3 headlines the White House hopes you'll miss as Hurricane Harvey hits

Washington (CNN)As the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the US in more than a decade took aim at Texas, President Donald Trump's White House engaged in an age-old Washington tradition: the Friday news dump.

Transgender individuals? Banned from joining the military. Convicted Sheriff Joe Arpaio? Officially pardoned. Controversial White House adviser Sebastian Gorka? Out of a white House job.

All three headlines popped after 6 p.m. Friday as TV news broadcasts and websites turned their attention to Texas, where Hurricane Harvey was preparing to make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane -- the most powerful to hit the US since 2004.

The hurricane provided cover, ensuring that the controversial storylines wouldn't dominate TV news broadcasts, websites or front pages of the next morning's newspapers. The storylines even got overshadowed in Twitter feeds dominated by the cataclysmic predictions about damage the storm is expected to wreak.

The coordinated effort drew quick notice from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who slammed the news dump as "so sad, so weak."

"As millions of people in TX and LA are prepping for the hurricane, the President is using the cover of the storm to pardon a man who violated a court's order to stop discriminating against Latinos and ban courageous transgender men and women from serving our nation's Armed Forces," Schumer wrote in a series of tweets. "The only reason to do these right now is to use the cover of Hurricane Harvey to avoid scrutiny."