https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition Trump Transition en-US Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:04:25 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/health-science/cdc-acting-director-jay-bhattacharya-scientific-disagreements-rfk-jr Margaret Manto In an internal meeting, Jay Bhattacharya spoke candidly about his relationship with Kennedy, expressed support for the measles vaccine and said his replacement is coming soon. Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:04:25 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/health-science/cdc-acting-director-jay-bhattacharya-scientific-disagreements-rfk-jr Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acting Director Jay Bhattacharya told agency staff Wednesday he has had “scientific” disagreements with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Do we agree on every single item? No,” Bhattacharya said of Kennedy during an internal Q&A session, according to audio obtained by NOTUS. He added, “We may have disagreements about scientific matters, but he listens.”

More specifically, Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor and health economist who rose to prominence as a critic of COVID-19 shutdown policies, said he would continue to strongly encourage parents to vaccinate their children.

“The way that we actually get back to having basically zero measles transmission is by making sure that every community in the country knows that this is the best way to protect their kids from this deadly disease,” Bhattacharya told staff.

“Bobby's fine with me saying that,” he added.

Vaccines were one of many topics Bhattacharya spoke about during the Wednesday morning session at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, his first appearance before the agency’s entire workforce since being named acting director in February, when the former acting director, Jim O’Neill, was dismissed.

Since then, Bhattacharya has served concurrently as head of both the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.

Kennedy has a history of casting doubt on vaccines and has drawn scrutiny for not highlighting them as the best way to control the ongoing measles outbreak. His hand-selected panel of vaccine advisers has voted to remove the hepatitis B birth-dose vaccine from the childhood immunization schedule and to split up vaccines long given in tandem. (A federal judge blocked some of those efforts last week, saying Kennedy’s decision to replace the panel did not follow federal legal procedures.)

In contrast, since becoming acting CDC director, Bhattacharya has received praise from agency staff for speaking publicly about the benefits of vaccines.

After publication, Bhattacharya responded to NOTUS’ reporting on X.

“I differ on scientific matters with nearly everyone about some things,” he wrote. “I learn much from respectful conversations about those disagreements, including especially with Sec. Kennedy.”

Bhattacharya’s time at the agency may soon come to an end: He told staff on Wednesday that he expects his permanent replacement to lead the public health agency to be announced imminently.

“I anticipate that there will be a permanent director nominated by tomorrow,” Bhattacharya said.

That news came with a word of caution Wednesday: Senate confirmations are “a long, painful – I know from experience — process.” He told staff he would stay on as CDC acting director until a new permanent director is sworn in.

Acting directors can only serve for a maximum of 210 days from the date a vacancy occurs. It has been 210 days today since the last permanent director, Susan Monarez, was fired in August.

The short list of potential candidates for the role include former Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher, who is also a family physician, and Joseph Marine, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg reported.

The CDC has been in a state of chaos since Kennedy took over the health department, including mass layoffs last October, a partial reversal of those layoffs, Monarez’s dismissal over scientific disagreements and a shooting on campus that left employees rattled.

Employees pressed Bhattacharya on his commitments to the agency. The acting director said he was bringing their concerns to HHS leadership, including “emphasizing in no uncertain terms” to HHS that telework accommodations for CDC employees should be “treated with the respect they deserve.”

Bhattacharya also said he had not heard of any future reductions in force, but that he would oppose them.

CDC employees also pressed Bhattacharya on the agency’s ongoing efforts to recuperate after the shooting at CDC headquarters in August, during which a gunman killed one police officer, David Rose, and fired hundreds of rounds at CDC buildings.

Bhattacharya said that repairs to broken windows that are still boarded up were planned, but he didn’t have an exact timeline. He also said he had suggested to Kennedy that the road leading into CDC’s campus be renamed after Rose, and that Kennedy was on board with the plan, which drew applause from the audience, according to the audio.

On other issues, like the U.S.’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, Bhattacharya remained mum.

"The politics of the WHO withdrawal are above my pay degree,” he said.

While some of the acting director’s comments were well-received — especially those relating to supporting hiring at the agency, including rehiring some employees who worked on chronic disease and were affected by last year’s reductions in force — the mood in the room was still on edge, one CDC employee who attended the meeting in person told NOTUS.

“There was tension,” the employee said. “We were trying to be respectful while still feeling very wary.”

The employee said that a number of non-CDC security personnel were present at the meeting, which they called “a first for any all-staff or all-hands I have seen.”

“Do they really think that little of us? Like we are going to bum rush the stage and attack?” the employee said.

Several other attendees who asked questions in person thanked Bhattacharya for his transparency.

“Thank you for your candor and this opportunity to ask you real questions, even the tough ones,” one participant said.

“It has been several years since we’ve had an open mic, so thank you for doing that, and we hope this will continue when a new director is appointed as well,” said another.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/immigration/white-house-denies-tom-homan-feds-fbi-money Violet Jira The White House is forcefully denying that Homan accepted the money, despite reports that the exchange took place on camera. Mon, 22 Sep 2025 19:24:22 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/immigration/white-house-denies-tom-homan-feds-fbi-money The White House is standing behind border czar Tom Homan after reports that he accepted $50,000 as part of an undercover FBI sting operation last year.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing Monday that Homan didn’t take the money at all — despite several reports suggesting that the exchange took place on camera.

“Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to,” Leavitt said. “So you should get your facts straight.”

According to reporting from MSNBC, Homan accepted $50,000 in 2024 from FBI agents posing as business executives after indicating that he could help them secure government contracts in the second Trump administration.

The FBI and DOJ intended to continue the investigation to see if Homan would fulfill the promises he made to the fake executives, only for the investigation to be closed by the Trump administration, according to MSNBC.

The reporting, which has been confirmed by other outlets, also states that the exchange of $50,000 in cash was recorded on camera by FBI officials.

“Mr. Homan did absolutely nothing wrong, and even the president’s Department of Justice, even Kash Patel’s FBI, looked into this just to make sure. They had a number of different prosecutors and FBI agents who looked into this,” Leavitt continued. “They found zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing in the White House, and the president stands by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong.”

Homan himself has also denied the claims.

The allegations come at a time when the White House is under scrutiny from critics who say it is weaponizing the Department of Justice against Trump’s political enemies. On Saturday, Trump posted a message to Truth Social urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to advance legal action against his foes.

Leavitt said that the FBI’s investigation into Homan, which happened while Trump was still on the campaign trail, is “another example of the weaponization” of the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden.

Democrats are already demanding answers as to why the investigation was closed.

“Border Czar Tom Homan was caught by the FBI accepting bribes – on camera – to deliver government contracts in exchange for $50,000 in cash,” Sen. Adam Schiff, himself the subject of a Trump DOJ investigation, wrote on X Saturday. “Pam Bondi knew. Kash Patel knew. Emil Bove knew. And they made the investigation go away.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/donald-trump/executive-orders-day-one Jasmine Wright, Reese Gorman The incoming president is set to move fast on immigration, energy and national security. “The first priority isn’t the messaging,” one former aide close to the Trump team said. “It’s the doing.” Mon, 20 Jan 2025 10:00:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/donald-trump/executive-orders-day-one After Donald Trump swore his oath to the nation eight years ago, his then-chief strategist Steve Bannon beelined straight to the White House — skipping the rest of the day’s pomp and celebration, intent on making sure all of the newly vetted executive orders were ready for the Washington newcomer’s signature.

“I was one of the first people in the White House, it still had boxes from the previous administration,” Bannon told NOTUS. That Inauguration Day was marked by chaos, miscommunication and fights over crowd size that left Washington declaring that Trump failed to deliver on his promises.

“The intensity of starting on Monday at noon for a new administration — particularly for us, since 2016 was such a come-from-behind victory — we didn’t really have a second to worry about transition until we actually won,” Bannon added.

Allies of the president-elect say that’s all over now. The senior team’s unfamiliarity with the government and infighting that fed a narrative of chaos for the first days won’t be present again, they say. This time around, Trump will take his oath and then enter the Oval Office far more ready to quickly transform the federal government.

Instead of the “shock and awe” strategy of 2017 — which included proclamations curtailing Obamacare, initiating a federal hiring freeze and withdrawing from a trade agreement — this time around the plans are bigger and have been in motion for months, if not years.

Trump will start with a host of prepared executive orders, which sources tell NOTUS could range in number anywhere between 70 and 100. The orders could be staggered throughout the week instead of all in one day. In addition to orders, he plans to sign dozens more executive actions, two sources told NOTUS — a different tool than an executive order that typically carries less legal weight. The full amount of new directives would reach over 200.

The strategy, said those who have knowledge of the plans, includes a flurry of action meant to show that Trump is serious about acting on the mandate he believes the American people bestowed upon him after the decisive November election.

“He wants to go to work and get a lot of things through to show the momentum, the swiftness in which he’s moving,” one GOP official said.

Bannon put it more bluntly.

