When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

As an attorney, Ring represented the American Trucking Associations, Marriott International and ocean shipping firms. His biography boasts of his “extensive dealings with reduction-in-force issues,” that is, layoffs. In his confirmation hearing, Sen. Patty Murray said Ring worked to hurt employees on behalf of his clients. “The last thing our nation’s labor board needs is another champion for those at the top,” she told him. “You’ve encouraged the board to undermine long-established rights.”   read more

Lowry served as general manager of Powertrain Operations at Harley-Davidson Motor Company in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, from 2001 to 2013. He left the company to become chief operating officer at REV Recreation Group, a manufacturer of recreational vehicles and motor homes in Decatur, Indiana, from 2013 to 2015. Since 2016, Lowry has been a consultant at Egon Zehnder, a corporate leadership advisory firm, in Chicago, where he heads the firm’s U.S. Supply Chain Practice.   read more

In 2013, King became global director for environmental safety and risk for GE Capital. In 2017, she was appointed deputy administrator of the NHTSA, effectively running the organization since it had no administrator. While in that role, King advocated for reducing fuel mileage targets put into place during the Obama administration. She has also had to defend the agency’s handling of the Takata air bag recall, which involves more than 3 million vehicles and at least 22 deaths.   read more

Nakasone rose in the Army, serving as a company commander in South Korea, and working at the Pentagon at the time of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Beginning in 2007, he was in charge of the Fort Meade (Maryland) Operations Center, where he deployed NSA personnel to Iraq and Afghanistan. During that time, he was also among a small group of officers to conceive the first cyber warfare command in the U.S. military, and served as executive assistant to the commander at the U.S. Cyber Command.   read more

Saul joined the board of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1997. In 2003, he was chairman of the MTA audit committee when state and city comptrollers accused MTA of keeping two sets of books. In 2007, Saul entered the race for Congress from his home district in New York, and his deep pockets made the candidacy popular with the GOP. However, Saul dropped out of the race in 2007 days after The New York Times reported that two of his campaign donors were bidding to build on MTA property.   read more

As analysts try to determine who were the big winners and losers in President Donald Trump’s decision pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, most of them seem to have overlooked one of the biggest winners of all…Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin gained a triple victory.   read more

Pallasch joined the Dept of Labor in 2001, as a special assistant directing the closure of department offices across the country. In 2007, he was named a deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Pallasch even served as acting head of the MSHA for three days in 2008 after the appointment of acting director Richard Stickler expired. In 2009, Pallasch took a post as a special assistant in the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.   read more

Part of Haspel’s time at CIA was her tenure as chief of a black-site prison in Thailand beginning in 2002. She was appointed deputy director of the CIA in 2017 despite opposition from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle because of her involvement with torture and rendition. Later, Haspel was to be a witness in a suit brought against two psychologists who ran the torture program. The Trump administration invoked executive powers to keep Haspel and others from having to testify.   read more

Rakolta’s construction company has been engaged in construction projects in the UAE for many years. Rakolta and members of his family donated more than $260,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, as well as $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration. He also served as a financial advisor for Trump in Michigan and helped fund Trump’s transition team after the election. A lifelong Republican, Rakolta has donated more than $845,000 to Republican candidates and organizations over the years.   read more

Schenker has spent most of his career at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that supports the Israeli government, starting as an analyst after graduate school. In 2002, he temporarily left the Washington Institute to be Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) country director in the Bush Defense Dept under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Schenker returned to the Washington Institute in 2006 and has been there since.   read more

Pryor called Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history,” and warned that if it recognized a constitutional right to homosexual sex, it would “logically extend” to activities like “prostitution, adultery...and pedophilia.” But he also angered religious conservatives. As Alabama’s attorney general, he removed Roy Moore as the state's chief justice because Moore defied a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building.   read more

President Donald Trump has chosen an old crony of President George W. Bush to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Uruguay. Kenn George is a Dallas businessman who grew up in Midland, Texas, with George W. Bush. Although George has no apparent connection to or knowledge of Uruguay, his appointment is a reward for being a Republican donor and politico. In fact, he has donated nearly $200,000 to Republican candidates and organizations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.   read more

As a reward for his efforts to help get George W. Bush elected in the contested 2000 presidential race, Bolton was named under secretary of state for arms control. In that post he effected the withdrawal of the U.S. from the International Criminal Court, and claimed without evidence that Cuba was running a biological weapons program. In 2001, he helped derail the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention that banned production and use of such weapons, claiming it endangered U.S. national security.   read more

As an Illinois state senator, McCarter filed a bill in 2011 to allow Catholic charities to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples and unmarried couples in adoption and foster care placements. The following year, he worked successfully to defeat an anti-bullying bill because, he said, it would promote homosexuality. In 2015, he opposed a bill to fund treatment for heroin addicts, even though his daughter had died of an overdose of heroin and fentanyl.   read more

Donald Trump chose a longtime Republican politico to be the next United States ambassador to the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Joseph N. Mondello has served as chairman of the Nassau County, New York, Republican Committee since May 1983. He also served as the Republican National Committeeman for New York from 1992 to 2004, as chairman of the New York Republican State Committee from 2006 to 2009, and as a Trump delegate to the 2016 Republican Convention, as did his wife, Linda.   read more

After serving as chief of Naval operations strategic studies group fellow in Newport, Rhode Island, Norton was promoted in 2013 to rear admiral and named director for command, control, communications and cyber for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. She was transferred to the Pentagon in 2015 as director of the Warfare Integration Directorate in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Norton was named vice director of DISA in 2017 in preparation for taking over as the agency’s director.   read more