elections + weather @nytimes.
was: @politico, @stanfordjourn, @business.
sorry? for the padres tweets.
Articles by Evan Peng
The Queens of Hell’s Kitchen — How Drag Became Part of the Neighborhood’s DNA
During Pride Month, Hell’s Kitchen’s drag scene is everywhere — on 9th Avenue sidewalks, in packed neighborhood bars and under the lights of some of the New York’s most intimate stages. Through interviews by Evan Peng and photography by David Gray, W42ST met the queens, performers and nightlife figures keeping the neighborhood’s drag magic alive. Drag performer and political activist Marti Gould Cummings walking along 9th Avenue.
See Something, Say Something — But Does 311 Actually Fix It?
Hell’s Kitchen residents filed nearly 30,000 complaints in 2025 — but does NYC’s 311 system actually fix problems or just track them? We’ve all experienced it: walking on the sidewalk and noticing something or other, be it faded crosswalk paint, uneven pavement, or an overflowing trash can, where we think to ourselves, “Huh, someone should tell the City about that.” Then we go on with our days, leaving the problem to sit and fester.
Sarah Beran on What to Expect from a Trump-Xi Meeting
With a U.S. Foreign Service career spanning 23 years, Sarah Beran has deep experience in U.S. diplomacy with China. A few of her various past government roles include special assistant to the president and senior director for China and Taiwan Affairs in President Biden’s National Security Council, director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs in the State Department, and, most recently, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 XR
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Melanie Hart on Countering Chinese Coercion
As part of the Biden administration’s State Department, Melanie Hart developed strategies to reduce nation-state vulnerabilities to Chinese pressure. She established the department’s playbook for responding to Chinese economic coercion and led an internal unit that provided response support to several countries.
Hongbin Li: How the Gaokao Shapes China
In 1989, Hongbin Li sat for the gaokao, China’s college entrance exam. The high score he achieved launched him on his trajectory out of the Jilin factory in which he had grown up to his position now as co-director of the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. An economist who taught previously at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University, Li’s research areas include the transition and development of the Chinese economy and the Chinese education system.
Hongbin Li on How the Gaokao Shapes China
Cover Story Taiwan’s Achilles’ Heel Taiwan is almost entirely dependent on imported fossil fuels for its power supply — a critical weakness in the event of a Chinese blockade. But the very democratic forces on the island that China would be seeking to destroy through forced unification are also standing in the way of the obvious solution: aggressive investment in nuclear power and renewable energies.
Roll With It - Kim&Bob Brings Kimbap and Bibimbap to Hell’s Kitchen
At Kim&Bob Shop, smiling mascots greet customers to sample a taste of Korea at the new quick service eatery on 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. Kim&Bob, which had its soft opening last week, specializes in Korean rice-based classics kimbap and bibimbap, dishes referenced cheekily in the name of the store, which also points to the fusion aspects of the food. Bibimbap is essentially a rice bowl with various toppings.
Block by Block: The Century-Old Ice Business That’s Chilled NYC Since Horse-and-Wagon Days
On a sweltering day, you might walk past an unassuming Hell’s Kitchen storefront next to a tire shop, whose signage reads “DRY ICE & CUBES,” and wonder whether they might be able to help you cool down. For more than a century, the Palmadessa family has run the ice business, selling frozen blocks of water — and, increasingly, dry ice — to anyone who needs it.
Chenggang Xu on Why It’s Right To Call China Totalitarian
Chenggang Xu is a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economic and Institutions. A 2011 paper analyzing how China’s institutions shaped the trajectory of China’s economic reforms won him China’s top economics prize. His new book, Institutional Genes: Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism, is out August 31.
Meredith Oyen on Chinese Immigration Into the United States
Face-Off: U.S. vs. China A podcast about the turbulent relationship between the world's two superpowers, the two men who run them, and the vital issues that affect us all. In a special bonus episode recorded live at the Asia Society, host Jane Perlez speaks with journalist and scholar Orville Schell about his 50 years covering Chinese leaders and their American counterparts. They attempt to answer the question: how did we get here?
Jeremy Daum on how Beijing is Controlling China's AI Industry
For more than a decade, Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, has been a contributing editor at China Law Translate, a website he founded that hosts open-source English translations and analysis of Chinese laws. China Law Translate aims to expand accessibility and understanding of the Chinese legal system. Before the pandemic, Daum was based for many years in China, but has since returned to the U.S..
Jerome Cohen on China's Rule by Law
Jerome A. Cohen is a pioneer in the field of Chinese legal studies in the United States. His storied career began in the early 1960s, when he studied China’s legal system. Cohen’s 1968 book The Criminal Process in the People’s Republic of China, 1949- 1963: An Introduction became a foundational text in the field, establishing him as an authority and leaving him with a host of former students and mentees scattered across the landscape of China scholars, lawyers, officials and activists.
If AI is biased, blame the humans
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off next week for the holidays but back to our normal schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 2. If AI inputs aren't diverse, don't trust the recommendations. | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images Bias may be among the most difficult problems to solve within artificial intelligence systems. But some health leaders look to a future in which AI helps correct human bias.
Google’s AI comes in large and medium
Google is honing its health AI offerings. | Getty Images Google is fine-tuning its family of artificial intelligence models for the health care industry, and they’re now available for Google Cloud customers in the U.S. The family of models, called MedLM, builds on Google’s existing products, including Med-PaLM 2, the large language model that’s the basis of the MedLM models.
AI safety rests on a promise
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CVS says any AI it uses will be safe and secure. | