Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Fox News Reporter Nominated To Lead Office Of National Drug Control Policy
Stat: Trump Taps Sara Carter Of Fox News To Be Next National Drug Czar
President Trump has selected Sara Carter, a conservative journalist and Fox News contributor, as the nation’s next drug czar. Carter’s selection comes as a surprise: Her background is not in drug policy, public health, or law enforcement, and she has never served in government. Her journalism in the past decade, however, has been staunchly pro-Trump, with a particular emphasis on border issues and former President Biden’s perceived failure to stem illegal immigration and the trafficking of illicit drugs. (Facher, 3/28)
On the federal budget cuts and funding freeze —
The New York Times: Trump’s U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Hobble Earthquake Response In Myanmar
The United States, the richest country in the world and once its most generous provider of foreign aid, has sent nothing. (Beech and Wong, 3/30)
Axios: RFK Jr.'s Emerging Vision For HHS: More Centralized Power
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says sweeping layoffs and restructuring in the department will bring order to a bureaucracy he claims is in "pandemonium." But experts say the overhaul also likely gives him far greater control over dozens of federal health agencies. (Reed, 3/31)
Stat: HHS Emergency Response Unit Given 48 Hours To Figure Out Its Fate
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to reshape the federal health department has left its roughly 1,000 emergency response workers in limbo, and with a daunting order: Sort out how you break up — this weekend. (Owermohle, 3/28)
Fierce Healthcare: Chiquita Brooks-LaSure Warns 'Cavalier' CMS Cuts Endanger Health Programs
Former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure is not buying the Trump administration’s claim health programs won’t be impacted by the most recent round of federal cuts. Brooks-LaSure is skeptical they can hold to their promise after the latest round of cuts and regional office consolidations, since many fired workers do influence the rollout of these programs. “Just because someone’s title doesn’t say that they work on Medicare and Medicaid doesn’t mean that much of the work that they’re doing doesn’t affect those programs,” she said, now as a senior fellow at progressive think tank The Century Foundation, in a press conference Friday. “I think it’s on them to prove that the claim is true.” (Tong, 3/28)
The Washington Post: Scores Of Child-Care Centers At Risk After Trump Officials Gut Federal Office
Families with children enrolled in scores of child-care centers in federal buildings hoped that the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate for federal employees would give a boost to these facilities and lead more to open after pandemic-era closures. Instead, the administration has eliminated an office responsible for overseeing that network and stopped providing accreditation to the centers, leaving them vulnerable to a drop in quality, higher costs or outright closure, former employees said. (Wiener, 3/30)
The Washington Post: State, Local Governments Want To Hire Federal Workers Fired By Trump
Wisconsin, California and New York are among the states that have in recent weeks launched campaigns to reel in candidates from a fresh and massive pool of people newly on the job market: fired federal workers. Since President Donald Trump took office, tens of thousands of federal employees have been caught in his sweeping job cuts, which have been led by billionaire Elon Musk. State and local governments — largely led by Democrats — have taken up hiring former federal workers as their cause, with recruitment drives tailored to those who had once expected to spend their careers in service to the federal government. (Somasundaram, 3/30)
The Conversation: Losing Your Job Is Bad For Your Health, But There Are Things You Can Do To Minimize The Harm
The Trump administration’s firing and furloughing of tens of thousands of federal workers and contractors have obviously caused economic hardship for Americans employed in national parks, research labs and dozens of government agencies. As a professor of social work who studies how people’s finances affect their physical and mental well-being, I’m concerned about the health hazards they’ll face too. (Anvari-Clark, 3/29)
Also —
AP: Trump Actions Cast Shadow Over Transgender Day Of Visibility
The president’s spotlight is giving Monday’s Transgender Day of Visibility a different tenor this year. “What he wants is to scare us into being invisible again,” said Rachel Crandall Crocker, the executive director of Transgender Michigan who organized the first Day of Visibility 16 years ago. “We have to show him we won’t go back.” So why has this small population found itself with such an outsized role in American politics? (Mulvihill and Bedayn, 3/30)
KFF Health News: Journalists Talk Public Health Data Under Trump, Therapists' Discontent With Insurers
KFF Health News senior correspondent Aneri Pattani discussed how mental health therapists are finding it difficult to work with insurance companies on WOSU Public Media’s “All Sides with Amy Juravich” on March 27. KFF Health News national public health correspondent Amy Maxmen discussed the effects of President Donald Trump’s policy changes on the collection and sharing of important scientific health data on Big Picture Science on March 24. (3/29)