“I say it’s bigger than shock and awe,” he said. “It’s gonna be days of thunder.”
AP25019840139412 (5782x3854, AR: 1.50)The majority of the orders that have been written and that Trump might choose to sign fall under one of several issue buckets, including immigration, energy, tariffs, cultural issues like DEI and return to work, as well as crypto, Big Tech, Jan. 6 defendants and TikTok.

For instance, Trump told senators during a Sunday morning breakfast at Blair House that he planned to repeal Joe Biden’s electric vehicle mandate on the first day, amid other orders that would focus on the border and drawing back other regulations, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

And in a midday call with lawmakers, his team expanded on what’s to come, according to two sources briefed. Stephen Miller, the incoming deputy chief of staff who will also oversee domestic policy, said Trump would move to revive key policies he put in place in his first administration — like Schedule F, making it easier for federal employees to be fired — while tearing down new policies erected by Biden.

The orders, many of which were drafted in a shroud of secrecy, are just the start of an administration on a mission to maximize its first 100 days in office — some orders might be substantive directives, while others might be solely for messaging.

Frank Maisano, a senior energy lobbyist at Bracewell, said executive orders are often “symbolic in nature.”

“They set a tone for what an administration wants to project as their agenda and their direction, right,” he said.

But a former top aide suggested Trump is trying to do more than just table setting. “The first priority isn’t the messaging, it’s the doing,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who had been a senior Homeland Security official in the first term. “I think to the extent messaging is on the list, it’s to convey that he’s going to keep his promises, which was one of his strengths in his first term, which is not necessarily something that always happens in Washington.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a close friend of Trump’s who has been briefed on what’s coming, summed the expected orders up as a way to “jump start” Trump’s agenda.

In an interview on Friday, Mullin told NOTUS to expect orders on the border, national security and energy. “Those are going to be the three big areas. You may see some stuff on foreign policy that’s directed depending on what happens, you know, in Israel and Gaza, but that’s to be determined.”

Many of the nearly dozen officials, operatives, allies and staff NOTUS spoke with say the biggest swing could be reviving Trump’s 2019 executive order “Remain in Mexico,” which required certain immigrants seeking asylum along the southern border to wait in Mexico. Biden ended the policy in his first year in office, but faced lawsuits looking to reinstall it. Others expect Trump to bring back Title 42, a controversial pandemic-era law that allowed the government to expel those who had come from countries where a contagious and passable disease was present.

“There will be impacts, literally, at 12:01 p.m.,” Cuccinelli told NOTUS. “The Border Patrol will immediately be converted from the world’s biggest force of greeters outside of Walmart to a law enforcement organization again who’s tasked with defending the border. That literally happens simply by the swearing in of Donald Trump.”

Miller and border czar Tom Homan have led the most recent drafting of EO’s since the election. But that’s after Trump’s allies — including in think tanks like America First Policy Institute and The Heritage Foundation — have spent years studying possibilities.

One person with insight into the process said that the major swings on immigration — including the pledge to deport migrants who have crossed the border illegally, with a focus on those who have committed crime while in the United States — may not begin in earnest until the Senate confirms Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

“I know that they have plans and are ready to rock and roll, but they also want to give some time for Noem to get in and get settled a little bit,” the source said.

Two Republican officials outside of the transition team NOTUS spoke with said they expect Trump to sign an order that kicks off the fight to get federal workers back in the office five days a week, after the pandemic pushed people out of the office and created a work-from-home model for many government workers.

Another major issue that Trump is likely to deal with on day one is the fate of TikTok. Trump acknowledged as much himself on Sunday, saying on Truth Social that he would issue an executive order to keep the app live in the U.S. after a law banning it or forcing its sale went into effect.

A GOP official with direct knowledge said that TikTok pitched Trump on three options to keep the app online in the U.S., after the Supreme Court upheld the law on Friday. They include effectively ignoring the law by the Department of Justice not enforcing it as passed, certifying that TikTok had qualified the divestment statute by offloading its infrastructure to the American company Oracle, or by simply issuing a 90-day extension.

Trump suggested on Truth Social that he would issue an extension.

A major crypto executive order is also expected, according to two sources. One option, Reuters reported, is to create an advisory council. And orders on artificial intelligence are also expected to come down, some meant to reverse Biden’s last-ditch efforts that erected guardrails on AI use.

AI isn’t the only place Trump and his team plan to reverse Biden-era policies.

“You’re going to see laws that Biden overturned will be reimplemented,” Mullin said. He added that applied to national security, regulation and executive orders on energy, like “when it comes to public land and permitting and the stuff that happened offshore, and maybe even Alaska.”

