D.C. briefly
President Donald Trump has nominated George Nesterczuk to become director of the Office of Personnel Management. Nesterczuk, head of a management consulting firm, was a senior adviser at OPM during the Reagan administration and went on to positions at the Defense Department and Transportation Department.
As Donald Trump prepared to assume the presidency, he unveiled an ethics plan promising that his company would donate to the U.S. Treasury "all profits" from foreign government patronage of his hotels. Several months later, the Trump organization told Congress that it was all but impossible to identify every foreign government official at its hotels.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is departing from the president's plan to overhaul U.S. food aid, saying he does not believe the food stamp system is "broken" or requires any fundamental change. Instead, he believes that reduced spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could be achieved by "a growing economy and falling unemployment," the Department of Agriculture said. The administration's proposal for SNAP would achieve the vast bulk of its $193 billion in savings by kicking the costs to state government.
President Donald Trump's 2018 budget proposal would bar Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from receiving federal funds that help pay for health care services for millions of Americans. Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the proposal "the worst budget for women and women's health in a generation."
The United Nations said the Trump administration's proposed budget cuts would "simply make it impossible" for the global organization to maintain essential operations. The budget submission would reduce funding of the State Department by roughly a third and cut foreign assistance by about 29 percent.
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