Mainzer's first job after grad school was at Enron, the power trading company that spectacularly collapsed in 2001. He then went to work for BPA, taking over as acting administrator/CEO in 2013 after then-administrator Bill Drummond was embroiled in a controversy involving failure to give proper preference to veterans in hiring and retaliating against BPA whistleblowers. Mainzer was named administrator and CEO in January 2014 and is credited with restoring employees’ confidence in the agency.   read more

Lewis made his name in managing ship production. As the Aegis program executive officer, Lewis led the delivery of seven Arleigh Burke class of guided missile ships and procured another 10 ships. As executive officer, Ships, he directed the delivery of 18 ships and procurement of another 51 ships. In 2003, Lewis wrote an article for the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute decrying the time it took—more than a decade in some cases—to bring a new class of warship from conception to deployment.   read more

Kelley’s first stint at Arlington National Cemetery came in June 2012 as its chief of standards and evaluation and director of accountability. A year later, she was made director of enterprise management at the Army’s Information Technology Agency. In January 2014, Kelley was promoted to chief of staff of headquarters services in the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. She held that position until moving back to Arlington National Cemetery as its superintendent.   read more

Tenn. State Sen. Mark Green—President Donald Trump’s second choice to serve as Secretary of the Army—has bowed out in the wake of bipartisan criticism of controversial statements regarding gays, transgender persons, Muslims, Latinos, birth control, and evolution. Green, who recently said “transgender is a disease,” has been a vocal opponent of gay Americans. He has publicly rejected the scientific theory of evolution in favor of a religious belief that God created everything without evolution.   read more

Bahr has been a professor in the Dept. of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1987, where she is also affiliated with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Her research focuses on physical, geochemical, and biogeochemical controls on the movement of underground water. She served as chair of the Nelson Institute’s Water Resources Management Graduate Program from 1995 to 1999, and of the Geoscience Dept from 2005 to 2008.   read more

Lhamon learned about racism and civil rights early on, as her parents were activists, and she was the product of a mixed-race marriage; the Supreme Court had overturned laws against such marriages only a few years earlier. On April 6, 2017, Lhamon characterized the policy shift of the new Trump administration by saying, “The backstop that has been the civil rights enforcement of the federal government is no more.” The commission's role will likely be important during years of the Trump regime.   read more

In December 2016,Callahan was promoted to deputy director of the Secret Service, and became acting director in March 2017. It didn’t take long for him to encounter controversy. On March 10, 26-year-old Jonathan Tuan-Anh Tran entered the White House grounds and was not detected for 16 minutes. On March 16, it was discovered that an agency laptop was stolen from an agent’s car in New York. The laptop was said to have had security plans for Trump Tower and other sensitive information on it.   read more

Haskell was sent to Tel Aviv as consul in 1996. While there, in 1998, he was involved in the case of an American teen arrested and held by the Israeli government, which charged him of being a member of Hamas. As consul, Haskell monitored the case and urged his release. Haskell returned to Washington in August 2013 for a stint as office director in the Africa Bureau’s Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, where he was a member of the Ebola communications task force.   read more

Appointed Air Force chief of staff in 1990 by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, McPeak had helped plan the combat phase of the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War. He later criticized the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, calling it "a strategic blunder made worse by slapdash execution. As we have seen, [it] took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, breathed new life into a moribund al Qaeda, and enhanced Iranian influence in this critical region—all outcomes which damaged both the U.S. and our ally Israel.”   read more

Trump’s numbers at 100 Days—usually one of the high points of a president’s popularity—are closer to those of a failing president than a newly minted one. Hovering around 40%, his approval is comparable to George W. Bush’s right after Hurricane Katrina, Gerald Ford’s during the 1975 recession, and Jimmy Carter’s during the Iran hostage crisis. Those presidents were so weakened by low public support that they failed to win re-election.   read more

In 2004, Shea became assistant secretary for HUD's Policy Development and Research. In 2005, he left to serve as senior advisor to Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who was chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. After the 2006 elections, Shea became VP for government affairs in the Americas for Pitney Bowes. In 2010, he left to start his own firm, Shea Public Strategies LLC. He serves as a consultant to the Bipartisan Policy Center Senior Health and Housing Task Force.   read more

Rogers spent the first 15 years of her career in private law practice and, in 1998, became a Superior Court judge. After eight years on the bench, she became an appeals court judge, serving on the Connecticut Appellate Court until 2007, when she was sworn in as chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. Rogers was appointed to the Federal-State Jurisdiction Committee of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in 2012.   read more

In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Timmons-Goodson to the U.S. District Court in eastern North Carolina. She would have been the first African-American to serve in that district, which includes a significant black population. The seat had been vacant since 2006, but Timmons-Goodson’s nomination was blocked by Republican Senator Richard Burr. It was the second time Burr had blocked an Obama nominee for that seat; the first nominee was also a black woman, Jennifer May-Parker.   read more

Gottlieb’s financial disclosure reads like a medical industry Yellow Pages. He has served on the boards of more than a dozen medical companies and has held leadership positions in a number of others. “He’s basically been a shill for pharmaceutical corporations for much of his career,” said Public Citizen director Dr. Michael Carome. Gottlieb’s nomination has been welcomed with delight by Big Pharma, and his ties to the investment world should make him fit right in with the Trump administration.   read more

As a law professor, Davis published in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law, national security law, alternative dispute resolution, and sports law. He's been a mediator/arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association, U.S. Postal Service and U.S. Olympic Committee. He joined the Navy Reserve Intelligence Program in 1988, and was called to active duty in 1999 (Bosnia) and 2001 (post-9/11). Davis is also a founder of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy.   read more

An active Wall Street Democrat, Nides raised more than $100,000 as a Hillary Clinton bundler in 2008, and provided informal advice to her 2016 run. Wikileaks revealed that he had advised Clinton campaign Chair Podesta in 2015 to “pull the official” emails off of Clinton’s private server, exclaiming that “you know as well as I every god damn cabinet officer and WH staff uses there (sic) gmail account!” The Wilson Center, which Nides heads, would be fully defunded under Trump's proposed budget.   read more