While Vitiello was in the Rio Grande Valley, the George W. Bush administration was working to complete a border fence in the region. The planned fence would have cut through the campus of the University of Texas-Brownsville, whose charter has a bi-national mission. School officials met with Vitiello to try to get some accommodation on the fence, but Vitiello told them the meeting was a waste of time. “He wanted to stop the conversation instantly,” said university consultant Putegnat.   read more

Perdue has a grasp on the Agriculture Dept, but the form it takes remains to be seen. While he was governor of Georgia, the state food safety budget was slashed by 29%. In 2006, Perdue paid $2 million for land near Disney World to a developer he’d put on Georgia’s economic development board. Perdue then got a bill passed, backdated to save him $100,000 in capital gains taxes on the land sale. During his re-election campaign, he pretended he didn’t know he'd benefit from the tax break.   read more

Donald Trump promised to deport undocumented immigrants and in Thomas Homan, now acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he has a man who won an award for deporting thousands of people. Trump tapped Homan to lead ICE in January 2017. At about that time, as ICE appeared to step up its pace of raids and deportations, Homan agreed to sit down on February 14 with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to address its concerns about the raids. He later backed out of the meeting.   read more

The Trump administration added another member of the Goldman Sachs alumni association to its roster when it announced that financier Lewis Eisenberg, head of the Trump Victory Fund, would be the next ambassador to Italy. A former GOP finance chairman, Eisenberg resigned from Goldman Sachs in 1989 after a civil lawsuit accused him of harassing a former assistant, Kathy Abraham, after she tried to end a seven-year extramarital affair. Abraham later received a settlement and recanted her claims.   read more

When Pai took over as FCC chairman, he couldn’t wait to roll back consumer protections enacted under the Obama administration. Many of his actions were done late on a Friday with virtually no public notice. “With these strong-arm tactics, Chairman Pai is showing his true stripes,” Matt Wood, of the consumer group Free Press, told The New York Times. “The public wants an FCC that helps people. Instead, it got one that does favors for the powerful corporations that its chairman used to work for.”   read more

Although forbidden to lobby Congress, Wilson directed Lockheed in its quest for contract renewal without competitive bidding. Her deals with Lockheed and other contractors were found to have violated government rules. In 2012, she criticized a bill to cut bullying of LGBTQ children, and voted for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Wilson was named by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the 22 most corrupt members of Congress.   read more

New York Jets owner Johnson sought some tax dodges and, in 2006, was brought before a Senate panel to testify about shelters in the Isle of Man that were used to offset profits from sales of investments. He eventually settled with the IRS, paying back taxes and interest. Johnson was a big donor to Sen. John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. He initially backed Jeb Bush in the 2016 contest, even serving as his finance chairman, but threw his support to Trump in May 2016.   read more

Shulkin’s work has frequently involved looking at managed and accountable care, in which patients, especially the chronically ill, get the right care at the right time, while avoiding unnecessary duplication of services and preventing medical errors. In 2008, for example, he studied why patients who are admitted at night are more likely to die than patients admitted during the day. One of his innovations was to champion 24-hour visiting hours for its healing effect on patients.   read more

McCord is in charge of the division’s 400 employees who collectively are tasked with carrying out the counterterrorism, counterespionage and counterintelligence functions of the Justice Dept. In her post, McCord has interacted with the 94 U.S. Attorney offices across the country. She replaced Assistant U.S. Attorney General John Carlin, who left the division to enter the private sector as chair of the global risk and crisis management team for the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster.   read more

If Goldman Sachs had been allowed to appoint the head of the SEC, which is supposed to keep an eye on the financial industry, it might’ve chosen Jay Clayton. Attorney Clayton has handled many deals for Goldman Sachs and is even married to one of its wealth managers. Goldman Sachs didn’t have to worry, because that’s exactly who Donald Trump, who declared during his campaign: “I’m not going to let Wall Street get away with murder. Wall Street has caused tremendous problems for us,” nominated.   read more

Friedman’s most radical position rejects the “two-state solution” that every U.S. administration has advocated since at least 1967. He has even said that Trump would support Israeli annexation of the West Bank—something most Israel supporters oppose because it would make Israel a Muslim-majority nation. To avoid the conclusion that his policies would destroy the Jewish character of Israel, Friedman claimed without any evidence that “nobody really knows how many Palestinians live there.”   read more

As a Washington law firm partner in 1985, Lighthizer focused on trade litigation and policy advice, in particular promoting the interests of U.S. Steel and the steel industry in general. In 1985, he lobbied on behalf of Brazil’s Sugar and Alcohol Institute. A longtime protectionist, he criticized presidential candidate Sen. John McCain for what Lighthizer believed were trade-friendly policies. And, like Trump, Lighthizer has focused on China as a trade bogeyman.   read more

Oil and gas interests have comprised most of Perry’s political donors over the years. A strong advocate of the death penalty, Perry is a climate-change denier who said those who believe the overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing “know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists..." As governor of Texas, Perry was Indicted for abuse of power--charges that were eventually dropped.   read more

Mulvaney rode the Tea Party wave in 2010 to become one of the 14 most conservative members of Congress. He signed on to Speaker Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher scheme and was criticized at his confirmation hearing for not having paid payroll taxes for the woman who cared for his young triplets. When Mulvaney said he couldn’t recall voting for cuts in defense spending and troop deployments, Sen. McCain responded: “I think I would remember if I was withdrawing troops from Europe.”   read more

Pruitt filed a series of 14 lawsuits against federal regulations designed to protect the environment from numerous threats, including mercury emissions by coal-burning power plants, and carbon dioxide that causes climate change. In 13 of the cases, Pruitt was joined by co-plaintiffs including companies that had contributed money to him. At one point, Pruitt allowed an industry-written letter, prepared by Devon Energy officials, to be printed verbatim on official stationery with his signature.   read more

In his 2014 fundraising emails, Zinke wrote: “I spent 23 years as a Navy SEAL and served as a Team Leader on SEAL Team Six — the team responsible for the mission to get Osama bin Laden.” What he didn’t mention was that he’d been out of the Navy for three years when the mission against bin Laden was carried out. He also said that while humans have some role in climate change, “the evidence is equally as strong that there are other factors...that have a greater influence.”   read more