Executive Departments 3

[GreyhoundFan]

"EPA regulator skirts the line between former clients and current job"

Spoiler

Less than a month into his tenure as the top air policy official at the Environmental Protection Agency, Bill Wehrum hopped into the EPA’s electric Chevy Volt and rode to the Pennsylvania Avenue offices of his former law firm.

There, he met with representatives of the nation’s largest power companies — including two groups that, shortly before, had been his paying clients — to brief them on the Trump administration’s plans to weaken federal environmental regulations.

The Dec. 7, 2017, meeting is just one example of interactions between Wehrum, a skilled lawyer and regulator, and former clients that ethics experts say comes dangerously close to violating federal ethics rules. Since joining the EPA in November 2017, Wehrum acknowledges that he has met with two former clients at his old firm — without consulting in advance with ethics officials, even though they had cautioned him about such interactions. He also weighed in on a policy shift that could have influenced litigation involving DTE Energy, a Detroit-based utility represented by his former firm.

Late last week, three Democrats — Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Thomas R. Carper (Del.) — asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General to investigate Wehrum’s conduct, saying it runs afoul of rules requiring federal appointees to recuse themselves from most matters involving former clients and employers for two years.

“There’s a plain and flagrant violation of the ethics rules,” Whitehouse said in an interview. “It’s hard to overlook in an agency that’s absolutely riddled with industry operatives that appear to be putting a thumb, wrist, forearm and elbow on the scale for the industry patrons they service.”

In an interview, Wehrum defended his conduct, saying he has followed the letter of the law on ethical matters.

“I have, from day one, tried to be absolutely strict and assiduous as to what I do about complying with my ethical obligations,” Wehrum said. “Because it doesn’t do me any good, and it doesn’t do the agency any good, to be doing things that people see as unethical.”

President Trump has tapped dozens of former industry lobbyists to fill senior roles in various agencies whose work affects their former clients, federal records show. That list includes more than a dozen EPA appointees, including the president’s nominee to head the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist.

Under Wheeler and his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, the EPA has moved aggressively to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations criticized as onerous by industry leaders — a mission in which Wehrum has played a crucial role.

To avoid conflicts of interest, Trump asks appointees to sign an ethics pledge that requires them to recuse themselves from specific matters involving their former employers and clients for two years. If an appointee does meet with a former client, the pledge, part of a 2017 executive order, says the session should be open to all interested parties — a dictum that has been interpreted to mean four other participants who were not clients.

Wehrum said he is still unclear about exactly what sort of meetings are permissible under the Trump pledge. However, he said he has concluded that his meetings comply so long as five different entities participate. And, he said, it does not matter how many of those entities are former clients.

“It’s enormously important to me to understand — as it relates to how folks in industry are potentially affected by what we’re doing — who I can talk to, who I can be dealing with, and who I can’t,” he said.

Wehrum’s former law firm, Hunton Andrews Kurth, is one of the nation’s premier challengers of federal air and water pollution standards. Its website notes that its clients “include most major industrial groups that are affected by air quality regulations” and says it raises “frequent” court challenges to EPA regulations. The firm declined requests for comment.

A trained chemical engineer who earned his law degree at night while working for a company in Delaware, Wehrum, 55, led the EPA’s air and radiation office on an acting basis under President George W. Bush until Democrats blocked his nomination.

He joined Hunton as a partner in 2007 and spent the next decade representing utilities, petrochemical manufacturers and trade groups. In his last year at the firm, he reported income of $2.15 million. At the EPA, his salary is $164,200.

Among Wehrum’s clients was the Utility Air Regulatory Group, a coalition of power companies that use coal. The organization lacks corporate forms and does not have a physical office separate from the law firm.

Just months before joining the EPA, in May 2017, Wehrum invited then-EPA official Mandy Gunasekara to brief the group “on any Clean Air Act regulatory issue that you are willing and able to address,” according to emails released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Sierra Club, an advocacy group. The email was first reported by Politico. And in June, according to a document first obtained by Politico, Wehrum convened the Utility Air Regulatory Group for a meeting where he and his colleagues requested $8.2 million for work related to the EPA.

Soon after joining the EPA, Wehrum spoke at an event on Dec. 7, 2017, organized by his former law partner, Makram Jaber, on behalf of the group; the event was first reported by the New York Times. In an interview, Wehrum said he asked Jaber to include Duke Energy, another former client, and three other utilities — all among the Utility Air Regulatory Group’s most generous backers — so the event would comply with his interpretation of Trump’s ethics pledge.

