While Security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA. Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars. Rent was about market rate, travel expenses OK. Scott is doing a great job!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

Senator Lankford Chief of Staff Nominated Assistant Secretary of the Navy

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today applauded the President’s nomination of Retired Rear Admiral Gregory Slavonic to be the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Slavonic is a native Oklahoman and currently serves as Chief of Staff in the Office of Senator Lankford.

“Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic is the model of public service. He has dutifully served our nation in the Navy, and he has served the people of Oklahoma as my Chief of Staff. He has been nominated to serve our country again in the Department of Defense. I am very proud of his long career and dedication to this nation. Greg has been my Chief of Staff for three years. His leadership will be missed on our team, but he will be a tremendous asset to the Navy. I fully support his nomination and look forward to Greg continuing his distinguished career as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.”

Prior to Slavonic’s role in Lankford’s office, he was a senior leader at the Computer Sciences Corporation, where he planned and executed several nationwide US Navy community outreach engagements. He also served as Executive Director of the Jim Thorpe Association; and as President of Flagbridge Strategic Communications, a consulting company focused on strategic communications and leadership. Mr. Slavonic retired from the US Navy after a 34-year career, where he originally enlisted as a Seaman Recruit and, after repeatedly distinguishing himself, was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral. During his Navy career, he held four command assignments, served in combat deployments to Vietnam, Operation Desert Shield/Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and was awarded numerous decorations including the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Presidential Unit Citation, and Combat Action Ribbon. Mr. Slavonic earned a BS from Oklahoma State University and M.Ed. from the University of Central Oklahoma, where he was recognized with a Distinguished Alumni Award.

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U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine has been nominated to be the next administrator of NASA, the White House announced Friday night.

Bridenstine, a 42-year-old Tulsa Republican, had taken the unusual approach of making clear his interest in the job. Bridenstine’s nomination will now head to the Senate for confirmation.

“I am pleased President Trump has announced his intent to name Jim Bridenstine as NASA Administrator today,” said U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa. “As the former administrator of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium, Jim Bridenstine’s lifelong passion for space, combined with his work in Congress on modernizing our nation’s space program will serve him well at NASA.”

If confirmed, Bridenstine would be the first former member of Congress to head a space agency traditionally seen as apolitical. Most past administrators have been scientists.

Read the complete story on NewsOK.com

One morning in the early months of President Donald Trump’s presidency, chief of staff Reince Priebus stood before a meeting at the West Wing. Gripping two news articles in his hand, he motioned toward chief White House strategist Steve Bannon.

“Hey, Steve, it says here I want to stab you in the back,” Priebus said.

Bannon, holding two news articles of his own, responded in kind.

“Hey, Reince, it says here I want to club you like a baby seal,” he said.

Seated between them and laughing heartily was a self-described “good ol’ boy from Oklahoma,” a fast-talking politico whose stream-of-consciousness spiels still harbor a slight Sooner State twang.

Three decades in Washington have not cost deputy White House chief of staff Rick Dearborn his folksiness. “Heck” and “doggoned” pepper his sentences. His mother is still “Momma.” The White House budget director is “ol’ Mick Mulvaney.”

Read the complete story on NewsOK.com

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating was interviewed Wednesday by President Donald Trump for the FBI’s top job but said he does not expect to be chosen.

“If they wanted me, I certainly would be honored, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen,” Keating, 73, told The Oklahoman after his interview at the White House.

Keating, a Republican, was identified as one of four candidates being interviewed Wednesday for the position of FBI director.

Trump last week fired James Comey, who had been FBI director since 2013. The abrupt dismissal triggered harsh criticism of the decision, since it came in the midst of an FBI investigation of Russia’s meddling into last year’s presidential election.

Read the complete story on the oklahoman.com

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma on Tuesday joined a small but growing group of Republicans pressing Donald Trump to release his tax returns.

“He promised he would,” Mr. Lankford told a small gathering of constituents on Tuesday, according to Tulsa World newspaper. “He should keep his promise.”

Since the late 1970s it has been common practice for presidential candidates to release their tax returns, though they have released records for differing time periods and at different stages of the campaign. Beginning with Jimmy Carter, every president has released their returns while in office.

Mr. Trump has declined, most frequently citing advice from lawyers not to release his returns during an audit. There is no law barring the release of tax returns during an Internal Revenue Service review.

Read the complete story on wsj.com

WASHINGTON — By most accounts, the Trump administration is running behind many of its predecessors in filling out its ranks. Under secretaries still need confirmation, staff members need to be hired and advisers named.

And yet, across the federal government, the middle tiers of the executive branch’s agencies, departments and White House offices — the people who will ultimately shape President Trump’s agenda — are beginning to come to life.

Here are a few of the less-than-boldface names among them who are likely to play an outsize role in accomplishing Mr. Trump’s highest-priority items.

Ryan T. Jackson, Chief of staff to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator

Since he started in politics at 18, Ryan T. Jackson had more or less worked for one man: James M. Inhofe, the powerful Oklahoma Republican who is one of the Senate’s most ardent skeptics of climate change.

Read the complete story on nytimes.com

Apparently the day after Moore police report Ralph Shortey shared a Super 8 Motel room with a boy, Shortey spent time with Donald Trump Jr. pic.twitter.com/84CMjbiPla

— Steve's OKC Central (@stevelackmeyer) March 14, 2017

WASHINGTON — When he addresses Congress for the first time on Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump will do so as one of the most untraditional and unexpected presidents in American history. The election, however close, was a decisive statement by the American people against the status quo, an expression of the hope that he would break the stalemate in Washington and lead the country in a new direction.