Trump reiterated that promise at a rally on Sunday night.

“Somebody said yesterday, ‘sir, don’t sign so many in one day, let’s do it over a period of weeks.’ I said, ‘like hell we're gonna do it over weeks. We're gonna sign them at the beginning,’” Trump told his supporters at Washington’s Capital One Arena.

But they’ll have to tread carefully. House GOP leadership has asked the Trump team to not rescind all Biden-era policies via executive orders, according to a senior aide. It’s not that House Republicans love the Biden policies — they just might need to own their reversals themselves. As Punchbowl News first reported, some lawmakers are hoping to rescind Biden policies during the reconciliation process and have it count toward spending cuts that conservative lawmakers say they need to see before they agree to new spending.

But for Bannon, who has been inside the driver’s car before on a day like this and will now work from the outside, the first day is one of many that can make or break a legacy.

“You understand the weight of history that’s on you and the country,” he said. “Whatever administration, it’s a ton of pressure because you’ve now relieved the watch, and whatever happens, you know you’re responsible for, and you’re gonna be held accountable for it.”

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Jasmine Wright and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/trump-border-wall-first-executive-orders Reese Gorman, Jasmine Wright Trump plans to declare a national border emergency, which he believes will allow the military to build more of his infamous border wall. Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:42:07 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/trump-border-wall-first-executive-orders In his first days in office, Donald Trump plans to issue sweeping executive orders that will revive key policies he put in place during his first administration while also tearing down new policies erected by his once-rival-soon-to-be predecessor, Joe Biden, according to two sources briefed by the incoming administration on Sunday.

In a phone call with congressional GOP leaders, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, gave Republicans their clearest picture yet of what Trump plans to do during his first hours in the White House.

On immigration, the executive orders are expected to designate various cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, declare a national border emergency that allows the military to build more of Trump’s infamous border wall and revive a signature 2019 Trump policy titled “Remain in Mexico,” which requires those seeking asylum to remain in Mexico while asylum requests are processed.

Immigration will likely grab the most headlines in Trump’s first days, as the incoming administration has promised to start the process of deporting millions of immigrants who came to the United States illegally on Day One.

Miller told the group that Trump also plans to implement sweeping government reforms, including creating a process for removing career government officials that Trump staffers believe are insubordinate to the president, rewriting federal hiring rules and rescinding government hiring programs on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Trump also plans, according to the sources, to sign executive orders on Schedule F, the federal employee classification created at the end of the president-elect’s first term, to make certain civil servants more like existing political appointees and more easily fireable by a new administration.

On energy, one of the incoming president’s most discussed issues on the campaign trail, Miller told lawmakers to expect an “energy omnibus” to address a wide array of issues, including terminating Biden’s newly implemented ban on offshore drilling. Trump’s first wave of executive orders will also repeal Biden’s electric vehicle mandate and expedite the development of Alaskan energy production.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Reese Gorman and Jasmine Wright are reporters at NOTUS.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/biden-fda-rules-trump-red-dye-nicotine Margaret Manto From food dyes to nicotine, the last days of Biden are leaving more questions for the first days of Trump. Sat, 18 Jan 2025 14:03:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/biden-fda-rules-trump-red-dye-nicotine The Food and Drug Administration has issued a blitz of high-impact new rules in the last days of the Biden administration. Now agency officials just need to convince Donald Trump that they should stick.

Some of the new rules, like the ban on Red Dye No. 3, are likely popular with both the outgoing and incoming administrations. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead Health and Human Services, has said he will make reducing food additives a priority, and praised protesters rallying in October against food dyes. By issuing the new rule now, President Joe Biden’s FDA has taken one unpopular food additive off the docket for Kennedy and FDA commissioner nominee Marty Makary.

Other rules, like a proposed restriction on the amount of nicotine in tobacco products, will likely face opposition from the incoming administration — meaning the last-minute new rule effectively serves as a challenge from the current administration to the new one on whether or not they want to publicly state that cigarettes should be extra addictive. While Trump and Kennedy haven’t included nicotine reductions in their “Make America Healthy Again” platform, efforts to enact a similar rule during the first Trump administration failed. And Kennedy, though an ardent advocate for the reduction of toxins in the U.S. food supply, has been spotted with nicotine replacement pouches — which, incidentally, the FDA also ruled on this week, saying that the popular brand Zyn could begin marketing.

The FDA also proposed requiring front-of-package nutrition labels on packaged foods, which would seem to align with Kennedy’s goal of improving the American diet in an effort to reduce chronic disease.

