Zelenskyy explained, “I told him that if he gave us the weapons we need and stopped supporting Putin, we would let him build Trump-branded hotels and other Trump-branded buildings in Ukraine’s ten largest cities, as well as Trump golf courses in the countryside. He was quite excited.”   read more

President Trump has nominated an insurance broker to lead the Indian Health Service, an agency usually overseen by medical professionals because it is a provider of health services. The nominee, Robert Weaver, published a 2017 paper that criticized the Affordable Care Act, while lauding its benefits for Native Americans that he urged be kept. He said that "health insurance will improve for Americans in general under the replacement plan.” Of course, no such plan had been published at that time.   read more

A generous donor to the GOP, Evans became a senior advisor to Newt Gingrich’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign. Evans used his relationship with Gingrich as a launch pad for both his political and legal career. Gingrich hired Evans as his outside counsel to represent him in several ethics investigations, which culminated in the House formally reprimanding Gingrich and ordering him to pay a $300,000 penalty, which lead to his resignation as Speaker of the House..   read more

Marino withdrew as nominee for "drug czar" right after a news report detailed his efforts to pass a 2016 law, at the behest of pharmaceutical interests, that made it harder to stop sales of addictive drugs by manufacturers and pharmacies. The report also disclosed his efforts to silence one of the law's critics. AlterNet's Philip Smith wrote: “Marino will be the sort of drug czar who is tough on Colombian peasant farmers, but not so tough on major U.S. pharmaceutical opioid manufacturers.”   read more

Copan is a leading expert in the commercialization of technology who says his top priority is to implement the Cybersecurity Framework, an effort led by NIST to improve network security across federal agencies as well as industry. He will have to defend NIST’s budget ($962 million for FY2017), which Trump has proposed to cut by 24%, including a 13% cut to its seven research labs and an 86% cut to its industrial technology services program.   read more

In 2006, Kurtz took his first job related to housing, serving as special assistant to Assistant HUD Secretary for Community Planning and Development Pamela Patenaude. He then served as special assistant to the deputy chief of staff at HUD and as policy advisor in HUD’s Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations. Kurtz later left federal service to work for the City of Detroit, which had been taken over by state government due to the city’s financial problems.   read more

At Trump's campaign rallies he pledged to “bomb the hell” out of the Islamic State. He openly mused about killing the families of terrorists, a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Ten months into his presidency, alarming trends have emerged. An intense focus on destroying ISIS elements may be overriding the competing priority of protecting civilians. Because Trump has scaled back civilian oversight and delegated authority to colonels, the likely result is higher casualties.   read more

Furchtgott-Roth’s economic theories are rooted in right-wing ideologies. She’s anti-union, having proposed the longshoremen’s union be regulated to make it harder for them to strike. She criticized the Family and Medical Leave Act, claiming without evidence that it would be abused by workers improperly taking sick leave. She also criticized the Affordable Care Act, claiming, again without evidence, that it would increase bankruptcies caused by medical bills because of lower-quality healthcare.   read more

Sands gave big to Trump’s presidential campaign and inaugural, and hosted a Trump fundraiser at her Bel Air mansion, where donors paid up to $449,000 per plate to dine with Trump. A former star of the movie "Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell," Sands is the widow of real estate tycoon Fred Sands, who once called Trump “a joke," adding that "he likes the publicity because that’s how he lives. He’s not really a real-estate guy. He licenses his name and surrounds himself with publicity.”   read more

LeVine was co-founder and board chair for the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, and worked at Microsoft as director of strategic partnerships, working with students, school leaders, and educators to promote the advantages of teaching tech skills using Microsoft products. As ambassador, LeVine became interested in the Swiss dual education system, which emphasizes vocational apprenticeships for many students, and began advocating its adaptation to the U.S.   read more

Just one out of 500 estates left by people with at least $5.5 million to their name – or couples with more than $11 million – get taxed today. Still, if Congress were to end the estate tax, as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers propose, the government might miss those funds. What’s more, nonprofits could see their budgets pinched by a decline in giving. The question is, do fewer multimillionaires write charities into their wills when this incentive goes away?   read more

Fite joined the Foreign Service in 1990. Early career stops included Portugal and Jamaica. She worked on regional and bilateral environment, science and health issues while based in Budapest, Hungary. Fite was then assigned to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. This won’t be Fite’s first posting in Angola, having served as the political/economic section chief in the embassy in Luanda. Fite also was deputy economic counselor in Afghanistan and consul general in Pakistan.   read more

Nominated on Sept. 12, 2017, the next commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will be Brian Montgomery, the same man who led the agency during the housing bubble that caused the Great Recession—and forced FHA to get a $1.7 billion cash infusion from the Treasury. Despite possible signs of a new housing bubble, Montgomery has claimed that “excessive enforcement” of rules designed to prevent another bubble has made the housing market “sluggish” and advocates loosening those rules.   read more

As deputy director of the Africa Bureau/Office of East African Affairs, Reimer did a tour in Baghdad beginning in 2011 as senior refugee coordinator. In 2012, he was made deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania. Reimer was back in Washington in 2014, first on the Board of Examiners for the Bureau of Human Resources, and then the following year as director of the Office of West African Affairs, a post he held until his ambassadorial nomination.   read more

Reeves served as a Navy surface warfare officer until retiring at the rank of commander in 2008. He served during the Gulf War and in operations in Kosovo and Haiti, and in the 2006 evacuation of almost 14,000 U.S. citizens from Lebanon. In 2009, Reeves was appointed deputy director of the Mississippi Veterans Affairs Board (VAB), which runs MVMC, four veteran’s nursing homes, and numerous programs for the state’s 225,000 veterans. In January 2012, Reeves moved up to executive director of VAB.   read more

As director of the Iowa Dept of Transportation, Trombino launched a pilot project of putting driver licenses on mobile devices. In 2012, he denied driver licenses to Iowa residents who were part of the DACA program. A few weeks later, the state backtracked and rescinded his decision. In 2015, Trombino made an admission that might seem startling from a DOT director: He said his state needs fewer roads. “. . . My personal belief is that the entire system is unneeded."   read more

Christopher Caldwell, a seventh-generation Arkansan, was nominated by President Trump on September 12, 2017, to head the Delta Regional Authority (DRA), an agency that Trump, in his March budget, indicated he would eliminate. Caldwell worked on a number of GOP political campaigns, including Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid in 2007-2008, before becoming campaign director for Sen. John Boozman, who recommended Caldwell for the $172,100-a-year job of DRA co-chair.   read more