He pursued a career as a newspaperman, serving as managing editor of the Chicago Evening Post and rising to the position of Washington, D.C. bureau chief of the International News Service.
Straus continued as part of the new Truman Administration, moving laterally in December 1945 to the position of Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation within the Interior Department.
The Bureau of Reclamation has been severely criticized for the permanent alterations it made to natural waterflows throughout the western United States.
Works like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by novelist Ken Kesey, lament what they see as the destruction caused by the dams and reservoirs constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation and its sister agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, during this period.
On the other hand, the electrical power generated by the new federal dams constructed during this period has become an essential element in the lives of millions of people in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and neighboring states.