White House

In a brief ceremony that mixed traditional holiday wishes with predictable humor, President Trump “pardoned” a 36-pound white-feathered tom turkey, Drumstick, from becoming a White House meal.

President Trump has nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, a current senior policy adviser at the free-market think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, to serve as the White House’s senior environmental policy adviser. Hartnett has argued that calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is “absurd,” and that C02 should instead be considered the gas of life.

After a commercial fisherman pulled a live Asian carp out of a northern Illinois river that empties into Lake Michigan, authorities have expressed concern that more of the invasive species have made it past electric barriers meant to keep them out of the Great Lakes, says the LA Times.

The Trump administration has removed nearly all mention of climate change from the White House website, says Reuters, while publishing a call for increased energy development and fewer environmental regulations.

The Opportunity Project released 29 digital tools to help communities grow, including one, "FindYour.Town," intended to help rural communities attract investment and spur economic growth, said the White House. The project was launched in March so non-profits, companies and other non-governmental groups could create digital tools that dig into federal databases to benefit communities.

As the Senate opened debate on the energy and water funding bill, the White House warned against using the bill as a vehicle to stop the EPA's Waters of the United States (WOTUS) regulation.

Four food-policy advocates called on presidential aspirants to spell out their views on a coordinated U.S. food policy with the intention of declaring a National Food Policy within weeks of taking office in January 2017. "Production and consumption of food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity," write Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, Ricardo Salvador and Olivier De Schutter.

Obama administration officials suggested additional steps to help schools meet requirements to serve healthier meals during an hour-long meeting with nutrition, school and consumer groups. Sam Kass, senior nutrition advisor at the White House, said it was a "positive discussion" and Wendy Weyer of the School Nutrition Association said the meeting was "very solutions-oriented."

The School Nutrition Association turned down a request by Sam Kass, White House nutrition policy advisor, to speak at this week's national conference, attended by 6,500 people working in the school food industry, says Politico. SNA chief executive Patricia Montague says Kass, in a message passed through USDA, asked to speak at the conference "to rally the troops" on rules requiring healthier school meals.

The Agriculture Department is seeking White House approval of poultry inspection rules that would allow processors to speed up slaughter lines and direct USDA inspectors to devote more time to preventing meat contamination. Approval by the White House budget office would be one of the final steps before the proposal becomes official policy. Submission of the Poultry Inspection Modernization rule was reported by groups on both sides of the issue.

President Obama has nominated Jeffrey Prieto, a federal attorney since 1998, to be general counsel for the Agriculture Department, said the White House. The general counsel is USDA's chief lawyer.

House Agriculture chairman Mike Conaway says that calls to reduce the cost of crop insurance are billed as reform, "but we know the real end game is to kill crop insurance."