Mr. Trump can take pride in his cabinet choices, the deregulatory thrust he and the Republican Congress have initiated and the boldness he has shown in shaking up the established order and the elites in Washington. His decision to push ahead on the Keystone pipeline is the triumph of common sense over environmental orthodoxy. And his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court is a master stroke that conservatives celebrate and even liberal jurists respect.

I have no doubt that President Trump will spend much of his speech making the case for three initiatives that are already underway in Congress: the rebuilding of the military, the repeal and replacement of the failing Affordable Care Act and the long overdue reform of the tax code. And he will surely discuss his proposals for something most Americans strongly favor — enhanced border security.

However, President Trump will need to do more than merely wait upon a Republican Congress to produce the legislation he has championed. He must become an active participant in the legislative process.

Read the complete story on nytimes.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal ethics officials have cleared President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency for confirmation.

The Office of Government Ethics on Monday released the personal financial disclosure report for Scott Pruitt, currently Oklahoma’s attorney general. The ethics office affirmed that Pruitt’s disclosures comply with applicable federal laws and rules.

No date has been set for Pruitt’s Senate confirmation hearing.

His finances are among the least complicated of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, who include several billionaires. In just four pages, Pruitt disclosed an investment portfolio valued between $420,000 and $1 million, held primarily in mutual funds, bonds and a state retirement plan.

Read the complete story from the AP. 

"I don't have that level of trust for Vladimir Putin" – @jameslankford reacts to @realDonaldTrump's praise of #Putin https://t.co/SvKbqf5RTT

— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) January 3, 2017

Video: OKCFox.com

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — It was the night of Donald J. Trump’s first win.

He was on stage in New Hampshire accepting victory over his fellow Republicans in the nation’s first primary. During his speech, he took a moment to thank his staff. “Get over here,” Mr. Trump said to a man standing off camera, “Get over here.”

Emerging through the crowd was someone a national audience had never seen, but it was the man Mr. Trump wanted them to know, “Come here,” Trump said as Stuart Jolly emerged from the people behind the podium. “This is the man,” Trump said of Jolly.

“He brought me up to the microphone,” Jolly recalls, “That was quite a night, quite a night.”

Jolly, is fairly well known to people in Oklahoma’s political circles. To the national political punditry, he was virtually unknown. That’s the way he liked it. Getting on stage was not something he had planned on as the votes came in that night in New Hampshire.

“He [Mr. Trump] came by and said ‘You’re going on stage.’ And I said Mr. Trump I don’t want to go on stage he walked away and then came back and said ‘You’re going on stage,’ Jolly told FOX 25 about the night before the New Hampshire victory speech. “I said seriously Mr. trump it’s your night you get up there and then he taps me on the chest and he said ‘You’re going on stage; I wouldn’t be here without you.’”

Jolly had been hired into the Trump campaign, initially, in a much smaller role. His experience running Oklahoma campaigns was a good fit for where Trump needed help.

The southeastern states that made up “Super Tuesday” voting.

Soon, it was clear that for Trump to survive through “Super Tuesday,” he needed more early wins. Jolly’s unique brand of Oklahoma campaigning was moved to New Hampshire.

“I think what I brought to New Hampshire was focus,” Jolly said, “I focused them, I focused on the grass roots.”

Soon after the New Hampshire win Trump promoted Jolly to be his national field director.

“Mr. Trump told me, I asked him what he wanted me to do and he said win, just win. I want you to win, I hire professionals so I don’t have to tell you what to do.”

Jolly hired staff to run each state. While it was a bigger job than he had ever done before, he treated it like he had previous successes. A strategy that confused those used to a much different presidential campaign strategy.

“I think Politico criticized me or Washington Post criticized me at some point for not having national experience,” Jolly said, “It wasn’t national at all. It was a state by state by state. How I ran New Hampshire, I didn’t run Texas; How I ran Oklahoma I didn’t run Missouri.”

Jolly would leave the campaign with much of what he calls “Trump One,” the original staff members that got the campaign through the primaries. By the time he left the campaign had secured 22 primary wins. Jolly went from the campaign to a pro-Trump Super PAC where he continued doing what he had been doing; working to win.

“We focused on the grass roots and not talking about what we were doing,” Jolly said, “We did not want to incentive the other side to work harder.”

There were times during the campaign Jolly and others were discouraged. He says the discouragement came when he would watch outsiders describe what was happening with the campaign. They painted a different picture than the one he knew as an insider.

On election night, he watched from the nation’s capital. First Ohio came in for Trump, then Florida. State by state, Jolly saw his work paying off.

“I wouldn’t say stunned, but we ran through the streets of Washington D.C.; there were about 20 or 30 of us who ran through the streets screaming it was awesome.”

So how did Trump win?

It is a question that is still being debated. However Jolly believes the answer is simple. They did not target the likely voters. They went to people who had given up on voting.
“We targeted those who had not been in the process for a while who had simply been left behind.”

Jolly said 2017 will begin with major changes as the new president takes over and begins fulfilling campaign promises.

“In six months you’ll never know President Obama had been president for eight years,” Jolly predicts due to the reliance on executive orders that a President Trump can quickly overturn.

Jolly is not planning to join the administration. He plans to continue splitting his time between Oklahoma and Washington helping, at first, ensure Trump’s picks for his administration get through the Senate.

Read the complete story on OKCFox.com

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to appoint Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a Trump transition team source said on Wednesday.

Pruitt was elected Oklahoma’s attorney general in November 2010 and has focused on restoring more regulatory oversight to states and limiting federal regulations.

As his state’s top legal official, he sued the agency is he poised to lead multiple times, including a pending lawsuit to topple the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Democratic President Barack Obama’s climate change strategy.

Read the complete story on reuters.com

TRUMP MEETINGS (3)
T.W. Shannon of Oklahoma
Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers of WA
John F. Kelly, Marine Corps general/formerly Southern Command.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) November 20, 2016