Free Republic

White House staff members who work in close quarters with President Trump have been told they are scheduled to receive injections of the coronavirus vaccine soon, at a time when the first doses of the vaccine are being distributed only to high-risk health care workers, according to two sources familiar with the distribution plans. The goal of distributing the vaccine inside the West Wing is to prevent additional government officials from falling ill in the final weeks of the Trump administration. The hope is to eventually distribute the vaccine to everyone who works in the White House, but will begin...

Donald Trump made it official Wednesday: The incoming senior White House staff will have a deep bench of aides steeped in politics, including staff members pulled from the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign. In 16 days, the businessman-turned-president will rely on a mix of mostly young political operatives and communicators whose focus will be on the agenda, messaging and business style he favored last year and in the weeks since his November victory. Trump also added former aides who served President George W. Bush to help manage the operations of the executive office of the president, as well as...

Say cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese. What has Valerie been lately?

President Barack Obama is rooting for President-elect Donald Trump's success, he said Wednesday afternoon during a nine-minute address in the White House Rose Garden - but his clearly devastated staff didn't look so sure. With Vice President Joe Biden at his side, a sometimes smiling but always composed Obama said Tuesday's election in which his party's nominee lost the nation's highest office was a setback for his agenda but not for the nation. 'We are now all rooting for his success in uniting the country,' he said. 'Everybody is sad when their side loses an election. But the day after,...

Paycheck Fairness: The president who repeated the feminist "77 cents" myth and touted equal pay for equal work in the State of the Union hasn't practiced what he preaches with the women he employs. The feminist heroine that prompted the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act might be surprised to learn of the Obama White House's war on women, paying its female staffers only 87 cents on the dollar compared with their male counterparts. So when Obama lectured that "women deserve equal pay for equal work," he hasn't exactly been true to his school. Last September, economist Mark J. Perry noted...

The investigation into the Colombia prostitution scandal has broadened to include the White House Communications Agency, Nextgov has learned. Laura Williams, a spokeswoman for the Defense Information Systems Agency, which manages the White House office that provides the president with secure communications, confirmed that one individual from WHCA is under investigation, but could not provide any more details at this time.

The prostitution scandal which has devastated the Secret Service could be set to spread to the White House. A senior Republican has urged the investigation into what happened in Colombia ahead of Barack Obama's trip there to extend to presidential staff who were preparing for his visit. Senator Charles Grassley's comments came on the day that three more Secret Service agents who had been sent home over the incident resigned from the agency. Also on Friday, Mr Obama received a personal briefing on the state of the investigation from Mark Sullivan, director of the Secret Service. -------- Mr Sullivan visited...

WASHINGTON, DC – Shortly after the last issue of Foundation Action went to press, Foundation attorneys hit the Obama Department of Labor (DOL) with a federal lawsuit for ongoing violations of disclosure laws. Foundation attorneys hope that the lawsuit will force the Administration to comply with an earlier Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which sought documents on Department of Labor officials’ ties to union political operatives. Meanwhile, evidence recently surfaced that DOL officials consciously and even deliberately ignored FOIA protocols. As a result, then Foundation has filed another FOIA submission, seeking documents about the DOL’s response to the first...

There may be 26 holiday parties in 21 days at the White House this month, but the mood in the West Wing is anything but merry. True, President Bush's recent Iraq speeches have put the White House back into comfortable blasts of campaign mode, but a lot of staff members say that they are feeling burned out and beaten down. So talk has intensified after a miserable year - Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the C.I.A. leak investigation, Iraq - about staff changes and who may be leaving in January. "I hope you know that coming into a new year, some people...

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton had a reunion of sorts last week with old White House officials and aides. Or was it a harbinger of things to come? That's the question raised Chicago Sun-Times gossip maven Michael Sneed, who reports that Clinton "held a get-together of former White House staff at her posh home in Washington, D.C., last Wednesday . . . causing wags to wonder if this was a prelude to national office." Attendees included former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, former White House chief of staff John Podesta and Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council. Also...