Wehrum said that he did not run the meeting by ethics officials because he thought he knew what the rules were, and did not see it as a potential business development opportunity for Hunton.

That same week, Wehrum participated in an agency decision that appeared to benefit his former law firm.

On Dec. 7, 2017, Pruitt, then the EPA chief, signed a memo saying the agency would not be “second guessing” companies’ projections about how much their expanded operations might increase pollution.

The memo’s timing was fortuitous for Hunton because it came on the eve of a critical Supreme Court hearing in a case against DTE Energy. In 2010, Obama’s EPA had accused DTE of excluding pollution that would result from its expansion of a Michigan coal plant when it calculated whether it needed to apply for a federal permit.

The timing was no coincidence. In a Dec. 4, 2017, email to other top EPA officials, Gunasekara said the memo had to be finalized before the court met on Dec. 8.

“The cert hearing is planned for Wednesday,” she wrote in reference to the court’s review of the DTE case. “The memo needs to go out before.”

Hours before the justices conferred on the case, Hunton hand-delivered Pruitt’s memo to the Supreme Court. After the high court declined to take up the case, the matter entered settlement talks, and DTE’s hand has been strengthened.

Though Wehrum was prohibited by ethics rules from engaging in any matter regarding the DTE lawsuit, he acknowledges reviewing the Pruitt memo in advance and discussing it with EPA colleagues in a meeting on Dec. 5, 2017.

He said the EPA’s Office of General Counsel cleared him to hold the meeting to explain the intent of 2002 air rules he helped write during the George W. Bush administration — rules that were key to the DTE dispute.

“I looked at that document, and then I sat in one meeting where we talked about the meaning of the 2002 rules,” Wehrum said. “That was it, that was my involvement.”

However, two people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the discussion ranged beyond the 2002 rules, covering such topics as the memo’s potential impact on future EPA enforcement activities and the need to issue it before the Supreme Court conference on the DTE case.

John Walke, who directs the clean-air project at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, blasted Wehrum’s involvement in drafting the memo.

“EPA was winning against DTE Energy, which is what makes these revelations so damning,” Walke said. “It was an abuse for him to facilitate amnesty for his former law firm’s client in a pending enforcement case.”

Don Fox, who served as general counsel and later acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration, agreed Wehrum’s conduct raises “significant” ethical issues.

Both his meetings with former clients and his involvement with the Pruitt memo are “highly problematic,” Fox said. “It would seem to me to be a misuse of position.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The reality show administration: "How a HUD official turned the Michael Cohen hearing into a reality TV audition"

Spoiler

Her cameo appearance at the Michael Cohen hearing — a bit of stagecraft intended to dispel accusations of racism against President Trump — provoked an instant backlash from black politicians and the public.

But Lynne Patton, a longtime Trump family aide turned federal housing bureaucrat, has long reveled in the limelight and has asked permission to star in a reality-TV show while serving as a HUD official.

In an Oct. 18, 2018, memo to officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Patton sought ethical and legal guidance on potentially participating in a “docuseries” about black Republicans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Among the 10 questions Patton asked:

Would HUD object to her attending events or non-HUD-related meetings at the White House if she took a two-month unpaid leave of absence for filming?

Would she be allowed to refer to herself as a current member of the Trump administration?

Would she be permitted to attend Trump 2020 campaign rallies? And, if so, who would be allowed to cover her travel expenses?

And would she be permitted to have dinner with HUD Secretary Ben Carson or his family during their personal time? What about the Trump family? Or other high-ranking officials like Kellyanne Conway?

The show, by the producers of “The Real Housewives of Potomac” and “Shahs of Sunset,” would center on a group of powerful black women such as Patton, Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson and conservative commentator Candace Owens.

“We would like to follow their day-to-day, capturing who they are at home, at work, and above all, understanding their political views and their strong sisterhood,” read a pitch from Truly Original, the New York-based production company specializing in unscripted content.

Patton told The Post that the show’s concept had piqued her interest because producers had compared it to Showtime’s “The Circus,” a documentary series about Trump-era politics — “not as a table-flipping reality show.”

“Black Republicans are not an anomaly. Not only do we suffer the same societal hurdles that face any black man or black woman every single day, we also have the additional albatross of being conservative,” Patton said. “Nothing proves this point more than the partisan reaction to my committee appearance this week. God forbid a black Republican is in the room based upon her own merit and can think for herself. But it’s a scarlet letter I wear with pride.”

Leslie Oren, spokeswoman for Truly Original, said the show is being conceived as a “serious” documentary series. It is still in development and has yet to be pitched.

