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Rex Tillerson's speech to assembled employees at the US State Department. He noted that his wife said in urging him to accept the nomination that "Your career until now has been a 41 year training program for this job." https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/10155043859978675/

Just yesterday we noted that, according to a Rasmussen poll, while the vocal, and often violent, disaffected Hillary protesters may get a lot of media attention, the silent majority of Americans, men and women who don't have time to protest 24 hours a day because they actually go to work to provide for their families, support Trump's temporary immigration ban from 7 mostly-Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. Now, Reuters/Ipsos, the pollsters who mastered the application of the Democrat "oversample" in the months leading up to the presidential election last November, is out with another poll that confirms...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roughly 900 U.S. State Department officials signed an internal dissent memo critical of President Donald Trump's travel ban for refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, a source familiar with the document said on Tuesday. A senior State Department official confirmed that the memorandum in the department's "dissent channel" had been submitted to management. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday he was aware of the memo but warned career diplomats that they should either "get with the program or they can go."

The White House on Monday warned State Department officials that they should leave their jobs if they did not agree with President Trump’s agenda, an extraordinary effort to stamp out a wave of internal dissent against Mr. Trump’s temporary ban on entry visas for people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Career officials at the State Department are circulating a so-called dissent cable, which says that Mr. Trump’s executive order closing the nation’s doors to more than 200 million people to weed out a handful of would-be terrorists would not make the nation safer and might instead deepen the threat. “These...

Today’s Fake News freakout began with a buzzing swarm of headlines about “mass resignations” by the “entire senior level of management officials” at the State Department resigning in some stunning act of protest against President Trump. Before long, we learned we were talking about four people, and they did not resign, they were fired. “The State Department’s Entire Senior Management Team Just Resigned,” gasped the Washington Post, prompting a ripple of secondary headlines across mediaspace. Some of those headlines were a bit more cautious, such as the Jerusalem Post reporting that the State Department team resigned “in a possibly coordinated...

Drain the swamp This is going to be one of those stories that’s either awesome or horrifying, depending on your predilections. If you’re a creature of Washington who believes in the sage wisdom of “nonpartisan” career bureaucrats, then you’re horrified that these fine, experienced public servants feel they can’t serve under the wild-eyed lunatic Donald Trump. If you’re interested in draining the swamp, on the other hand, it’s hard to get more drainy than this:

Stupid people need jobs too Fox News Channel appears to have instituted an affirmative action hiring program among on-air contributors. Incompetent low-IQ Obama administration spokesthingies are now in demand, or so the hiring of former State Department goofer upper Marie Harf suggests.

Thank goodness for our federal government, they can fix anything: The Department of State held workshops for agency employees struggling with the emotional stress of the Trump Transition in December, the Washington Free Beacon reports. – DC You can’t blame them, their poor employees had barely recovered from Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) when along comes this even more virulent strain, Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), that nearly every employee at State fell prey to. I’m sure they had plenty of diaper pins, Play Doh, coloring books and counselors on hand in their safe space to prevent staffers from doing harm to...

The State Department held stress management sessions following Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, providing employees tips for how to cope with change so they do not “become paralyzed by fear.” . . . The State Department’s Employee Consultation Service sponsored the stress management events. Workers were given excused absence from their work duties in order to attend the one-hour sessions.

President-elect Trump won't get any help from the State Department in implementing Israeli-relation policies opposed by President Obama before his inauguration. "The short answer is no," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. "You have one president at a time." Obama's team invoked that axiom to justify high-profile foreign policy actions in recent weeks, notably his decisions to sanction Russia over the election year cyberattacks and to allow the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israeli settlement construction. Kirby's statement extended that principle to barring any aid in helping the Trump team prepare to move the United States embassy to...

