According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   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

To improve the public’s access to independent and authoritative information about the Federal Government, Oversight.gov was created by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency to consolidate in one place all public reports from Federal Inspectors General. The role of federal IGs is to prevent and detect waste, fraud, and abuse relating to their agency’s programs and operations, and to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in agency operations.   read more

In 2010, Singh was named the first executive director of the Barer Institute for Law and Global Human Services. The institute’s mission is to study and promote the effectiveness of legal frameworks as essential elements in achieving goals for health, education, and social and economic well-being in developing countries. Singh was there only a year though, returning to work at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and then resuming work for Sen. Dan Sullivan as his chief counsel.   read more

Rosenberg resigned as acting director of the DEA on Sept. 26, 2017, apparently because he believes President Trump has little respect for the law. In a memo to DEA employees, Rosenberg said Trump had “condoned police misconduct” when he told police officers in July to halt the practice of protecting the heads of suspects when guiding them into the back seat of a police car. Rosenberg advised his people to ignore Trump's advice, citing "an obligation to speak out when something is wrong."   read more

In 2005, McMullen founded his own PR/ad firm that specializes in representing GOP candidates and issues. He has served as an advisor in several national presidential campaigns, including those of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson. McMullen hopped on the Trump train early in 2015 as one of five advisors to Trump’s exploratory committee, which became the Trump for President Campaign. He later joined the Trump transition team and became vice chair of Trump's Inaugural Committee.   read more

Huntsman’s biggest political controversy came in 2009 when he publicly backed civil unions for gay couples, even though he'd backed a state amendment passed in 2004 that prohibited same-sex marriage. The decision angered conservatives. President Obama appointed Huntsman to be ambassador to China in 2009. His tenure ended in 2011, shortly after Huntsman caused a controversy in China by being present in an area of a planned protest. Huntsman said he was coincidentally in the area shopping.   read more

Winberg joined the Consol Energy utility firm in 2002 and worked his way up to a VP post. He was also Consol’s representative on the board of FutureGen Industrial Alliance. The group of electricity generators, coal companies and manufacturers was supposed to build the first coal power plant to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground instead of emitting it in the air. No such commercial plants were built, with Winberg blaming this on poor government support.   read more

After six years working for Public Storage, Kohorst, in 1990, became CEO of Tiger Shark Golf, a golf club maker, and of the Halloween costume firm Masquerade International, which Kohorst later sold to a company that marketed clothing for dogs. Kohorst has been a big donor to GOP candidates, having given $650,000 to the RNC alone between 2012 and 2016, and $194,000 to the Trump Victory PAC. After the election, Kohorst was made a member of Donald Trump’s Transition Finance Committee.   read more

Walker worked for 18 years for Consolidated Edison, New York City’s electrical supplier, and served on the utility’s Biological Chemical Weapons Response Team. He later dealt with the power emergencies caused by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the widespread power blackout in August 2003. Walker co-founded the Global Smart Grid Federation, a 10-nation collaboration to modernize electric energy systems, and served on two DOE advisory committees.   read more

Masso was VP at Anteon Corp, which specialized in simulators and interrogator training. He was then senior VP for Navy and missile defense programs at SAIC Corp. He's a senior fellow at the conservative Potomac Institute, and has written for the right wing website Breitbart, attacking the deal over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Among his military awards, Masso is most proud of the commendation he received as a member of Navy Command Center 106 for actions during and after the 9/11 attacks.   read more