What the rule — or really any of the others — doesn’t align with, though, is Elon Musk’s calls for a drastic reduction in the number of federal regulations.

One former FDA official told NOTUS that the timing of these new rules may have more to do with the end of the Biden administration than the second coming of Trump: Many of these seemingly last-minute policy proposals have been in the works for months, or even years.

“It’s not at all surprising or unusual that at the end of an administration, they will work hard to get out those priorities that they’ve already invested a lot of time and energy on out the door before the change of administration,” the official said.

But the official also said that while the FDA rule-making process is typically lengthy, “there are ways to compress that timeline, primarily in the clearance steps” that come after the public review periods, when the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Office of Management and Budget review the rule.

An FDA spokesperson told NOTUS that he was unable to comment on the timing of the new rules, or whether the agency had expedited the process in order to get the rules out before Jan. 20.

But in a statement released by the FDA, Commissioner Robert Califf seemed to acknowledge the cross-administration support needed to actually implement the new nicotine limit rule.

“Multiple administrations have acknowledged the immense opportunity that a proposal of this kind offers to address the burden of tobacco-related disease,” Califf said. “I hope we can all agree that significantly reducing the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S. is an admirable goal we should all work toward.”

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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/cdc-health-emergency-border-mexico-weldon Margaret Manto Is Dave Weldon up for it? Sat, 18 Jan 2025 12:00:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/cdc-health-emergency-border-mexico-weldon Donald Trump’s nominee for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director may have an unexpected role in the coming months: assisting the incoming president with closing the U.S.-Mexico border to migrants.

Trump and his advisers are reportedly considering using a public health emergency as an excuse to close borders. The catch? The decision on whether or not a disease warrants a border closure falls to the CDC. This caused issues for Trump in 2020, when his administration wanted to use COVID-19 as a reason to close the southern border.

Luckily for Trump, his new nominee for CDC director, Dave Weldon, appears to share his feelings about immigration. Weldon didn’t respond to a request for comment. However, his campaign website from when he ran for Florida House of Representatives in 2024 describes his goals for immigration policy in Florida.

“I have always supported strong border security to stop illegal immigration. I will never allow Florida to become a sanctuary state. While Congress fails to secure the border, the Florida Legislature must keep Floridians safe from illegal immigrants. I will give law enforcement the tools they need to enforce the rule of law,” Weldon’s website states.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a question about whether Weldon’s views on immigration were considered during the CDC director nomination process.

Weldon may soon have the power to decide on immigration policy for not just Florida, but the entire country. Under a 1944 law known as Title 42, the CDC can decide that “the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country” justifies prohibiting immigration in the name of public health.

But former CDC Director Tom Frieden told NOTUS that he feels there has been a “misunderstanding of the role of the CDC in general.” The function of the CDC is to provide information to policymakers so that they can understand the health effects of those policies, Frieden said.

“Policy decisions are generally made by policymakers. The CDC director is not by nature a policymaker,” he added.

Frieden also emphasized that ultimately, diseases like COVID-19 don’t respect borders.

“Even if you cut down on immigration, we’re all connected by the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. Whether it’s businesspeople or tourists traveling around the world and coming back with malaria or mpox or the next pandemic that spreads inexorably around the world, if we turn our back from the world, we’re increasing the risk to the U.S. The U.S. will be less safe,” Frieden said.

A spokesperson for the CDC declined to discuss the role the agency could play in calling for any future border closures, saying only that the “CDC cannot predict or theorize how or if Title 42 would be used in the future.”

Unlike some of Trump’s other cabinet nominees, Weldon has managed to avoid the spotlight since the announcement of his nomination in November. A physician and member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2009, he made a name for himself as an anti-vaccine advocate and by introducing legislation that barred federal health care programs from requiring health care entities to perform abortions.

But during his time in Congress, Weldon sponsored a number of bills targeting immigration, including a predecessor to Trump’s 2017 travel ban for visitors from Muslim-majority countries.

“United States border security agencies are presently overwhelmed with more than 400 million visits across our borders each year and safeguards need to be put in place to make our borders more secure,” begins Weldon’s 2002 bill, titled the Terrorist Admission Prevention Act.

The bill goes on to propose a moratorium on awarding U.S. visas to applicants from eight countries it considered “state sponsors of terrorism,” including Afghanistan, Lebanon and Egypt.

If Weldon is confirmed as the CDC director, his views on immigration could help Trump and his main immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, as they search for a public health-related excuse to close the border.