When Secretary of State John Kerry delivered his comprehensive statement on the Arab-Israel conflict in front of a safe audience at the State Department, he took over an hour to defend the decision of the United States to in essence allow passage of the recent UN anti-Israel resolution by abstaining from it, rather than adhering to the longstanding policy of the U.S. to veto such resolutions. The general thrust of his message was to chastise Israel for building “settlements” on land defined as “occupied Palestinian territory,” as the main obstacle preventing a two-state solution. In addition to focusing attention on...

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday “it’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things” after the Obama administration issued sanctions against Russia for its alleged 2016 election hacking. “It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said in a written response released four hours after the announcement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation." The Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia’s intelligence services, while...

Labor Secretary Tom Perez called presidential transition questions sent to government agencies like the Energy department, seeking to identify employees who worked on climate change, against the law. “Those questions have no place in a transition,” Perez said. “That is illegal.” Last week, President-Elect Trump’s transition team sent the State Department a memo requesting information on its “gender-related staffing, programming, and funding.” However, the document did not request specific names of employees working on those programs. “Will dedicated career people be targeted because they were doing the right work?” Perez said. He said he isn’t aware of any similar “blanket...

According to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the State Department gave $349,276 in U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to a political group in Israel to build a campaign operation, which subsequently was used to try to influence Israelis to vote against conservative Benjamin Netanyahu in the March 2015 election for prime minister. In the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report about the State Department’s action, Chairman Bob Portman (R-Ohio) said, “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader [Netanyahu]...

Mr. Tillerson emerged as a contender on the strong recommendations of James A. Baker III, the secretary of state under President George Bush, and Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary, according to a person briefed on the process. Mr. Kushner and Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, advocated strongly for Mr. Tillerson, and the president-elect became intrigued.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest encouraged President-elect Trump on Monday to take advantage of the "expertise and advice" of career diplomats at the State Department as the controversy surrounding the incoming president's recent call to Taiwan continues to boil over. "Whenever you are talking about the president-elect interacting with foreign leaders, it's incredibly important. It has profound consequences for our country and for our national interests around the world," Earnest said in response to a reporter's question about whether Trump is "winging" his discussions with foreign leaders. "Last week, we had some conversations about a conversation the president-elect had...

News Media Organizations Also on Record Supporting Public Release (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced it filed a motion that seeks to unseal the audiovisual recordings of the depositions of top Clinton aides and State Department officials. The depositions come in connection with a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to former Secretary Clinton ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). Judicial Watch argues that “even though the election is over, the news media and the public continue to...

President-elect Donald Trump is having a heckuva time deciding on who to nominate as secretary of State. It began with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s insistence that he wanted and deserves the job as payback for the yeoman work he did for candidate Trump when many leading Republicans were, shall we say, less than enthusiastic in their support of his fellow New Yorker. The mayor is an up-front sort of fellow, but trying to force a new president’s hand as he did is not always the best approach for a cabinet wannabe who might have a hard time being...

JW Asks Court to Find Government Misconduct in Clinton Email Scandal Trump Administration Should Investigate Clinton ScandalsNew Documents Show Clinton Conflicts of InterestTune In! — The First 100 Days: The Anti-Corruption Agenda JW Asks Court to Find Government Misconduct in Clinton Email Scandal The Clinton email scandal is more than about the conduct of Hillary Clinton. It is about the lawlessness of the Obama administration, especially the State Department. That’s why our Judicial Watch attorneys recently asked a federal court, on the grounds that the documents relate to government misconduct, to reject the State Department’s secrecy claims over certain...

Muslims working in the State Department, Defense Department, and intelligence agencies like the CIA wonder if, with the election of Donald Trump, they should quit their jobs. The employees are on edge about everything from retaining their security clearances to the possibility of discriminatory treatment under Trump, whose top aides include known peddlers of conspiracy theories about Islamists infiltrating the U.S. government. "I feel apprehensive," a Muslim intelligence official told POLITICO. "I fear that – whatever white power movement or equivalent all of a sudden feels empowered by the president-elect, whatever tidbits of that community make their way into...