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

A native of the Netherlands, Uvin worked for Commonwealth Corp. in 2000, as a workplace learning specialist and, a year later,as a vice president. There, he conducted studies on how those in workforce development programs fared on the job. For the state of Rhode Island, Uvin worked as director of adult education, then as director of the Office of Adult, Career and Technical Education. He joined the Dept of Education in 2009 as a senior policy adviser to Asst Secretary Brenda Dann-Messier.   read more

Some of Curran Neild’s work involved the link between students’ success in ninth grade and their likelihood of graduating from high school. She joined the IES in 2011 as associate commissioner and in 2012 was named commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance. In 2015, she was named deputy director for policy and research. In January 2017, Curran Neild announced she was leaving the Education Dept for the nonprofit Research for Action.   read more

Bay became the first Chinese-American U.S. Attorney during the Wen Ho Lee case. The government was accused of prosecuting Lee due to his Chinese background and Lee was held without bail for months. Bay helped negotiate the plea deal that freed Lee. Bay's nomination to chair FERC brought pushback from a disgruntled energy industry and some senators who said a FERC employee shouldn’t jump to the chairmanship without having served on the commission. So Bay did so prior to taking over as chairman.   read more

Dabby had to defend the Education Dept’s record $32.5-million grant of charter school funding to Ohio. Investigations have shown that Ohio’s program is one of the most troubled in the country. “Ohio has a pretty good mechanism in place to improve overall quality and oversight,” Dabby said without providing details. “There’s always room for them to grow,” she added. Later that year, the Education Dept put a hold on the funding, saying it hadn’t been aware of all the program's problems.   read more

The early part of Mahaffie’s career was spent working in a Washington, D.C., law firm. She joined the Education Department in 2002. Mahaffie has been forced to defend her office’s role in overseeing the accreditation of some failing institutions, such as for-profit colleges that have gone bankrupt. She also helped roll out an expansion of the Clery Act, which mandates that crimes related to sexual assault be reported by institutions of higher education that receive federal funding.   read more

In 2004, Semonite was sent to Iraq and charged with restoring electricity to the country, whose infrastructure had been severely damaged in the fighting. He also worked to provide power on a fair basis, unlike former Iraqi Premier Saddam Hussein, who had favored Sunni Muslim areas when building power lines. Semonite was sent to Afghanistan in 2014 to head up the effort to rebuild not infrastructure, but that country’s armed forces and police department.   read more

Runcie was promoted to acting CEO in May 2011. He oversaw the important move from bank-based student loans to those held by the federal government, which saved taxpayers billions of dollars. During his tenure, FSA has increased the direct loan portfolio of federal student loans from 9.2 million recipients representing $155 billion to 32 million recipients representing $1 trillion.   read more

Gil undertook work in bilingual education at New American Schools, a non-profit research group that helped install education programs in public schools. New American Schools merged in 2005 with the American Institutes for Research, where Gil, as the organization’s managing director, developed the AIR Center for English Learners. She moved to CASEL in Chicago in 2011, becoming their vice president for practice. She held that position until joining the Department of Education.   read more

The GAO reported that Chao’s Wage and Hour Division had consistently failed to follow up on reports of wage theft, and that WHD staffers often failed to pick up the phone when called by those seeking help. Chao made $1.2 million as a director at Wells Fargo, which holds more than $400 million in Trump mortgages. As DOT secretary, she will be able to regulate the business of her father, who has given millions to his daughter and her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell.   read more

Early in his tenure as chief, Lengyel was faced with the controversy over re-enlistment bonus clawbacks from National Guard members. He said Congress had been informed of the clawbacks as early as 2012 but had declined to pass legislation that would have stopped them. Lengyel is from an Air Force family. His father, Lauren, was also an Air Force pilot and was shot down over Vietnam in August 1967. He was captured and held in a North Vietnamese prison camp until 1973.   read more

Thomas took his unit to Afghanistan three months after the 9/11 attacks and spent much of 12 years in Afghanistan. He then served 15 months in Iraq and, while there, survived a car-bomb attack on his armored vehicle. In 2013, Thomas went to work at the Central Intelligence Agency as its associate director of military affairs. The following year, he took over as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., the unit that oversees secret counter-terrorism units.   read more

Stewart is the first Marine, and the first African-American, to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he earned master’s degrees, including in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. His first specialty was tanks, but he moved into signals intelligence--the gathering of data from radio transmissions. Since taking over DIA, Stewart said he wants to build an information system that will facilitate sharing of data among intelligence services.   read more

Busch grew up in different places around the world, including five years in Saudi Arabia, while his father worked for airlines. He was recruited to the Air Force Academy to play basketball—at 6-foot-10, he was the Falcons’ center—and graduated from there with a B.S. degree. After earning his second master’s degree, Busch moved into logistics. His assignments were at the Defense Logistics Agency, Ogden Air Logistics Center, and at the Propulsion Management Center at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma.   read more

Durand started with the DTRA in 2003 as deputy associate director for business enterprise, working on the business side of the agency dedicated to stopping weapons of mass destruction. In 2007, she was made associate director, business enterprise/component acquisition executive and in 2012, Durand was made the agency’s executive director. She held that post until being named acting director in 2016.   read more

Price has long been a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a right-wing group that has fought against anti-smoking campaigns; opposed mandatory vaccinations; linked vaccines to autism and abortion to breast cancer, in both cases without medical evidence; and denied that the HIV virus causes AIDS. In the Georgia Senate, he advocated for caps on medical malpractice awards and fought efforts to make it easier for Georgia’s undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses.   read more

By 2000, Lynn was in the Network Management Division in the Pentagon. After the 9/11 attacks, Lynn was made division chief for the Commander in Chief for Operations and Support Division. In 2002, he took command of the 3rd Signal Brigade and was deployed to Iraq. Lynn returned to the U.S. and in 2005 moved into the office of the Army’s Chief Information Officer and became executive officer to the CIO.   read more