White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters, who regularly defended the administration’s economic policies, plans to leave in April to work for Edelman Public Relations.
Walters is the only White House spokesman besides Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to remain on the job since the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency. She joined the White House staff after working with former press secretary Sean Spicer at the Republican National Committee and concentrated on economic issues, including the 2017 tax overhaul and trade negotiations with China.
Walters said it was “time for a change” and that she was excited by the opportunity at Edelman. “It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the president in this administration,” Walters said in a statement.
New Rumor! People are worried Trump might fire Dan Coats?
President Trump has grown increasingly disenchanted with Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, who has served as the nation’s top intelligence official for nearly two years, leading some administration officials to worry he will soon be dismissed, according to people familiar with the matter.
The president has never seen Coats as a close or trusted adviser, the people said, but he has become more frustrated with him in recent weeks over public statements that Trump sees as undercutting his policy goals, particularly with respect to reaching a disarmament agreement with North Korea.
The people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, did not believe that Coats would be fired immediately but said that Trump is considering removing him. They also noted that Trump sometimes grows angry with officials but stops short of dismissing them.
Trump is still “enraged” about Coats’s congressional testimony on national security threats last month, believing that the director undercut the president’s authority when he shared intelligence assessments about Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State that are at odds with many of Trump’s public statements, said one adviser who spoke with the president over the weekend.
This is a must read!!!
Deep dive into the early days of Trump’s NSC.
A former NSC staffer came back during the first few months of the Trump administration for another person’s farewell party. When he asked people how they were, at least six individuals declined to say anything in front of others. Instead, each pulled him to a corner near a window. Of the Trump appointees, they would say, “‘These people are incompetent. They literally don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t care to know what they’re doing,’” the person recalled, saying the despondent staffers would add, “‘I don’t know why I’m doing this. Nobody listens to professional advice.’”
(…)
Among NSC watchers, there’s a sense of relief that no major national security crisis occurred during those first several hectic weeks. The question now, many say, is whether America’s foreign policy machine under Bolton is functional enough to handle a major surprise.
“If you don’t have process, then when a crisis happens you’re not going to be able to pull the right people together for a coherent response,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who now leads the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “And in this administration, all the crises that we’ve had so far have been self-inflicted. We haven’t had one from the outside.”
At the time, in 1993, the Princeton professor was taking a break from academia to direct scientific research at the U.S. Department of Energy. He turned a skeptical eye toward one of then-Vice President Al Gore’s favorite issues: the risks posed by chemicals eating away at ozone in the stratosphere and letting in dangerous ultraviolet radiation. As the story goes, Happer went to the White House and told Gore’s staff he saw no evidence that the ozone hole actually was hurting anyone.
Gore was annoyed, and Happer lost his job.
(…)
Bender says he wouldn’t do it now, though. It’s partly because of the scientific dispute, because he thinks Happer is misreading the evidence. But it’s also because of Happer’s style — he’s labeled climate science a cult and accused other scientists of whipping up climate fears to boost their own careers. Most offensive for Bender: Happer once said the "demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the Jews under Hitler."
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Good advice and it looks like Whitaker is taking it. Maybe he’ll surface somewhere on Turks and Caicos.
Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has left the Department of Justice.
A Justice Department spokesman told The Hill that Whitaker’s last day was Saturday but did not expand on the circumstances surrounding his departure or his plans after leaving. It is unclear where Whitaker might go, including whether he might seek another role in the Trump administration. …
Whitaker’s departure comes less than three weeks after William Barr was confirmed as Trump’s next attorney general. Barr was widely expected to bring new blood to top leadership roles in the department, raising questions about Whitaker’s tenure.
Since Whitaker’s testimony, The New York Times reported that Trump at one point asked Whitaker whether the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman could be put in charge of an investigation there related to campaign finance violations stemming from a scheme to pay off women who alleged affairs with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump has denied doing so and the Justice Department said Whitaker stood by his testimony.
Don’t hold your breath. Carson is giving two years’ notice. Say what? That’s a head scratcher. Maybe he’s just trying to distance himself from Trump.
One other question would be: If Trump resigns or is removed from office would you leave then?
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson says he intends to leave his post at the end of President Trump’s term.
Carson made his remarks in a segment airing Monday evening on Newsmax TV, a conservative news outlet. In his two years leading HUD, Carson has dialed back civil rights enforcement at the agency and suspended Obama-era rules that had been aimed at fighting housing segregation and discrimination.
