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Ok…Dr. Bright’s lawyers are filing a whistleblower complaint about the retatiatory treatment he was subjected to by HHS political leaders. 
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Capt. Brett E. Crozier should be restored to command of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy’s top officials recommended on Friday.
But Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, who was briefed on the recommendations, has asked for more time to consider whether to sign off on the reinstatement of the captain of the nuclear-powered carrier.
Mr. Esper received the recommendation on Friday that Captain Crozier be reinstated from the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael M. Gilday, and the acting Navy secretary, James McPherson. Defense Department officials said earlier that they expected to announce the results of the Navy’s investigation into the matter on Friday afternoon.
Mr. Esper’s decision to hold up the investigation has surprised Navy officials, who believed that the defense secretary would leave the process in the hands of the military chain of command.
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Yes, the guy who hired the Labradoodle trainer to head the pandemic response is more than likely getting the axe.
It had to be someone who gets the the blame. Azar is a horror show…so yes, let’s take him down, just to get things right for T.
Senior officials’ long-standing frustrations with the health chief have mounted during the pressure-packed response to the Covid-19 outbreak, with White House aides angry this week about Azar’s handling of the ouster of vaccine expert Rick Bright. At a recent task force meeting, Azar assured Vice President Mike Pence that Bright’s move to the National Institutes of Health was a promotion — only for Bright and his lawyers to release a statement that he would soon file a whistleblower complaint against HHS leadership, blindsiding White House officials, according to three officials familiar with the meeting.
White House officials also have blamed Azar for long-running turmoil at the health department and a series of media reports that portrayed him as urging Trump to act on the Covid-19 outbreak in January, only for the president and his aides to disregard Azar’s warnings as alarmist. Azar has denied the reports, saying that Trump “never once rejected, turned down or dismissed a recommendation” of his or the task force’s.
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Rayon and Rhinestone are have finally fallen out of favor.
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Joe Grogan to Resign as Top White House Domestic Policy Adviser
His decision to leave, which aides have anticipated for months, comes shortly after former Rep. Mark Meadows took over as the president’s fourth chief of staff.
“I had a great conversation with the president and a great conversation with Meadows,” he said.
Mr. Grogan began heading the Domestic Policy Council last year, after serving as a top health-care official in the White House budget office, where he became a close ally of former budget director and former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. He previously served as a lobbyist for the drug company Gilead Sciences Inc.
Mr. Grogan has been deeply involved in the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. He has been a member of the White House coronavirus task force since it was formed in late January, and he was among several officials who expressed concerns internally in February and March about the nation’s testing capacity, aides said. In late March, he began urging the president to reopen the economy, people familiar with the discussions said.
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Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages
President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.
The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.
See video below 
And her report, see below
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Atlantic writer
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Eject critics and plant the CYAers
In a Friday night announcement, the White House nominated a permanent inspector general to take the reins from Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who has run the office since January.
The White House nominated Jason Weida, an assistant United States attorney in Boston, as permanent inspector general. The announcement said Weida was chosen because he has overseen “numerous complex investigations in healthcare and other sectors.” He must be confirmed by the Senate.
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Top FEMA official announces he’s departing the office in July
William Roy, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Response Operations Division, is departing his position at the end of July, a senior administration official told NBC News.
Roy, a retired Army major general, has served as director of the division since July 2017. As part of that role, Roy oversees multiple departments, including the FEMA Operations Center and the National Response Coordination Center.
Roy has been deeply involved in the coronavirus response effort and is a member of the interagency leadership group that works with the White House and its task forces.
FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
I don’t know if this has to do with the FEMA report that came out today.
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I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Trump actually invoking the Defense Product Act to help manufacture vital PPE and other supplies has a slim chance of happening or succeeding given that the Trump regime just quietly fired Jennifer Santos, the Pentagon’s industrial policy chief s point person FOR the Defense Production Act.
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Another removal of an IG, but Acting one Mitchell Behm, who had replaced someone who retired at the Dept of Transportation. Mrs. Mitch McConnell aka Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao has been under investigation for her family connections and dealings.
Rep. Peter DeFazio and two other senior House Democrats on Tuesday demanded that the Trump administration reinstate Mitchell Behm, who had been the acting Transportation Department inspector general until he was ousted from the position over the weekend and replaced with the head of another agency.
Behm, a longtime deputy inspector general who had been acting in the lead position since Calvin Scovell retired in January, was replaced Saturday by Skip Elliott, who is also administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
In two letters, one addressed to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and one to Elliott, the chairs of the House Oversight and Transportation committees protested Behm’s removal, saying it’s the “latest in a series of politically motivated firings of Inspectors General” and calling Behm a devoted public servant.
Behm, who is not a political appointee, was pushed out of the job one day after Trump fired the State Department inspector general, a move which is now under investigation by House Democrats.
This happened on Friday, the same day as the other IG Linick was removed.
And another comment from Walter Schaub, former Ethics adminstrator who resigned at the beginning of T’s administration, suggesting that there had been a proposed bill to prevent T from firing IG’s that Sen Susan Collins could have seen to.
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You wonder what’s up with this…
A top banking regulator, Joseph Otting, announced Thursday that he will step down, a day after finalizing a sweeping overhaul of a 40-year anti-redlining law widely criticized by Democrats as potentially harmful to minority and low-income communities.
