Rumors are spreading that the U.S. Supreme Court will vote 5-4 to rule that a U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for anything he does while he is president. Some Democrats are suggesting that Joe Biden bring a gun to his first debate with Donald Trump. If he shoots Trump, he would be immune, but if Trump shoots Biden he would be prosecuted because he is not a sitting president.   read more

Trump, who has put several of his businesses into bankruptcy, nominated the so-called “King of Bankruptcy,” Wilbur Ross, to be his Commerce Secretary. Ross is currently on the board of directors of 59 different companies, including ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel firm. ArcelorMittal could be a beneficiary of Ross’ decisions as Commerce secretary. “He might be the second-most complicated person in the administration to vet, behind the President-elect himself,” said ethics lawyer Eisen.   read more

Walker worked for Missouri’s Dept of Social Services and in 1988 was named director of the Missouri Division of Aging. He pushed through a program that made it easier for the elderly to remain in their homes, instead of being forced into nursing facilities. Walker joined the Administration on Aging in 1992 as associate commissioner for State and Community Programs. He later moved up to be Director of Program Operations and Development, and by 2009 was Deputy Assistant Secretary at AoA.   read more

Much of Pauling’s tenure with the Department of Energy includes 11 years working on the cleanup of the Weldon Springs weapons manufacturing site near St. Louis. A World War II munitions factory was on the site and later the DOE processed uranium ore there. A quarry was filled with contaminants including uranium. Pauling worked on the cleanup from the early 1990s to 2004. The site is now a tourist attraction.   read more

A native of Germany, Keller came to the U.S. in 1994 as a consultant for biotech firm Diversa. He then joined the company full time and became director of screening and technology development. Diversa worked to turn organisms into enzymes that were used in chemicals. Keller even took organisms from boiling-hot thermal pools at Yellowstone National Park to be used in different compounds. Keller's work at Oak Ridge Lab centered on developing biological replacements for petroleum-based fuels.   read more

In 1992, Moury joined the DNFSB as a group lead and served in senior leadership positions for nearly two decades. In 2011 he was appointed as a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Environmental Management. In 2014, Moury gave the Energy Dept’s response to the firing by a contractor of whistleblower Donna Busche, who reported on unsafe cleanup practices at the Hanford nuclear facility. Moury said the department had nothing to do with the dismissal of Busche by her employer, URS.   read more

Friedman was grilled in 2014 by a Senate committee on the GM problem. Sen. McCaskill pointed out that consumers had complained about the failing ignition switches and a Wisconsin state trooper had warned NHTSA about them. “Why can't you take responsibility?” McCaskill asked Friedman. “You have got to take some responsibility that this isn't being handled correctly for the American driving public.” Friedman was moved to EERE as principal deputy administrator, a better fit for his skillset.   read more

Swenson's background is in marketing, but she became interested in the plight of the disabled after one of her three sons, Charlie, was found not long after his birth to be profoundly disabled.She began learning how to advocate for her son’s needs and started to work for the rights of all disabled. She testified about the disabled before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in 1993 and, three years later, she found herself working with that subcommittee as a Kennedy Fellow in the Senate.   read more

A native of the Netherlands, Uvin worked for Commonwealth Corp. in 2000, as a workplace learning specialist and, a year later,as a vice president. There, he conducted studies on how those in workforce development programs fared on the job. For the state of Rhode Island, Uvin worked as director of adult education, then as director of the Office of Adult, Career and Technical Education. He joined the Dept of Education in 2009 as a senior policy adviser to Asst Secretary Brenda Dann-Messier.   read more

Some of Curran Neild’s work involved the link between students’ success in ninth grade and their likelihood of graduating from high school. She joined the IES in 2011 as associate commissioner and in 2012 was named commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. In 2015, she was named deputy director for policy and research. In January 2017, Curran Neild announced she was leaving the Education Dept for the nonprofit Research for Action.   read more

Bay became the first Chinese-American U.S. Attorney during the Wen Ho Lee case. The government was accused of prosecuting Lee due to his Chinese background and Lee was held without bail for months. Bay helped negotiate the plea deal that freed Lee. Bay's nomination to chair FERC brought pushback from a disgruntled energy industry and some senators who said a FERC employee shouldn’t jump to the chairmanship without having served on the commission. So Bay did so prior to taking over as chairman.   read more

Dabby had to defend the Education Dept’s record $32.5-million grant of charter school funding to Ohio. Investigations have shown that Ohio’s program is one of the most troubled in the country. “Ohio has a pretty good mechanism in place to improve overall quality and oversight,” Dabby said without providing details. “There’s always room for them to grow,” she added. Later that year, the Education Dept put a hold on the funding, saying it hadn’t been aware of all the program's problems.   read more

The early part of Mahaffie’s career was spent working in a Washington, D.C., law firm. She joined the Education Department in 2002. Mahaffie has been forced to defend her office’s role in overseeing the accreditation of some failing institutions, such as for-profit colleges that have gone bankrupt. She also helped roll out an expansion of the Clery Act, which mandates that crimes related to sexual assault be reported by institutions of higher education that receive federal funding.   read more

In 2004, Semonite was sent to Iraq and charged with restoring electricity to the country, whose infrastructure had been severely damaged in the fighting. He also worked to provide power on a fair basis, unlike former Iraqi Premier Saddam Hussein, who had favored Sunni Muslim areas when building power lines. Semonite was sent to Afghanistan in 2014 to head up the effort to rebuild not infrastructure, but that country’s armed forces and police department.   read more

Runcie was promoted to acting CEO in May 2011. He oversaw the important move from bank-based student loans to those held by the federal government, which saved taxpayers billions of dollars. During his tenure, FSA has increased the direct loan portfolio of federal student loans from 9.2 million recipients representing $155 billion to 32 million recipients representing $1 trillion.   read more

Gil undertook work in bilingual education at New American Schools, a non-profit research group that helped install education programs in public schools. New American Schools merged in 2005 with the American Institutes for Research, where Gil, as the organization’s managing director, developed the AIR Center for English Learners. She moved to CASEL in Chicago in 2011, becoming their vice president for practice. She held that position until joining the Department of Education.   read more

The GAO reported that Chao’s Wage and Hour Division had consistently failed to follow up on reports of wage theft, and that WHD staffers often failed to pick up the phone when called by those seeking help. Chao made $1.2 million as a director at Wells Fargo, which holds more than $400 million in Trump mortgages. As DOT secretary, she will be able to regulate the business of her father, who has given millions to his daughter and her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell.   read more