“I will certainly finish out this term,” Carson said during his interview with Newsmax.
another one bites the dust…
Bill Shine resigns from the White House to advise Trump’s 2020 campaign
Officials: Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has resigned
Just for the visual effect…
And Wilson
Shine was the fifth communications director in Trump’s White House, a role the president has struggled to fill during his more than two turbulent years in office. The others were Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke, Anthony Scaramucci and Hope Hicks.
6th time’s the charm?
Notice there’s always a spike in departures when things start to go badly off the rails? Does anybody know precisely why Scott Gottlieb took off? That one seemed to shock a LOT of people.
Slight Edit: I just noticed that Scott Gottlieb, head of the FDA, is not listed above. So, uh, now he is.
Thanks, I’ve been sick this week.
- FDA chief Scott Gottlieb is leaving in about a month.
- Just last week, Gottlieb said the FDA was working on new regulations for CBD-infused food and drink.
- While the federal government legalized hemp-derived CBD, the FDA’s rules still prohibit adding it to food or drinks.
The top communications official at the Department of Veterans Affairs, John Ullyot, announced his resignation Thursday, according to an internal email obtained by CNN and a statement from Secretary Robert Wilkie.
Ullyot will officially leave his post as the assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs in early April and will be “announcing an exciting new position shortly,” according to the email.
A White House appointee, Ullyot was widely considered to be a staunch loyalist of President Donald Trump during his two years at the VA and praised the President’s leadership in an note to colleagues announcing his decision to leave the department. …
Ullyot came under fire in December after emails surfaced showing he discouraged the department’s former chief diversity officer from posting a more forceful condemnation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who participated in the deadly August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Last March, USA Today and The Washington Post reported that Ullyot tried to facilitate the ouster of then-secretary David Shulkin by trying to get a top House Veterans’ Affairs Committee staffer to encourage members to demand his resignation.
Lance Leggitt, deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and a veteran of two presidents, plans to resign soon, the White House announced on Friday.
A former chief of staff at the Health and Human Services Department, Leggitt served as deputy of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump White House for little more than a year, working on lowering the price of prescription drugs and assisting U.S. veterans.
Omfg, VEEP had to talk Coats down from resigning over pulling out of Syria. Also Trump calls Coats, Mr. Rogers. 
The country’s intelligence chief was on the verge of resigning at the end of last year over his frustrations with President Donald Trump but was talked out of it by his closest ally in the administration, Vice President Mike Pence, according to current and former senior administration officials.
Among the tensions the officials said have marred the relationship between the president and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats: Trump pushed Coats to find evidence that former President Barack Obama wiretapped him; he demanded Coats publicly criticize the U.S. intelligence community as biased; and he accused Coats of being behind leaks of classified information. More recently Trump also fumed to aides after Coats publicly defended the importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in countering Russia’s aggression, officials said.
But the tipping point for Coats came in December with Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, and the contentious departure of former Defense Secretary James Mattis after protesting the policy, according to the current and former officials. The vice president, who has repeatedly played the role of envoy between Trump and Coats, convinced his longtime Indiana friend to stay until at least this summer, the officials said.
Linda McMahon is stepping down as head of Small Business Administration to chair the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action, according to three people familiar with the move.
Trump allies have spent weeks searching for someone to chair the super PAC, which officials view as a key plank in the president’s reelection campaign. The president’s top aides believe they will need to raise around $1 billion, and say the super PAC will be a major part of the effort. Brian Walsh, America First Action’s president, declined to comment.
Mystery of mysteries…
In a new profile, The Atlantic claims Rod Rosenstein will NOT be leaving the Justice Department as previsously reported, he will stay on indefinitely, role unknown.
Rosenstein was slated to leave the Justice Department in March, but will now stay on indefinitely, according to NBC. The hearings for his replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, are scheduled for later this month.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is about to lose two of his most trusted aides, just as House Democrats ramp up pressure on his department to release President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Eli Miller, chief of staff at Treasury and a former Trump campaign official, will leave the department next week, according to a staffwide email sent Friday afternoon. Close Treasury observers say Miller is expected to join the private sector.
[…]
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Public Affairs Tony Sayegh has also planned for months to leave by the end of May and is interviewing candidates for his replacement as the agency’s top communications official.