“It’s a deep look into a faction of African Americans who happen to be Republican — their point of view and why they chose to take a position that is not typically the majority position politically,” Oren said.

Patton noted in her memo to HUD officials that Truly Original Productions initially approached her in December 2016, before her federal employment, to play a primary role in a prime-time series for Netflix, HBO, Bravo, Hulu or Lifetime.

“In the interest of public service to the President of the United States, I declined,” Patton wrote in the memo.

The production company approached her again in 2018, when she floated the reality-show concept to HUD officials.

Patton’s request was denied on ethical grounds, according to two people at HUD familiar with the decision who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Patton disputed that characterization, saying agency officials told her the decision was hers to make after outlining strict parameters limiting how much money she could earn.

She said HUD also would not allow her to be filmed at work, because it could violate equal-airtime rules surrounding campaigns since Trump had already declared his 2020 candidacy.

In her memo, Patton asked whether she would continue to be subject to government regulations if she took an unpaid leave of absence. She even proposed temporarily resigning her HUD post when filming was expected to begin in the summer of 2019 and asked whether she could legally be rehired after two months.

The agency told her that the scenarios she presented would not work.

Patton said HUD officials had previously informed her in a meeting that federal employees are allowed to make a secondary income as long as it does not exceed $28,000 a year and is not in an industry related to their government job.

Given that she was told by industry insiders that she could command as much as $40,000 per episode in the inaugural eight-episode season, she decided not to pursue the opportunity while at HUD.

“I love my job. My sole priority are the residents of New York and New Jersey, especially the residents” of the New York City Housing Authority, Patton said. “This is not about money. I could make 10 times the amount writing a book about a fraction of what I know. This is about me honoring my commitment to the American people. If the producers are truly interested, they’ll figure out a way to make it work without me having to compromise my own principled mission.”

Even so, it appears as though Patton, who landed a $160,000 a year job overseeing HUD’s New York and New Jersey region after serving as the Trump campaign’s senior adviser on minority engagement, has been on a never-ending audition.

She moved into New York City public housing in February to highlight the deplorable living conditions — Rats! Black mold! Getting trapped in an elevator! — that prompted a conference call with the president himself. But Patton said she had to suspend her month-long stay to be in Washington this week for mandatory HUD meetings.

Over the objections of some HUD officials, Patton skipped the final day of meetings for regional administrators, taking unpaid leave Wednesday to pop up behind a Republican congressman as he grilled Trump’s former fixer on his characterization of the president as a racist.

Her surprise appearance at the hearing — she stood for less than a minute as Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) recounted Patton’s previous statements that she would never work for anyone who was racist — was panned by critics who said she had allowed herself to be used as a prop.

Patton hit back Thursday by appearing on the president’s favorite morning show, “Fox & Friends,” promoting “MY SIDE of the story” with the hashtags #AMustWatch, #NoHoldsBarred and #TheRealStory on Instagram.

“I was not there to represent an entire race of people. I was there to represent one man,” Patton said on the show, emphatically pointing her finger in the air.

She highlighted her résumé as a “black female who is highly educated, rose up through the ranks of one of the most competitive companies in real estate, spoke before 25 million people at the Republican National Convention and now works at one of the most historic administrations in history.”

Cohen said Wednesday that he had helped Patton get her job at the Trump Organization as well as at HUD. The two were “virtually inseparable,” Patton posted on Instagram this week, beneath an old photo of them dining in Trump Tower.

Patton began working for Trump’s son Eric in 2009 as the vice president of his foundation and as his primary aide before being promoted in 2012 to be the senior aide for all the Trump children, according to the résumé she submitted to HUD.

Her June 2017 promotion at HUD from a Carson senior adviser to regional administrator overseeing the nation’s largest housing authority stirred controversy because of her lack of housing expertise and accusations that she had embellished her résumé.

At HUD, Patton has the reputation of being uncontrollable — and untouchable, given her close ties to the Trumps. The Post previously reported on emails showing how she tried to get a colleague fired by citing her friendship with Eric Trump.

Her silent role at the Cohen hearing has further elevated her profile, bringing intense media scrutiny as well as opportunity.

Darryl Madden, spokesman for HUD’s Office of Inspector General, told The Post on Thursday that the office has referred Patton’s appearance at the hearing to the Office of Special Counsel for additional review.

Patton appears to relish being in the crosshairs, even as late night comedy fodder. She gave an appreciative nod on Facebook to “partisan comedian Trevor Noah,” host of “The Daily Show,” who joked after the hearing that the Trump family seemed to have a “bat signal” for Patton because “whenever the Trumps are accused of racism, they always bring the same woman … like if you can only bring one black person every time, something tells me you don’t have black friends.”