Miller has reportedly long searched for a disease concerning enough to justify migrant expulsions. But even in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists at the CDC opposed his and Trump’s decision to use COVID-19 as a reason to close the southern border. The head of CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, Martin Cetron, told a House select subcommittee in 2022 that the order to close the border was not drafted by his team, but rather “handed” to them from “outside the CDC subject matter experts” and that he had asked Robert Redfield, who was then the director of the CDC, to excuse him from the process of determining whether the pandemic warranted a border closure.

Ultimately, it reportedly took a direct call from Vice President Mike Pence to Redfield to get Redfield to authorize the use of the public health emergency to justify the Title 42 border closure in March 2020. It was the first time the law was used to close the border since it was passed in 1944.

The Trump administration did not want to have to strong-arm the CDC into issuing the Title 42 order in 2020. Trump described the order as originating with the CDC, saying at a March 2020 briefing that the CDC had decided to “exercise its authority” to “give Customs and Border Protection the tools it needs to prevent the transmission of the virus coming through both the northern and the southern border.” Pence’s team denied that he was involved in pressuring the CDC to issue the order.

One public health expert told NOTUS that closing borders is generally not an effective disease-mitigation strategy since it’s often done after the disease has already spread. The biggest public health impact the 2020 order had, he said, was to the CDC itself.

“There’s no doubt that it damaged the CDC’s reputation, not just within the broader public health community, but among the American people who were looking for sound, scientifically based guidance on COVID,” said Joseph Amon, director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University.

He added that if another Title 42 order were to be issued by the CDC, this time not during a major pandemic, it could cause even more issues.

“I don’t think this will restore people’s confidence in the CDC,” Amon said.

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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/jd-vance-senior-staff-vp-office Reese Gorman Jacob Reses, who served as chief of staff to Vance in his Senate office, will now be chief of staff to the vice president. Fri, 17 Jan 2025 20:30:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/jd-vance-senior-staff-vp-office Three days ahead of inauguration, Vice President-elect JD Vance has filled out his senior staff with some major hires.

Vance has tapped nine senior employees to lead his operation in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is just a stone’s throw away from the West Wing, according to a source familiar with the hires.

One of the most notable hires is Sean Cooksey, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission in 2024, who will serve as counsel to the vice president. Trump appointed Cooksey to the role of FEC commissioner in 2020. Prior to his time in that position, Cooksey was general counsel to Sen. Josh Hawley, and had been deputy chief counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz.

Cooksey resigned as a commissioner at the FEC on Jan. 13.

Vance is also bringing a number of people over from his Senate office to work with him as vice president.

His top aide will be Jacob Reses, who served as chief of staff to Vance in his Senate office. Reses will now be chief of staff to the vice president.

Reses, a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford Law School, previously served as senior policy adviser to Sen. Josh Hawley.

Bryan Gray, who was the political director of Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign and state director for his Senate office, will now be deputy chief of staff to the vice president.

Ben Moss, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and previously an appellate litigator at Vinson & Elkins LLP in Houston, will serve as director of domestic policy for the vice president. He previously was general counsel in Vance’s Senate office.

Andy Baker, who served as national security adviser in Vance’s Senate office, will now be the national security adviser for the vice president. Baker previously served as a foreign service officer at the State Department for more than 10 years.

The director of operations from Vance’s Senate office, Abby Delahoyde, will also be making the transition to the executive branch. She will serve as the director of operations for the vice president. Delahoyde was previously deputy chief of staff for Rep. Byron Donalds and served as director of operations for former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson in the first Trump administration.

Vance’s communications team will be led by William Martin, who will be communications director for the vice president. Martin previously served as communications director in Vance’s Senate office, worked on the Trump-Vance campaign, and was deputy communications director on Vance’s Senate campaign. Luke Schroeder will serve as deputy communications director for the vice president, having served in the same role for Vance on the presidential campaign. He was previously press secretary for Vance in his Senate office.

Taylor Van Kirk, who served as communications director on Vance’s Senate campaign and as national press secretary for Vance on the presidential campaign, will also be press secretary for the vice president.

Meanwhile, Second Lady Usha Vance is bringing in a close ally to serve as her top aide. Shannon Fisher, who served as deputy director of external affairs for the Republican National Convention and as the special assistant to Usha Vance on the Trump-Vance campaign, will be chief of staff for the second lady.

From 2017 to 2023, Fisher served as director of operations in the office of the RNC chair.