Otting did not offer a reason for his departure, which comes halfway through his five-year term as comptroller of the currency and during a global pandemic that is testing the resiliency of the U.S. financial system. His last day will be May 29.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appointed Otting’s deputy, Brian P. Brooks, to take over the Office of Comptroller of the Currency on an acting basis. Brooks was once a top executive at OneWest Bank, which Mnuchin owned and where Otting served as chief executive. Brooks “recognizes the importance of a robust federal banking system to the health and strength of the nation’s economy and has the skills and experience to succeed in this important role,” Mnuchin said in a statement.
Otting often cited his decades of banking industry experience while leading an agency that plays a critical role in regulating massive financial institutions, such as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. In a statement, Otting said he was “extremely proud” of his efforts at the OCC to “eliminate unnecessary regulatory burden.”
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Cross-posting 
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White House Coronavirus Testing Czar To Stand Down
The Trump administration’s testing czar announced Monday that he will be leaving that position in mid-June.
Adm. Brett Giroir told a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS that he will be “demobilized” from his role overseeing coronavirus testing at FEMA in a few weeks and going back to his regular post at the Department of Health and Human Services.
An HHS spokesperson confirmed the plan for Giroir to stand down from his role and indicated that there are no plans to appoint a new “head of efforts” for coronavirus testing.
“While Adm. Giroir will remain engaged with the COVID-19 testing and related efforts, many of the day-to-day management and operations of testing are being transitioned to HHS operating divisions,” the spokesperson said in a statement to NPR. This will allow Giroir “to return to the key public health responsibilities of the Assistant Secretary for Health.”
Giroir was appointed to the testing position in March at a time when the U.S. was struggling to ramp up testing capacity as coronavirus was spreading. When Giroir took charge, on March 12, there were only 5,247 tests done per day nationally.
By the end of May, there were around 400,000 tests done daily according to The COVID Tracking Project. While that’s a significant increase, some public health experts say that in order to safely reopen, as many as 900,000 daily tests may be needed.
“Week after week, things do look a little bit better,” says Scott Becker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “But we’re working to continue to expand because we really believe much more testing is needed through through the summer and certainly into the fall.”
Becker says Giroir was responsive and forthright about the testing issues, and that he appreciated him in the “command and control kind of role.” The move by HHS away from that model is understandable, Becker says, adding that it also makes him “a little bit anxious.”
“The testing supplies are still not perfect — the supply chain still isn’t fully operational,” he says. “So I want to make sure that we’re still getting the attention that we need.”
Becker takes some comfort in the fact that Giroir should still be accessible and responsive on testing issues from his usual post as assistant secretary for health at HHS, noting, “I still know where to find him.”
Trump clearly no longer needs testing now that he has a wall of soldiers to protect him from us sickos.
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A former top policy official at the Pentagon, James Miller, resigned from his role on the Defense Advisory Board due to what he said was Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s visible support for law enforcement officers’ clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square on Monday.
Miller called what he saw as Esper’s support for suppressing the protest a violation of Esper’s oath of office. Miller served as the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy during the Obama administration.
"When I joined the Board in early 2014, after leaving government service as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, I again swore an oath of office, one familiar to you, that includes the commitment to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same,’ " Miller wrote in a resignation letter addressed to Esper, which was published Tuesday in The Washington Post.
“You recited that same oath on July 23, 2019, when you were sworn in as Secretary of Defense. On Monday, June 1, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath,” Miller wrote.
“You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it. Instead, you visibly supported it,” Miller added.
On Monday, roughly a half hour before a curfew went into effect for Washington, following a weekend of unrest over the death of George Floyd, law enforcement began pushing back the crowd of peaceful protesters gathered outside the White House with tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets.
After they were cleared, President Donald Trump and an entourage of administration officials and security personnel walked to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church, a historic house of worship, where the President posed for photos, some of which included Esper and several other top officials. The exterior of the church had been defaced during protests outside the White House on Sunday and there had been a small fire in the parish house basement, but church leaders said in a statement that the structure was largely “untouched.”
Esper told NBC on Tuesday that he thought the trip out of the White House was “to see some damage and to talk to the troops.”
“I didn’t know where I was going,” Esper told the network. “I wanted to see how much damage actually happened.”
The secretary also addressed the widespread protests in an internal department-wide memo on Tuesday, saying, “I, like you, am steadfast in my belief that Americans who are frustrated, angry, and seeking to be heard must be ensured that opportunity.”
Protesters who have taken to the streets in recent days to draw attention to Floyd’s case and police violence across America say they want to see charges for all four police officers involved in his death. So far, officials have only charged the officer who was seen in a video with his knee on Floyd’s neck with third-degree murder and manslaughter – charges the protesters believe aren’t harsh enough.
The Defense Advisory Board, which was established in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War, comprises nearly 50 retired senior military, government, and industry leaders, and has advised the Pentagon on issues such as acquisition, cyber and communication technology, and weapons of mass destruction.
The Pentagon did not immediately return a request for comment on Miller’s resignation.
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This statement is equally scary. He’s supposed to be in charge!
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