White House details ethics waivers for at least 16 of its staff members
WASHINGTON — Presi- dent Donald Trump has given at least 16 White House staff members dispensation to work on policy matters they handled while employed as lobbyists or to interact with their former colleagues in private-sector jobs, according to records released late Wednesday.
The details on these socalled ethics waivers — more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration— were made public after an intense dispute between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics, which had been pushing the Trump administration to stop granting such waiversin secret.
The list of waivers includes high-profile names such as Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser. They had to be granted waivers because of their prior work with organizations such as the Republican National Committee and because they continueto have contact with those organizations as part of theirWhite House work.
But the waivers are also going to former lobbyists — most notably Andrew Olmem, Michael Catanzaro and Shahira Knight — despite Mr. Trump’s campaign vow to try to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington.
Five former lawyers and another former employee from Jones Day — the law firm that handled compliance matters and other legal issues for the Trump campaign — also have been given waivers to talk with the firm, including White House CounselDon McGahn.
The waivers made public Wednesday also appear to clear the way, ethically, for Steve Bannon, Breitbart’s former chief executive and now Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, to ring up reporters at thenews site.
GOP care bill poll
A new poll finds that 3 out of 4 people in the United States do not believe that the House-passed health care bill fulfills most of Mr. Trump’s promises.
The poll out Wednesday from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation also found a growing share of the public concerned that the GOP’s American Health Care Act will have negative consequences for them personally by increasing their costs, making it harder to get and keep health insurance, orreducing quality.
In the poll, only 8 percent said the Senate should pass the House bill as it is.
However, the poll also found that the GOP base continues to support the House bil, and a plurality of Americans expressed support for Medicaidwork requirements favoredby the GOP.
Arctic drilling
U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is issuing a directive aimed at spurring oil and gas development in Alaska, including a move to assess just how much crude might be lurking under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, according to a statement announcingthe move.
Mr. Zinke’s order, which was to be signed during his trip to Anchorage, also compels a rewrite of an Obamaera plan that limited oil and natural gas development in roughly half of the nearly 23 million acre National PetroleumReserve in Alaska.
‘Covfefe’ kerfuffle
Mr. Trump sparked a global kerfuffle over “covfefe” with his bizarrely truncated tweet just minutes into Wednesday, spawning countless jokes across Twitter but also more serious questions for which the White House gave no answers.
The original Twitter post read “Despite the negative press covfefe.” With that, Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed went silent for the next five-and-ahalf hours.
Interior retirement
Tim K. Lynn, a senior law enforcement official at the Interior Department who investigators documented had sexually harassed six women who worked for him or with him, reportedly has retired.