rule is “dangerous & unnecessary,” putting millions of Americans at risk, and that the state would take legal action.

Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen called the rule “unconscionable and unethical.”

“Imagine if the Trump administration prevented doctors from talking to our patients with diabetes about insulin,” she said. “It would never happen. Reproductive health care should be no different."

Wen has said the group could not accept funds under the rule because it would compromise its ethical obligations to patients. The provider serves about 41 percent of Title X patients and receives about $60 million from the program.

The new rule is part of a broader effort by the administration’s social conservatives to reshape how the federal government treats a range of culture-war issues, including family planning, abortion and LGBTQ rights.

HHS has previously issued rules that allow employers to deny insurance coverage of birth control on religious or moral grounds. It had sought to emphasize abstinence in grant rules for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, although it later reversed course. And it is seeking to allow faith-based foster-care and adoption providers who reject gay or non-Christian couples to continue getting federal funds.

The family planning rule published Friday is expected to result in a dramatic change in the type of information the women participating in Title X programs receive. Some of the faith-based groups advocate “fertility awareness,” which involves using ovulation predictors and calendars, and abstinence as methods of preventing pregnancy. Last year, HHS issued a funding opportunity announcement for Title X that elevates natural family planning and abstinence counseling as program priorities.

The new rule also eliminates a 2000 requirement that clinics provide “non-directive” pregnancy counseling, which might include information on abortion. HHS said that mandate is “inconsistent with federal conscience laws.”

Critics also took issue with a provision that seeks to “encourage appropriate family participation in family planning decisions,” which Carrie Flaxman, deputy director of public policy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a conference call with reporters is “dangerous” because it might discourage some adolescents from seeking appropriate care.

Democratic members of Congress last week objected to what they have called an “unconventional and nontransparent” review process for the rule and called on the Office of Management and Budget to send it back to HHS for more analysis. In a Feb. 15 letter, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.) and Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Maggie Hassan (N.H.) called out HHS for taking numerous shortcuts.

Among other concerns, they said, there was no advanced public notice and no early outreach to groups that participate in the program. Their letter pointed out that HHS had failed to provide an adequate cost-benefit analysis or to account for the rule’s negative health impacts on the poor women the program serves. And it noted that “numerous major medical associations, 15 governors, 200 members of Congress, more than 20 state and local health departments, and more than 500,000 members of the public submitted comments opposing the rule on constitutional, legal, ethical, and policy grounds.”

The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center that supports abortion rights, said it expects lawsuits seeking to stop the law’s implementation before it even goes into effect. Senior policy manager Kinsey Hasstedt accused the administration of seeking to “subvert this long-standing and critical program to appease social conservatives and further their ideological agenda.”

The rule takes effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register. However, clinics will have 120 days to comply with the requirement that family planning and abortion services are kept financially separated and a year to comply with the physical separation requirement.

The rule, which was announced in May, was modeled after requirements adopted under President Ronald Reagan but never enforced.

The Trump regulation does allow for a limited exception to the referral ban. If a pregnant patient has decided to have an abortion and makes an explicit request for a referral, a physician would be allowed to provide a list of comprehensive care providers as long as she or he does not indicate which of them offer abortion services.

Referrals for abortion for emergency care, such as if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy — in which the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus and threaten her life — are also allowed.

The administration implemented a similar rule — nicknamed the “Mexico City gag rule” — for grantees of U.S. foreign aid that prevents organizations that get those funds from referring, providing or discussing abortion with patients.

 

[smittykins]

So now we’re back to “we don’t consider abortion to be a form of family planning”?

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s new nominee for U.N. ambassador will be a laughingstock"

Spoiler

Next to the secretary of state, there is no more distinguished diplomatic post than the permanent representative to the United Nations. Its occupants have included former senators (Henry Cabot Lodge, John Danforth), former House members (Andrew Young, Bill Richardson), former governors (Adlai Stevenson, William Scranton), a former Supreme Court justice (Arthur Goldberg), noted scholars (Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power), storied diplomats (Thomas Pickering, Richard Holbrooke, John Negroponte, Zalmay Khalilzad, et al.) — and even a future president (George H.W. Bush).

President Trump’s first U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, fit comfortably in that eminent circle: She was a former governor who has been talked about as a possible presidential contender, and she acquitted herself admirably at the United Nations.

The first person appointed to replace her — Heather Nauert — was not remotely in the same league. Her chief qualification was that she had been a co-host of Trump’s favorite TV show, “Fox & Friends.” Her only experience in foreign policy was serving for less than a year and a half as the State Department spokesperson, where her only memorable utterance was one she would rather forget. Trying to “reaffirm the strength of our relationship with Germany,” she cited the fact that, why, the next day was the anniversary of D-Day. At least she didn’t cite Pearl Harbor or Hiroshima to affirm American friendship with Japan.

Queasiness about Nauert’s lack of qualifications, even in a Republican-controlled Senate, torpedoed her nomination as much as her illegal nanny problem. But her replacement doesn’t inspire confidence.

Kelly Knight Craft was chosen to be U.S. ambassador to Canada, and now to the United Nations, because she and her third husband, the billionaire coal baron Joe Craft, are mega MAGA-donors. According to The Post, they gave “about $1.5 million to GOP candidates in 2016, including $270,800 to Trump’s campaign committee or his joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee.” Perhaps just as important from this president’s perspective, they are also “repeat, high-paying customers at Trump’s hotel in Washington.” Craft’s other recommendation is that, as a Kentucky native, she is a supporter of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and is said to be friends with McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Those are the typical qualifications to be appointed the U.S. envoy to some prosperous and placid country where the ambassador’s role is primarily social. No president before Trump has ever treated the U.N. ambassadorship as a plum to be handed out to a campaign donor.

What is there to be said in Craft’s defense? Well, she was an alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly under President George W. Bush — an honorary position that was another reward for campaign cash. The best that Reuters could muster from an anonymous source was that “she was seen as a tough negotiator in a new U.S. trade deal with Canada and Mexico and as ambassador to Canada established decent working relationships with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.” Plus, no war with Canada broke out on her watch. So there’s that.

But the only thing Craft said that anyone will remember is even more embarrassing than Nauert’s D-Day comment. This is her stance on climate change: “I believe there are scientists on both sides that are accurate. … I appreciate and respect both sides of the science.” This was widely and rightly ridiculed because, while there is a debate about what to do about global warming, there is no legitimate debate about whether global warming is real. There is a scientific consensus on the subject — one that Craft is either ignorant of or simply denies. According to the New York Times, her electronic signature has even included: “Sent by my coal powered iPad.”

If confirmed, Craft will arrive at the United Nations as a laughingstock — just like her boss. It’s hard to escape the suspicion that this is precisely what Trump intends: He is showing his contempt for the United Nations, and indeed the world, by appointing an ambassador who is singularly unqualified for the position.

More than that, Trump is showing what kind of people he wants to surround himself with. The “Axis of Adults” who dared to stand up to Trump — economic adviser Gary Cohn, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — is long gone. The adults have been replaced by yes men such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton, economic adviser Larry Kudlow and acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan. One of the few holdovers who still dares to speak truth to power — Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats — has incurred Trump’s wrath and is said to be on his way out.

Trump wants to be surrounded by lickspittles and nonentities whose chief qualification is that they will cater to his insatiable ego. Is there any doubt that Kelly Knight Craft would happily join in the North Korean-level praise that Trump expects of his Cabinet? Only she won’t get the chance, since the U.N. ambassador is being downgraded from Cabinet rank. That is entirely fitting, because under Trump, America is being downgraded in the eyes of the world.