Dear ACH Members,
We are officially one month from Election Day, and in our fourth post-election Friday update, we still have plenty of new updates and developments to share. As we continue to prepare for the coming administration, we are laser-focused on strategies to move forward with our policy agenda on behalf of health centers. We plan to continue this series through Friday, December 20th, and following that date will provide ongoing updates in the Biweekly Policy Update emails.
The end-of-year funding negotiations are well underway, and we anticipate a final package to be released early next week. We have said it many times, but it’s worth repeating: Contacting your member of Congress is the single most important thing you can do to drive health centers to the front of the agenda. Please let us know if you have any questions or if we can help facilitate meetings with your congressional delegation.
Administration
President-elect Trump has scheduled his first network interview since winning the election, which will air on “Meet the Press” at 10:30 am (ET) this Sunday. In the past month, he has rolled out his planned nominations to lead his Cabinet and has made picks for every secretary role in the new administration, pending Senate confirmation. Most of the nominations are newsworthy, though some of the more controversial picks have taken most of the spotlight. The primary focus of these nominees' centers around their ability to earn enough support among Senate Republicans and which nominations Trump and GOP Senate holdouts will spend their political capital fighting for. This week, the spotlight has mainly shined on Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, who has faced increased scrutiny as Senators share concerns about his qualifications; one GOP senator stated his nomination was “on the death watch.”
A full list of Trump’s Cabinet picks can be found here, but for our purposes at ACH, we thought it would be helpful to highlight a handful of nominations to health-centered positions.
In our last update, we covered the nominations for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Dr. Mehmet Oz. Since then, nominations for several other Senate-confirmed positions have been announced: Commissioner of Food and Drugs (FDA), Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), Surgeon General, and Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which requires Senate confirmation for the first time beginning January 2025.
FDA: Dr. Marty Markary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, has been selected as Trump’s choice to lead the FDA. Though critical of the FDA’s vaccine approval process time and for not considering changes to its recommendations for children after a light risk of a rare heart condition in young males had been linked to the vaccine, he is publicly “pro-vaccine.” During the height of the pandemic, he advocated for federal authorities to develop nuanced recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine rather than the one-size-fits-all approach they ultimately took. We anticipate Markary’s confirmation to be less controversial in the Senate and will likely pass without notable opposition.
Surgeon General: Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, the medical director for CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in NY and NJ, as well as a Fox News medical contributor, has been tapped to serve as the Trump administration’s surgeon general. Dr. Nesheiwat specializes in family and emergency medicine, and supports the vaccines that RFK Jr. casts doubts about.
CDC: In late November, Trump announced Dr. Dave Weldon, an internal medicine physician and former Congressman from Florida who held office from 1995-2009, as his pick to lead the CDC. Weldon’s nomination surprised people in public health as he has been out of the political arena for more than 15 years. However, he has maintained a 25-year friendship with Secretary of HHS nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Over time, he has aligned many of his views on public health with those of Kennedy, including the claim that some children may develop autism when vaccinated against measles (a claim that is without evidence). However, in a recent interview with the New York Times, Weldon said that as a Member of Congress, he worked with Kennedy to get mercury out of childhood vaccines, but described himself as a supporter of vaccinations. During his time in Congress, he pushed to move the vaccine safety office out of the CDC and instead establish it as an independent agency within HHS, arguing that the CDC had a conflict of interest because it also purchases and promotes vaccines. (Other prominent public health experts have made the same point.) Overall, former colleagues and many professionals in the medical field have expressed support for Weldon’s nomination, noting his experience, legislative record, and credentials fit the role.
NIH: The President-elect has selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and health economist at Stanford University, as director of the NIH. Bhattacharya is an advocate of shaking up the NIH after claiming the agency failed the public during the pandemic by supporting lockdowns, school closures, and vaccine mandates. In October 2020, Dr. Bhattacharya was one of the main authors of the "Great Barrington Declaration,” arguing against lockdowns, instead relying on low-risk people to build up herd immunity while prioritizing protections for the elderly and other vulnerable populations. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the NIH enjoyed largely bipartisan support but has since received heavy criticism from Republicans. In 2025, we may see efforts leading to NIH undergoing significant funding cuts, restrictions on certain types of research, and major changes to the agency’s structure.
ACH remains optimistic that we will be able to find ample opportunity to work with the incoming administration, as health centers are essential to the pillars of the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. We will continue to engage with the transition team and new administration officials to ensure that the Trump health care agenda meets the needs of community health centers and their patients.
119th Congress
All races for the House and Senate have officially been called, and while we’ve known that Republicans have won the majority in both chambers, the final tally is now official. Republicans will hold the majority in the House by a margin of 220 - 215 and in the Senate 53-47.
This week, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-D) released the House and Senate legislative calendars for 2025. Both chambers are scheduled to spend more time in Washington next year than in 2024 and will be in session during ACH’s 2025 Annual Member Meeting.
New members of both chambers will be sworn in on Friday, January 3rd, and from there, the Senate is scheduled to be in session for 10 weeks straight - through the week of March 10th (with breaks only for weekends and President’s Day). The schedule reflects five voting days per week, a fairly significant break from the norm, as the Senate typically organizes its voting schedule to take place Monday evening through Thursday afternoon. The Senate is scheduled to be in session on January 20th, Inauguration Day (which is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day), so we can expect to see votes to confirm key national security Cabinet roles take place on day one of Trump’s second term.
The House schedule, on the other hand, largely follows the pattern of previous years. The longest work period is currently a four-week stretch from the end of April until Memorial Day weekend. (The general consensus among policy professionals on and off the Hill is that Congress will pass a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds the government through March. Though this is strictly speculation, it’s worth considering whether the House calendar indicates a longer-term funding package through April or May, as the longer work periods in the Spring would provide more time to work through the appropriations process.)
The competition to lead certain House Committees has geared up, and leaders will be selected by House Republican and Democratic Steering Committees in the next two weeks. While Republican races are primarily among rank-and-file Committee members, Democrats have seen an insurgency of “new guard” members running to oust “old guard” members.
We will be most closely watching the selection for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The race for the Chair comes down to Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and Bob Latta (R-OH) - the current Chair, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers announced her retirement earlier this year. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) will remain the ranking member for the Democrats. The Health Subcommittee will see significant changes in the 119th Congress, as five of the 12 Democrats will not be returning, and four Republicans will retire at the end of the year.
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