On Thursday night, she appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show. Friday, she’s set to appear before Fox News host Sean Hannity. Saturday, it’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”

On Monday, Patton is slated to resume regularly scheduled programming: moving in with her third volunteer family living in New York public housing, this time in Queens, where Amazon was supposed to build a second headquarters.

And just as she has done during her week-long stays in housing complexes in the Bronx and the Upper West Side, Patton will tour the distressed apartments, documented in her own video blog — and the media she has invited to tag along.

 

[Howl]

Boom, Whitaker has left DoJ; his job there was done apparently.  Nobody knows what he's up to next! 

Matt Whitaker Has Left The Justice Department

No implication that he was forced out, but ya never know.  He did his assigned tasks and now he's no longer really of use to the Republicans; maybe the Democrats have some questions about his testimony. 

 

[fraurosena]

15 hours ago, Howl said:

maybe the Democrats have some questions about his testimony

This isn't a maybe. According to Jerry Nadler on TRMS last night, Whittaker has already agreed to appear before the committee a second time, and Nadler has some choice questions about the presidunce pressuring him, which would amount to obstruction of justice. It wouldn't surprise me if Whittaker left the DOJ like a rat leaving a sinking ship (the ship being supporters of the presidunce, not the DOJ itself) and will spill the beans to Nadler and his committee. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 Local racists , misogynists and Nazis hate this journalist too so this decision makes a lot of sense.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Wilbur Ross broke law, violated Constitution in census decision, judge rules"

Spoiler

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

In finding a breach of the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires a census every 10 years to determine each state’s representation in Congress, the 126-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco went further than a similar decision on Jan. 15 by Judge Jesse Furman in New York.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to review Furman’s narrower decision, with arguments set for April 23, but may now need to expand its inquiry to constitutional dimensions.

The Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The administration has been on the losing end of scores of court decisions involving immigration issues since President Trump took office. But the census case has taken on special significance because it strikes at the heart of the United States’ form of government and because of what Seeborg described as a “strong showing of bad faith” by a Cabinet secretary who, influenced in part by White House advisers, tried to conceal his motives.

The cases against Ross have been brought by jurisdictions with significant immigrant populations. Only two have completed trials, the case heard by Furman and brought by 18 states led by New York, and today’s challenge, initiated by the state of California and combined with a suit brought by the city of San Jose.

Unable to find any expert in the Census Bureau who approved of his plan to add the citizenship question, Seeborg wrote, Ross engaged in a “cynical search to find some reason, any reason” to justify the decision.

He was fully aware that the question would produce a census undercount, particularly among Latinos, the judge said.

That would have probably reduced the representation in Congress — and thus in the electoral college that decides the presidency — of states with significant immigrant populations, notably California.

Because census data is used to apportion distribution of federal funds, an undercount would also have cheated these same jurisdictions, the judge said.

Seeborg, like Furman, found after a trial that Ross misrepresented both to the public and Congress his reasons for adding the citizenship question last March. Ross claimed he was acting at the request of the Justice Department in the interest of enforcing the Voting Rights Act.

In reality, the “evidence establishes” that the voting rights explanation was just “a pretext” and that Ross “acted in bad faith” when he claimed otherwise.

He pursued the citizenship question after hearing from then-White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Kris Kobach, the vice chair of Trump’s now-disbanded voting fraud commission.

Apart from violating the Constitution, Seeborg ruled, the Commerce Department breached the Administrative Procedure Act by acting “arbitrarily and capriciously” and violated Census Act restrictions on modifying questions.

 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Wilbur Ross broke law, violated Constitution in census decision, judge rules"

  Hide contents

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

In finding a breach of the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires a census every 10 years to determine each state’s representation in Congress, the 126-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco went further than a similar decision on Jan. 15 by Judge Jesse Furman in New York.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to review Furman’s narrower decision, with arguments set for April 23, but may now need to expand its inquiry to constitutional dimensions.

The Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The administration has been on the losing end of scores of court decisions involving immigration issues since President Trump took office. But the census case has taken on special significance because it strikes at the heart of the United States’ form of government and because of what Seeborg described as a “strong showing of bad faith” by a Cabinet secretary who, influenced in part by White House advisers, tried to conceal his motives.

The cases against Ross have been brought by jurisdictions with significant immigrant populations. Only two have completed trials, the case heard by Furman and brought by 18 states led by New York, and today’s challenge, initiated by the state of California and combined with a suit brought by the city of San Jose.

