At least five officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, four of them high-ranking, were reassigned or demoted, or requested new jobs in the past year after they raised concerns about the spending and management of the agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt.
The concerns included unusually large spending on office furniture and first-class travel, as well as certain demands by Mr. Pruitt for security coverage, such as requests for a bulletproof vehicle and an expanded 20-person protective detail, according to people who worked for or with the E.P.A. and have direct knowledge of the situation.
Mr. Pruitt bristled when the officials — four career E.P.A. employees and one Trump administration political appointee — confronted him, the people said.
Today, Trump told reporters that Pruitt is “very courageous,” and “a good man” who’s “done a terrific job.” Pruitt’s aggressive deregulatory spree, don’t forget, has also turned him into a “conservative hero.” — gs
* Jeff Stein reports that in Kentucky, Republicans are doing the people’s business:
The Kentucky legislature passed a sweeping tax overhaul this week, and now lawmakers are asking Gov. Matt Bevin to sign a bill that would slash taxes for some corporations and wealthy individuals while raising them on 95 percent of state residents, according to a new analysis.
The proposal arrives on the Republican governor’s desk at a charged moment in Kentucky politics: The bill flew through the legislature on short notice, and thousands of teachers went to the State Capitol building earlier this week to protest cuts to their pension system.
Bevin’s position on the tax overhaul, Kentucky’s biggest in more than a decade, remains unknown. He said in a statement that the bill and the state budget, which was also passed by the legislature and is awaiting his signature, may not be “fiscally responsible.” Bevin has until April 13 to sign or veto the bill or send it back to the legislature with modifications.
The plan would flatten Kentucky’s corporate and personal income-tax rates, setting both at 5 percent. Currently, Kentucky’s corporate tax rate runs between 4 and 6 percent, while its income-tax rate ranges from 2 to 6 percent. The new flat rate of 5 percent for everyone means that small companies and Kentuckians with below-average incomes will face tax hikes, and higher earners will get tax cuts.
Look, if those poor people wanted to pay less in taxes, they should have had the good sense to be born rich.
* Greg Jaffe reports that Trump is at odds with his generals about what “victory” is:
President Trump’s pronouncement that he would be pulling troops out of Syria “very soon” has laid bare a major source of tension between the president and his generals.
Trump has made winning on the battlefields of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan a central tenet of his foreign policy and tough-guy identity. But Trump and the military hold frequently opposing ideas about exactly what winning means.
Those differences have played out in heated Situation Room debates over virtually every spot on the globe where U.S. troops are engaged in combat, said senior administration officials. And they contributed to the dismissal last month of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster who as national security adviser had pressed the president against his instincts to support an open-ended commitment of U.S. forces to Afghanistan.
Trump’s words, both in public and private, describe a view that wars should be brutal and swift, waged with overwhelming firepower and, in some cases, with little regard for civilian casualties. Victory over America’s enemies for the president is often a matter of bombing “the s— out of them,” as he said on the campaign trail.
He returned to the theme this week. “We’re knocking the hell” out of the Islamic State, Trump said at a rally in Ohio last month. The boast was a predicate to the president insisting that U.S. troops would be “coming out of Syria real soon.”
For America’s generals, more than 17 years of combat have served as a lesson in the limits of overwhelming force to end wars fueled by sectarian feuds, unreliable allies and persistent government corruption. “Victory is sort [of] an elusive concept in that part of the world,” said Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who led troops over five tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. “Anyone who goes in and tries to achieve a decisive victory is going to come away disappointed.”
Well, Trump knows more than the generals do, believe him, so we know who’s right.
* Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis, and Josh Dawsey report that the EPA’s top ethics official says he didn’t have all the relevant information when he signed off on Scott Pruitt’s unusual living arrangement — meaning Pruitt could still be in trouble over it.
* Geoff Mulvihill and Maureen Linke report that there are now a record number of women running for Congress, most of them Democrats.
* Joshua Holland explains why Trump’s naked racism could in the long run harm the anti-immigrant movement he champions.
* Michael Hiltzik has a nuanced look at how the coming trade war with China could hurt workers and consumers, without accomplishing what Trump says he wants.
* Ryan Reilly reports from the trial of a group of white nationalist terrorists in Kansas who had a plan to slaughter Somali refugees.
* A new poll in Tennessee shows Democrat Phil Bredesen leading Republican Marsha Blackburn by 10 points in the race for a Senate seat.
* Robert Maguire reports that GOP megadonor Robert Mercer gave over $2 million to a dark money group that ran despicable anti-Muslim hate-mongering ads before the 2016 election with the help of Google and Facebook.
* And Luke O’Brien tracks down Trump’s most influential white nationalist social media troll.