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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/kristi-noem-confirmation-senate Casey Murray Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security suggested TPS was at risk and Title 42 could soon be back. Fri, 17 Jan 2025 17:22:43 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/kristi-noem-confirmation-senate Kristi Noem, the likely next homeland security secretary, promised that incoming President Donald Trump’s policies on the border would go into effect fast — and that true border security would be achieved soon after.

“The southern border is not secure today, but in just three days, we will have a new president in this country, President Donald J. Trump, and he will secure our border,” Noem said during her confirmation hearing Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security is a wide-ranging department responsible for cybersecurity, combating terror attacks, responding to natural disasters, protecting the president and more. But it was clear from Noem’s remarks that for this administration, the border is the central issue.

In response to a question from Sen. Ruben Gallego about ensuring that the agricultural industry has enough workers, Noem said, “Trump has been very clear that his priority is going to be deporting criminals, those who have broken our laws and perpetuated violence in our communities.”

But she also declined to say whether she thinks the U.S. needs more immigrants. When asked, she said, “I do believe we need to follow our legal immigration laws and that it needs to be vetted.”

Noem previewed many of Trump’s policies. She said that she has “talked extensively” with the president-elect about reinstating Title 42, a public health emergency authority that his first administration used during the COVID-19 pandemic to turn away migrants at the southern border and was eventually ended by the Biden administration.

She said that if she is confirmed, she’ll end the use of the CBP One app “on Day One.” The app allows migrants to apply for asylum remotely and schedule an appointment to make their asylum claim at a point of entry.

Noem also indicated that temporary protected status would come under fire. Trump significantly limited the use of the status during his first term, but Joe Biden has extended it to allow migrants from certain countries to stay and work in the United States, most recently for Venezuelans and Salvadorans. The status does not provide a path to citizenship but provides legal status for 18 months.

“This program has been abused and manipulated by the Biden administration, and that will no longer be allowed,” Noem said. “The program is intended to be temporary, and this extension of over 600,000 Venezuelans as well, is alarming.”

Noem declined to comment directly on whether she’d work to reunite families Trump separated during his first term. She denied the “zero-tolerance” policy could be considered family separation at all and instead referenced Laken Riley, a student killed by an undocumented immigrant, and drugs from the southern border that may have harmed U.S. citizens.

“The Trump administration never had a family separation policy. They had a zero-tolerance policy, which said that our laws would be followed,” she said. “We will uphold our law, and we’ll make sure that we’re doing everything we can to keep our children safe.”

One senator questioned how Noem would work with Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar.” Sen. Andy Kim pressed Noem on whether she would actually be supervising the department, pointing to statements from both Homan and Trump about Homan’s involvement.

Noem said Trump “will be in charge of the border” but that she and Homan “communicate all the time” and will work together closely.

Noem has taken an active role on the border, even from South Dakota, deploying the National Guard from her state multiple times down to Texas, but others took her appointment as a sign that immigration policy would really come from Homan and Trump aide Stephen Miller, Politico reported.

She alluded to the questions about her appointment in the hearing and said she was the right pick for the department.

“The reason that I asked for [the job] is because I knew it was the president’s No. 1 priority,” Noem said. “I knew that it needed to have someone in the position that would do what the president promised the American people, would be strong enough to do it.”

Noem does not appear to be facing a particularly contentious confirmation. Democrats asked some pointed questions but generally seemed open to her. Like Republicans, they also took the opportunity to emphasize the need for border security.

“We all want more border security. We want to stop migrant crime,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.

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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/lee-zeldin-confirmation-hearing-senate Anna Kramer The EPA nominee’s hearing was contentious as Democrats anticipate major rollbacks of Biden’s environmental programs. Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:57:54 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/lee-zeldin-confirmation-hearing-senate Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency will determine the future of President Joe Biden’s climate legacy.

Trump’s pick to lead it, Lee Zeldin, did not give much insight into what that future will be at his confirmation hearing Thursday — one that was often interrupted by climate protesters screaming outside the hearing room.

Zeldin, who has no experience in climate regulation beyond his time in Congress, repeatedly said that he intends to collaborate with Congress and will prioritize “clean air and clean water.” Despite pointed questions from senators, he remained vague on which Biden-era rules and programs he would aim to cut or change, although he did reference abiding by recent Supreme Court decisions that limit the EPA’s power.

He spoke like the lawyer he is, saying that he was refusing to provide detailed answers about what he might do with the agency’s regulations because he is not allowed to “pre-judge” a rule, and he was trying to avoid jeopardizing future EPA decisions. Changes to EPA rules could be challenged in court based on his statements at the hearing.