Unable to find any expert in the Census Bureau who approved of his plan to add the citizenship question, Seeborg wrote, Ross engaged in a “cynical search to find some reason, any reason” to justify the decision.

He was fully aware that the question would produce a census undercount, particularly among Latinos, the judge said.

That would have probably reduced the representation in Congress — and thus in the electoral college that decides the presidency — of states with significant immigrant populations, notably California.

Because census data is used to apportion distribution of federal funds, an undercount would also have cheated these same jurisdictions, the judge said.

Seeborg, like Furman, found after a trial that Ross misrepresented both to the public and Congress his reasons for adding the citizenship question last March. Ross claimed he was acting at the request of the Justice Department in the interest of enforcing the Voting Rights Act.

In reality, the “evidence establishes” that the voting rights explanation was just “a pretext” and that Ross “acted in bad faith” when he claimed otherwise.

He pursued the citizenship question after hearing from then-White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Kris Kobach, the vice chair of Trump’s now-disbanded voting fraud commission.

Apart from violating the Constitution, Seeborg ruled, the Commerce Department breached the Administrative Procedure Act by acting “arbitrarily and capriciously” and violated Census Act restrictions on modifying questions.

 

So why is he still in office? 

Don't answer that. It's because they're all evil corrupt traitors building a kleptocracy Russian style, that's why.

[AmazonGrace]

 

Just wondering if he was able to get a security clearance.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

WTAF? 

She has been mentioned as a potential replacement for Secretary of Defense; maybe that's what this is about? 

ETA: Okay, okay, she's going to resign in May to become president of the University of Texas at El Paso.  It's an odd jump, but surely will be less stressful. 

ETA II: Bingo!  <snip> from Air Force Times Web site: 

Quote

Wilson has been Air Force secretary for about two years, but her tenure has seemed precarious in recent months as she reportedly clashed with White House officials — and now-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan — over President Trump’s plans to create a Space Force. In October, Foreign Policy reported that Trump was planning to fire Wilson after the midterm elections over her perceived slow-rolling of his Space Force order.

And this "The report said Shanahan was particularly angered by Wilson’s Space Force position."

This is a telling sentence. Shanahan was the numbers/project guy from Boing who was Deputy SecDef and became acting SecDef when Mattis left at the end of December.  We now know he's a Trump appeaser.  NEVER A GOOD THING. 

Nobody is excited about becoming SecDef under Trump and numerous people have turned down the nomination.  Trump has implied that he prefers acting cabinet heads because they are more malleable, so maybe Shanahan will just sit there as acting SecDef or (NOT A GOOD THING) become regular SecDef, even though he is completely unqualified.   

Also, Shanahan may see the potential for immense profits and contracts for Boeing in the Space Force initiative, and wants to push it forward for that reason alone.  

Edited March 8, 2019 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

"DeVos allows religious groups to provide taxpayer-funded services in private schools"

Spoiler

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced this week she would no longer enforce a rule that bars religious institutions from providing certain taxpayer-funded services in private schools, saying the restriction ran afoul of a recent high-court decision.

Under the federal education law, private schools are entitled to many of the federally funded services that public schools receive, particularly if they educate children who are from low-income households or who are English-language learners. The rules, called equitable-services provisions, mean that public school districts pay for professional development for private-school teachers, or send members of their own staffs to provide reading help to struggling children who are eligible for extra help.

School districts will often contract with third parties to provide the services. But the rules barred school districts from contracting with religious institutions in these circumstances.

Sister Dale McDonald, director of public policy for the National Catholic Educational Association, said it meant that school districts could not contract with faculty members at religiously affiliated universities, for example, to provide professional development to private-school teachers, even if the services were secular.

DeVos said in an announcement Monday that the prohibition was no longer enforceable because of a 2017 Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that religious organizations could not be excluded from state programs if the organizations have secular intent. The court sided with Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri church that sought to participate in a state program to resurface its playground for its preschoolers.

“The Trinity Lutheran decision reaffirmed the long-understood intent of the First Amendment to not restrict the free exercise of religion,” DeVos said in a news release. “Those seeking to provide high-quality educational services to students and teachers should not be discriminated against simply based on the religious character of their organization.”

While school districts are now open to contract with religious organizations, the services they provide must be “secular, neutral and non-ideological.” The service providers also cannot be affiliated with the private schools they are serving.

DeVos’s announcement received mixed reactions from educators, politicians and advocates.

Andy Smarick, an education researcher and former president of the Maryland State Board of Education, said he expects lawsuits to be filed in response.

“It’s either courageous or provocative, depending on how you look at it,” he said. “It calls into question if this part of the federal law is still valid.”

