White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers is leaving her job a few months after her office allowed uninvited guests to attend a state dinner, the White House announced today. Rogers will be returning to the private sector in Chicago, where she first met President Obama, reports The Washington Post. Rogers faced blistering criticism from Congress and the media after employees of her office, which clears guests for White House events, failed to catch three uninvited guests who walked into a state dinner for the prime minister of India. In a statement, the president and Michelle Obama thanked Rogers, a longtime…
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The Environmental Protection Agency is asking for the public to help it comply with an Obama administration directive to make government operations more open and transparent. EPA has created a special website through which people can submit and vote on ideas for how the agency can solicit more feedback from the public, improve the quality and availability of information posted online and work better with groups inside and outside government. Ideas will be accepted until March 19. EPA will use the suggestions to help write its first-ever Open Government Plan, said Linda Travers, EPA’s principal deputy assistant administrator, in an Feb. 10 e-mail to…
My colleague Elise Castelli posted a blog earlier this week about the White House’s launch of a new open government dashboard, which you may have missed for all of the Snowpocalypse/Snowmaggedon/snOMG news. Not much information is posted yet on the dashboard’s Web site, which is part of the administration’s move to make government operations more transparent. President Obama signed an executive order Dec. 8 giving agencies until April 7 to detail how they will open up data to the public, and more will be added to the dashboard once agencies have released their transparency plans. But until then, the first…
The federal government’s Washington offices may be closed today because of the Snowmageddon, but the White House sees only sunshine and rainbows for its Open Government Initiative. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer posted a blog entry today showing how agencies are faring in meeting the goals of the president’s Open Government Directive. According to Pfeiffer, and this stoplight-styled scorecard (think Bush-era President’s Management Agenda), federal agency performance toward meeting their goals has been green like the grass under the two feet of snow covering the White House lawn. And rainbows. If you count it up, all but four of…
If you’re looking for something to do Wednesday evening after our next expected round of snow, you might want to check out www.whitehouse.gov beginning at 5:15 p.m. Bob Dylan will be one of at least a dozen musical acts performing that night in the East Room to honor the Civil Rights Movement, and the White House will stream the whole thing live on their Web site. Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson, Joan Baez, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Smokey Robinson and John Mellencamp are among the other musicians to be featured at “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music…
President Obama today sounded off on the hold that’s been placed on Martha Johnson’s nomination to head the General Services Administration, even as the Senate planned a procedural maneuver to force a vote on her confirmation. After addressing the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Issues Conference this morning, the president opened the floor to questions. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced his frustration that many of Obama’s judicial nominees and political appointees were being blocked by Republicans. While conceding that Democrats have been guilty of the same thing in the past, Obama said Republicans are blocking nominees for reasons that have nothing to…
The White House just announced that the federal government will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020, compared to 2008 benchmarks. The ambitious federal target is the aggregate of percentage reduction targets reported by 35 federal agencies earlier this month. President Obama ordered agencies in an October executive order to begin measuring and reducing their carbon footprints, the first such comprehensive effort by the federal government. I’ll be sitting in on a conference call at 11 a.m. with administration officials to discuss the initiative. Check back at www.federaltimes.com for a full report.
The General Services Administration is getting a lot of attention from White House this week. Last night, I reported that Pres. Obama appeared to call out Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., for holding up Martha Johnson’s nomination to lead the agency. Today, the White House blog chose GSA to illustrate the new feature: “The President’s Cabinet Reporting to You.” Coincidence? Or a sign of how the White House views the government’s procurement and real estate arm?
Much has been written about the politics of President Obama’s call for a partial spending freeze. (In short, they’re hard to figure out: The freeze annoys liberals, it’s too small to placate conservatives, and because it exempts defense spending, it hasn’t earned many plaudits from real fiscal hawks.) Less has been written about the policy side, partly because the details of the freeze won’t be public until Obama releases his budget on Monday. But the sense I get — and I alluded to this in a quick State of the Union story last night — is that the freeze will…
If you have questions after watching Wednesday night’s State of the Union, President Obama wants to hear from you. After the president finishes his 9 p.m. EST speech, anyone will be able to log onto www.youtube.com/citizentube and post a question. Participants can also vote on their favorite questions, the White House announced on its blog Tuesday. Obama will answer the questions next week (date and time TBA) during a live interview on YouTube.