Republican and Democratic senators made clear that they expect big change to come. Their questions covered rules governing power plant emissions, solar programs for lower-income people, lead pipe replacement, methane, ethanol and other so-called “renewable fuels,” long-lasting chemicals called PFAS and an obscure but important rule for farmers and real estate developers known as “waters of the United States.”

While secretary of energy nominee Chris Wright’s Wednesday hearing was mostly friendly and generally covered bipartisan topics like nuclear power, Zeldin’s hearing was much more contentious along party lines. This reflects the fact that the Department of Energy is largely responsible for popular investments in technology and “carrot”-like incentives, while the EPA administers the “stick” portion of the Biden administration’s climate agenda.

During the first Trump administration, the EPA was transformed by the administration’s deregulatory agenda and challenges to climate science. Agency scientists quit amid pressure from the administration. Many Obama-era environmental regulations were rolled back, and the work of several EPA programs was slowed or delayed.

Zeldin alluded to that time in his opening remarks, saying he would “foster a collaborative culture within the agency, supporting career staff who have dedicated themselves” and calling the agency’s scientists “talented.”

But he did not provide detailed answers to questions from Democrats about the science of climate change. He acknowledged climate change is real, but when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse asked about ocean acidity and the specific consequences of global warming, Zeldin repeatedly said he would defer to “the scientists.” He was asked if he still believes that it is important to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and responded: “In an ideal world, we would be able to pursue always the cleanest, greenest energy sources.”

He also said he is “researching and reading” information about microplastics.

The new chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, made it clear what her priority as the committee’s leader will be: electric grid reliability and electricity affordability. In her opening statement and then in her questions to the nominee, she repeatedly referenced the latest report from the nation’s grid reliability monitor, which has forecast increasing chances of blackouts over the next decade.

“The reliability risk is due to the projected retirement of dispatchable power plants, compiled with a 15% increase in electricity demand over the next decade. Critically, this demand cannot be met solely with intermittent energy generation,” Capito said, criticizing the Biden administration’s emphasis on renewable energy sources.

Zeldin did not provide details about what he would do to address this, but the EPA is in charge of the Clean Power Plan, a Biden administration rule structured to increase the speed of retirement of coal and gas-fired power plants. Representatives for the oil and electricity industries, Republicans in Congress and Trump have all pledged to do what they can to undo this plan, and the EPA under Zeldin could immediately begin the process of rolling back this rule.

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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/scott-turner-housing-confirmation-hearing Amelia Benavides-Colón Scott Turner, who has limited public experience in housing policy, had stayed out of the limelight until Thursday. Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:22:37 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-transition/scott-turner-housing-confirmation-hearing Scott Turner’s confirmation hearing on Thursday was the first real opportunity for senators to get a sense of his plans to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But Turner largely avoided committing to specific policies, focusing instead on sweeping goals of streamlining HUD’s funding and eliminating “ineffective” programs.

“What I do support is maximizing the budget and making sure that programs that we do have are meeting the intended needs,” Turner said, adding that he did not believe that was currently happening.

Turner, best known for his time as an NFL player, led the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Donald Trump’s first administration and served in the Texas state House. He also serves as chair of the Center for Education Opportunity at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. But unlike other Trump cabinet picks, he has not received much national attention and has been a mystery to many housing policy experts and Democrats.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, focused on Turner’s “limited public record” in her opening statement and encouraged him to lay out the “nuts and bolts” of his plans for HUD.

Turner agreed with nearly all committee members on the need for more affordable housing. But he did not outline detailed plans on how he would accomplish creating more. He did not commit to advocating for increased funding to affordable housing programs, indicated that he believed the federal government should play a smaller role in the housing market and did not commit to preserving federal funding toward mixed-immigration-status households.

Republican senators were very receptive to Turner, with Sen. John Cornyn introducing him and committing to confirming him.

Turner aligned himself with Trump’s agenda, and repeated throughout his confirmation hearing that he needed to take “inventory” of what programs were and were not working.

“At this moment, we’re not just talking about fixing what’s broken, but about continuing and expanding the policies of the first Trump administration. I’m talking about the ‘America First’ policies that work for the American people,” Turner said.

Sen. Andy Kim pushed Turner for “a more granular” plan to give more people the opportunity to own a home.

“We have to get our fiscal house in this country in order to bring down inflation, bringing down interest rates, because that will then bring down the cost to build affordable housing,” Turner responded. “I think that when we do that, and prices do come down and housing is built, those that are in this younger generation will begin to have hope again.”

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Amelia Benavides-Colón is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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