Democrats are still debating the legality of DeVos’s move.

“House Democrats are carefully reviewing the legality of the administration’s new policy,” said Joshua Weisz, spokesman for the Committee on Education and Labor.

Advocates who closely monitor freedom of speech and religion expressed concerns about the implications of the announcement.

“Betsy DeVos is neither the Supreme Court nor Congress. She does not get to unilaterally declare that a statute is unconstitutional, especially with a provision that is designed to protect church-state separation, a bedrock of our democracy,” said Maggie Garrett, vice president for public policy at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy organization.

Leaders at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit organization that focuses on issues of religious freedom, applauded the policy move.

“Religious organizations should be free to compete to provide goods and services to schools and colleges on a level playing field with everyone else. We commend the Trump administration and the Department of Education for recognizing the unconstitutional nature of the existing ban on religious contractors who are providing secular services,” said Kellie Fiedorek, legal counsel to the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Smarick said that it is unusual for an education secretary to make such a move and that it may suggest a larger policy shift in the Trump administration.

“This is the kind of decision that would have had to go through lawyers, policy debates; it’s a major decision,” he said. “This kind of move doesn’t happen lightly in most administrations.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump wanted his personal pilot to head the FAA. The critical job is still vacant amid Boeing fallout."

Spoiler

As a private citizen, Donald Trump glided through the sky on the trusted wings of his personal pilot, whose job it was to “make sure that everything happens seamlessly behind the scenes for Mr. Trump.”

That’s how easy air travel used to be for the businessman, thanks to John Dunkin, who explained his role in a segment of the “Mighty Planes” series, broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel before Trump’s presidential liftoff in 2016.

“Everything’s good, John?” Trump asked his trim, gray-haired pilot in the segment, whose producers couldn’t have found a more convincing aeronaut if they had handpicked one from “central casting,” as the president likes to say.

“Everything’s perfect, Mr. Trump,” replied Dunkin, whose work with the real estate tycoon dates to 1989.

Now that he occupies the Oval Office and Air Force One, rather than a private jet with enough gold to plate the outside of a Greyhound bus, President Trump is learning that aerospace is not so simple, especially without the aid of a full director of the Federal Aviation Administration, the multibillion-dollar agency responsible for overseeing all civil aviation in the United States. The role has been filled on an acting basis since the five-year term of Michael Huerta, an appointee of President Barack Obama, ended in January 2018.

The president has yet to name a replacement, one year after reportedly pushing for Dunkin to assume the role. The intermingling of a president’s private life with the federal bureaucracy would have been uncommon for the aviation authority. Yet the move would have been in line with Trump’s insistence on personal loyalty, highlighted recently by revelations that he pressured his staff to grant security clearances to his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.

The expertise required of FAA leadership was underscored on Wednesday as American regulators were forced to reverse themselves and ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, following a deadly crash in Ethiopia on Sunday and another several months ago in Indonesia. Earlier in the week, as the rest of the world moved to take the jetliner out of the sky, administration officials resisted bipartisan calls to do the same, insisting that the airplanes exhibited “no systemic performance issues.” New tracking data and evidence from Sunday’s crash revealed parallels to the disaster in Indonesia, causing them to change their minds.

Trump declared the about-face at a previously scheduled immigration event on Wednesday, surprising federal aviation officials who thought the announcement would be entrusted to them, as The Washington Post reported.

In meetings earlier that day, the president had scorned the Boeing 737 Max, saying the jetliners “sucked.” He said he preferred the 757, the model of his private jet, known as Trump Force One.

Dunkin shared Trump’s assessment of the private jet, reportedly purchased for $100 million in 2010. In the Smithsonian segment, the pilot rhapsodized about its virtues, calling it the “Ferrari of airplanes.”

Measuring 155 feet long, with a wing span of 125 feet, it boasts twin Rolls-Royce engines that can propel the plane to 41,000 feet in 20 minutes, Dunkin said. “It takes turbulence very, very well,” he noted. A smooth journey meant that Trump could enjoy watching television on a 57-inch screen. The aircraft also includes two bedrooms and a shower.

“Any man who flies for Donald Trump is no ordinary pilot,” the narrator of the segment proclaimed. “John Dunkin has aviation in his blood.”

His father, who was a military pilot, began teaching Dunkin to fly when he was 15, he said. He learned to steer a plane before he learned to drive. “It’s just something that always fascinated me,” he said.

When he came under consideration for the top FAA job, Dunkin met at least one key criteria, as a Bloomberg News report observed at the time: “loyalty.” Axios reported that Trump had personally recommended Dunkin, who most recently ushered him to campaign events during his bid for the White House.

