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

“Absurd” is not a word often found amid the dry accounting investigations performed by inspectors general of the federal government. But the IG for the Department of Veterans Affairs couldn’t help but use the word, and others like “nepotism,” to d...   read more

The new chief federal official for K-12 education empathizes easily with students who face difficulties in school. Born in 1958 to Mexican immigrants, Dr. Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana arrived at kindergarten unable to speak or read English, and fo...   read more

Is racial profiling always a bad thing? Professor Walter E. Williams of George Mason University doesn’t think so. He points out examples where decisions are made based on an individual’s ethnicity, with little or no concern expressed for such disc...   read more

To repair relations with this country’s Latin American neighbors, President Obama has turned to a leading academic who was born and raised in South America and has studied the region his entire adult life. Arturo Valenzuela is a specialist on Chil...   read more

Called out of retirement to head the Food and Nutrition Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Julie Paradis is a longtime lawyer specializing in agricultural issues who divided her 30-year career between Congress and the USDA.   ...   read more

The cost of health insurance hasn’t just outpaced the growth of family incomes in the United States—it’s blown past. According to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund, employer-sponsored fam­ily health insurance premiums rose by 119% from 1999 to ...   read more

In the early months of his administration, President Barack Obama criticized the reliance on private contractors to help fight America’s war in Iraq, saying “too much money has been paid out for services that were never performed, buildings that w...   read more

Detainees held at secret camps run by American commandoes will now have their identities released to the International Committee of the Red Cross under a new policy crafted by the Obama administration. While George W. Bush was president of the Uni...   read more

Some Sunni Muslim men and women are protesting a proposed law in Mali that would put the two sexes on equal footing for the first time. If the measure—adopted by the Malian parliament but awaiting President Amadou Toumani Toure’s signature—goes in...   read more

Were it not for President Barack Obama’s “no lobbyists” policy, Mark Gitenstein might well have taken over the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy. But Gitenstein’s prior lobbying work on behalf of business clients, including the U.S....   read more

A coalition of advocacy organizations including the NAACP and Africa Action are lobbying Congress to adopt new legislation that would prevent so-called “vulture” funds from buying up debts owed by developing countries to Western governments and fi...   read more

William C. Eacho, III is another important fundraiser for President Barack Obama who has been rewarded with an ambassadorship, this one to Austria. Eacho has spent much of his corporate career working in the food service distribution industry, whi...   read more

What Alfonso Lenhardt lacks in diplomatic experience, he makes up for in knowledge of military affairs and security, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing to have as the next ambassador to Tanzania. In 1998 the American embassy in Dar es Salaam was ...   read more

Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) is not ashamed of the federal money he funnels back to his home state. “It may please you or it may not please you,” Inouye told a group of Hawaiian business and social representatives recently. “I’m the No. 1 earm...   read more

U.S. Army officials near San Antonio have successfully lobbied local officials to pass a new ordinance making it more difficult for developers to build new properties near Camp Bullis, a key subsection of Fort Sam Houston. The primary weapon used ...   read more

Going from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration has had no adverse effect on immigration crackdowns—in fact, arrests have gone up. Data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University show th...   read more