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

Shulman first took a job in the White House as executive secretary for the Domestic Policy Council, moving up to deputy press secretary. In 2014, she was named the council’s deputy chief of staff. She moved to DOT in 2015, first as a policy adviser in the office of the secretary, then as senior policy adviser. While at DOT, Shulman worked on the Smart City Challenge, in which medium-sized cities were given the opportunity to come up with plans for integrated efficient transportation systems.   read more

López and his colleagues in the Dept of Interior were working on a plan to protect Lake Mead when Donald Trump was elected in November 2016. They weren’t able to finish the job and its future was in question as López left the Bureau as the new administration came in. The day before Trump’s inauguration, López did execute an agreement with the Gila River Indian Community to provide the community with $6 million in funding for water conservation in fiscal year 2017 to acquire water from Lake Mead.   read more

Hopper served as energy adviser to Maryland's then-Gov. Martin O’Malley. She moved to the BOEM in January 2015. Some of the things her agency accomplished right before she left office as the Trump administration was about to take over was the oversight of the offer of 48 million acres of Gulf of Mexico oil leases; the halt of seismic testing for Atlantic Ocean oil fields; and the prohibition of oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean.   read more

Lampton has served as president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and was founding director of the Chinese Studies Program at the Nixon Center. He is currently head of SAIS China, a program run by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that offers educational courses around the world about contemporary China. Lampton continues to serve as Hyman professor and director of China studies at John Hopkins.   read more

Roberts left federal service in 2002 to go into private practice, including a stint as a registered lobbyist, working on Indian law and environmental matters. From 2003 to 2005, he served as chair of the Native American Resources Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He returned to government in 2010 as general counsel to the National Indian Gaming Commission, then joined the Department of the Interior in 2012.   read more

While participating in a fellowship sponsored by Walter Reed and NIH, Birx began to be consulted on patients with what became known as HIV. Her early knowledge of the disease may have saved her life. While giving birth to her eldest daughter in 1983, Birx had complications, but told her husband not to let the doctors give her blood. They didn’t, and the blood that Birx would have received was later found to contain HIV. Thus, she began a long career of searching for a cure for that disease.   read more

Olijar has worked at BEP for 29 years, beginning his career in 1988 as a systems accountant implementing BEP’s first Enterprise Resource Planning system. In 2006, he became BEP’s chief financial officer. He initiated the performance of BEP-wide risk assessments and implemented a program to improve customer service and efficiency. In 2012, Olijar served as the executive sponsor for BEP’s Best Place to Work initiative and the BEP was recognized as one of the most improved agencies.   read more

As an associate at the Patton, Boggs & Blow law firm, El-Hindi practiced international law, focusing on cases relating to sanctions, export controls, foreign corrupt practices, foreign sovereign immunities, status of forces agreements, international trade and banking litigation. He began his Treasury Department career in December 2000 as legal counsel to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers and enforces economic sanctions imposed by the federal government.   read more

She went to Bulgaria as ambassador in August 2008. Her stay there only lasted a year, however. In 2009, she was called back to Washington by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to serve as principal deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs. Some of McEldowney’s State Department cables, as released by WikiLeaks, are refreshingly blunt, although they were not so well-received by members of the governments of Turkey and Bulgaria.   read more

Steve Glomb's M.S. thesis was on “Speciation in the oyster genus Crassostrea: It’s not just a shell game.” He was also the co-author of an academic journal article, “The effect of temperature on growth and ammonia excretion of the Manila clam Tapes japonica,” in Estuarine and Coastal Marine Science.   read more

When President Donald Trump nominated Rick Perry to be Secretary of Energy, there was some concern that Perry, who had proposed eliminating the Department of Energy, did not fully understand what the department does. That was probably an exaggeration. However, just in case, now that Perry has been confirmed for his new position, for him or for anyone else, a good place to start is AllGov’s page about the department here.   read more

Muniz worked as office manager for Leon E. Panetta (D-California) in the House of Representatives. In 1995, she was legislative assistant in the Office of Legislative Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget and in 1996 she was special assistant for policy in the Office of the Secretary of the Army. She then served as deputy director of the Department of Media Affairs in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.   read more

Susman produced a conference, “The Myth of Superwoman,” which focused on the challenges facing women in the workplace, and she edited a memoir of the life of her late sister who had worked as a photojournalist in the Middle East. In 2011, President Obama appointed Susman as a member of the President's Advisory Committee on the Arts for the JFK Center for the Performing Arts. Named as the top female Texas bundler for Obama, she donated $100,000 to the Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action.   read more

In 1998, President Clinton nominated Aponte to be ambassador to the Dominican Republic, but Republicans killed the nomination, using rumors, later debunked, that she'd been recruited by Cuban intelligence. Aponte caused a stir in El Salvador in 2011 when she wrote in a local newspaper, “No one should be subjected to aggression because of who he is or who he loves. Homophobia and brutal hostility are often based on lack of understanding about what it truly means to be gay or transgender."   read more

Garber oversaw bilateral relations with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Slovenia. She later served as ambassador to Latvia, the first career diplomat to the small Baltic nation since Brian E. Carlson served in Riga from 2001 to 2004. Garber’s two immediate predecessors, Catherine Todd Bailey and Chuck. Larson, Jr., were non-career appointees who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the 2004 presidential campaign of George W. Bush.   read more

McMaster has said that rather than taking an anti-Muslim stance, the U.S. should join forces with Muslim-majority countries to fight the Islamic State. Another contrast with Trump’s philosophy was outlined in an April 2015 speech at the University of South Florida, when McMaster said “the military-industrial complex may represent a greater threat to us than at any time in history.” McMaster also warned about military strategy think tanks that are actually funded by defense contractors.   read more