In the Smithsonian segment, Trump sang his personal pilot’s praises.

“You need somebody with great integrity,” he said. “There’s tremendous amounts of money at stake.”

Trump added, “John Dunkin really epitomizes to me what that’s all about.”

Not everyone was as impressed with Dunkin’s credentials. Writing in Forbes last year, Christine Negroni, an aviation and travel journalist, wrote that “being a pilot, even a great pilot, as Trump proclaims Dunkin to be, is not enough to lead the FAA.” More important, she wrote, was knowledge of regulation and safety.

Trump was unbowed.

“John Dunkin isn’t just a pilot,” an administration official told Axios. “He’s managed airline and corporate flight departments, certified airlines from start-up under FAA regulations, and oversaw the Trump presidential campaign’s air fleet, which included managing all aviation transportation for travel to 203 cities in 43 states over the course of 21 months.”

Following an inquiry this week from The Post, the White House declined to say whether the president still viewed Dunkin as suitable for the role, or whether he had plans to nominate someone in light of the pressure facing the agency.

In the meantime, Trump has left the work of overseeing the “safety and efficiency of the largest aerospace system in the world,” as the authority’s website defines the mandate of the job, to an acting administrator, Daniel K. Elwell, who was named to the agency’s deputy role in June 2017. All three spots in the office of the administrator are currently filled on an acting basis.

FAA administrator is one of nearly 150 positions requiring Senate confirmation for which Trump has not put forward a nominee, according to data compiled by The Post and the Partnership for Public Service.

But the uncertainty at the top of the FAA has been especially notable this week, as the agency grappled with the fate of the Boeing aircraft and as Trump mused on Twitter about the complexity of modern airplane technology.

Chris Lu, former deputy secretary of labor under President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter that Trump was ill-equipped to address the fallout so long as the “critical position” at the FAA’s helm went unfilled.

The man he wanted for the job was someone whom the president “trusts with his life,” as the narrator of the Smithsonian segment described Dunkin. Addressing reporters on Wednesday, Trump signaled that his concerns had broadened.

“The safety of the American people and all people is our paramount concern,” he said.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Mike Pompeo: We are war criminals and proud of it 

 

[AmazonGrace]

How can  I get a job at HUD?

it seems very laid back and I need more of that in my life

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/ben-carson-s-schedule-shows-friday-trips-florida-lunch-my-n983526

[GreyhoundFan]

WTAF?

 

[Howl]

Veterans are screwed yet again.  This is sad. This is a massive scandal that, due to the tsunami of scandals with this administration and MSM dithering about which Dem presidential candidate is the shiniest,  won't be covered and will screw both veterans and doctors trying to use this system.  Worth a read if you are a veteran or know a veteran who uses the VA. 

The VA's new private care program is going to be yet another tech nightmare, review finds

<snip>

Quote

As the Trump administration prepares to launch a controversial program to expand private medical care for veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs is developing a software tool to determine who's eligible.

But the tool is so flawed, according to an independent review obtained by ProPublica, that it threatens to disrupt the health care of about 75,000 veterans every day...

...The review was conducted by the U.S. Digital Service, an elite group of software developers and designers employed by the White House to help federal agencies improve their technology. The USDS team said the VA should scrap the eligibility tool and start over.

I truly wish that there would be draconian penalties for companies that bid these mega-million dollar jobs, win the bid, and then can't follow through with a viable product, leaving disaster and miss-spent millions of government dollars in their wake.  

 

Edited March 19, 2019 by Howl

[AmazonGrace]

Or fetuses.

[Ali]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

Or fetuses.

The thread discusses other areas the "pro-life" president wants to including Head Start and Section 8  housing. He also wants to cut NASA. This will totally help them accomplish his directive to send humans to  Mars.

 

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Betsy DeVos strikes out — in court"

Spoiler

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ attempts to swiftly roll back major Obama-era policies at her agency are hitting a roadblock: federal courts.

Judges have rebuffed DeVos’ attempts to change Obama policies dealing with everything from student loan forgiveness to mandatory arbitration agreements to racial disparities in special education programs.

As a result, the Education Department is being forced to carry out Obama-era policies that the Trump administration had been fighting to stop — stymying DeVos’ efforts to quickly impose a conservative imprint on federal education policy over the past two years.

The latest legal blow came earlier this month, when a federal judge ruled DeVos illegally postponed a regulation requiring states to identify school districts where there are significant racial disparities among the students placed in special education programs. And last week, Education Department officials began implementing a sweeping package of Obama-era student loan policies after DeVos lost a lawsuit over delaying them last fall.

