White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is laying down a new policy sharply restricting overseas travel, after one member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet has been accused of frivolous international trips.
According to Politico's West Wing Playbook, "At a February meeting with Cabinet members and senior staff at the Capitol Hill Club more than a week before the war with Iran, Wiles made clear that overseas travel should be kept to a minimum and only undertaken when absolutely necessary, according to three people familiar with the private conversation granted anonymity to discuss it freely. As a sign of how serious the new mandate is, any Cabinet-level international travel now must be approved by Wiles herself, two of the people said."
The change is framed as a necessary move to focus on domestic travel ahead of what Republicans expect to be a bruising midterm election cycle.
"Wiles’ edict came ahead of the crucial midterms and when the GOP more broadly was reckoning with the president’s tariff fight and fallout over the killings of two Americans in Minnesota at the hands of federal agents," said the report. "The outlook for Republicans in November, however, has since become more dire as Trump launched a war with Iran and gas prices spiked."
However, Politico's Sophie Cai noted, the move also follows Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ "'aggressive international travel' last year to Vietnam, Japan, India, Peru, Brazil, and the UK last year."
Rollins has frequently come under controversy for statements about inflation perceived to be tone-deaf.
At a moment when egg prices were spiking due to a shortage last year, she suggested people should simply raise chickens in their backyards. And more recently, she insisted there was no issue with food prices, because the USDA ran "more than 1,000 simulations" and determined Americans can have "a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing," for just $3.