The department already had to forgive $150 million in student debt under those policies, which DeVos argues are too costly to taxpayers and unfair to colleges. Department officials also directed colleges to stop requiring students to sign mandatory arbitration agreements, forcing them to implement an Obama-era policy that largely bans the practice.

More legal challenges are in the pipeline. A federal judge allowed a challenge to DeVos’ delay of rules governing online colleges to proceed. And a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s delays of the Obama administration’s signature regulations aimed at cracking down on for-profit colleges is ripe for a decision at any time.

Judges in the cases decided so far have said the Trump administration ran afoul of the Administrative Procedures Act, ruling that the department’s efforts to delay policies were arbitrary or lacked a reasoned basis.

“It speaks to the Department of Education’s unwillingness or inability to follow the basic law around how federal agencies conduct themselves,” said Toby Merrill, who directs the Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has brought some of the lawsuits against DeVos.

Every administration has wins and losses in court, Merrill said, but most have done better at making sure they follow the legal rules of the road for rulemaking.

“At the very least, they cross their Ts and dot their Is and therefore are less vulnerable to some of the procedural challenges that have been the undoing of so many of this Department of Education’s policies,” she said.

In rejecting the Trump administration’s efforts to delay the policies, judges have largely focused on procedural problems. The federal judge striking down DeVos’ postponement of student loan regulations called her delays “unlawful,” “procedurally invalid” and “arbitrary and capricious.” The judge who rejected the delay of a special education rule faulted DeVos for failing to provide a “reasoned explanation” for stopping the policy.

The administration is committed to correcting the regulatory overreach of the prior administration and will continue to make the case for fair and appropriate regulatory reform in the courts,” Education Department spokeswoman Liz Hill said.

Many of the policies at issue in the lawsuits have dealt with student loan forgiveness. The Obama administration began forgiving the debts of some students who it determined were defrauded by their college after the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, a massive for-profit chain of colleges.

DeVos and other conservatives have said that the previous administration’s approach was too lenient and costly to taxpayers. But the Trump administration’s effort to scale back the amount of loan forgiveness for some defrauded student loan borrowers has been blocked in court.

The judge ruled in that case that the Education Department violated federal privacy law when it came up with a new formula for loan forgiveness that tied the amount of debt relief a borrower would receive with average graduate earnings at an academic program. The Trump administration has appealed the ruling to the Ninth Circuit, where it remains pending.

In another case involving Obama-era regulations that call for more consumer disclosures to students of online colleges, a judge chastised the Trump administration’s arguments in favor of delaying them.

The judge wrote in that it “takes chutzpah” for the Education Department to say that it would be too burdensome for colleges to provide the disclosures to students while also arguing that students “should be able to hunt down this undisclosed information on their own.” The judge hasn’t ruled on the merits of the case, which is being brought by a teachers union, but allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

The Obama Education Department also faced legal setbacks to its regulatory agenda. A federal judge dealt a blow to the Obama administration’s first attempt to tighten regulations on for-profit schools and other career colleges, which officials rewrote during Obama’s second term. The Obama administration was similarly forced to redo another set of rules governing online college programs after a federal judge tossed them out. More recently, a federal judge found that the Obama administration’s decision to terminate a large accreditor of for-profit colleges illegally failed to properly consider tens of thousands of pages of evidence.

The Trump administration welcomed that decision, immediately reinstating the college accreditor.

And the Trump Education Department, to be sure, has also had some victories in court. A federal judge last year dismissed most of a lawsuit brought by advocacy groups challenging DeVos’ new guidance for how colleges must address sexual assault.

But the Trump administration overall has been on a particularly noteworthy losing streak in the courts, according to a Washington Post report this week that analyzed data maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

The legal setbacks to DeVos’ efforts to stop Obama-era policies at the Education Department also come as the Trump administration has faced a well-organized coalition of consumer groups, state Democratic attorneys general and oversight organizations run by many Obama administration alumni, all of whom are focused on challenging the Trump administration’s agenda at every turn.

“This administration likes to pretend the rules don’t apply to them,” said Aaron Ament, a former Education Department official during the Obama administration who has brought legal challenges against DeVos as head of the National Student Legal Defense Network.

“The Administrative Procedures Act does not say ‘check with your corporate supporters, and do whatever they ask,’” Ament said. “As long as DeVos keeps on acting based on political expediency instead of what’s best for students, she’ll keep getting challenged and she’ll keep losing in court.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

Um, yeah. Sure. Why the hell not.

[Audrey2]

14 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Um, yeah. Sure. Why the hell not.

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.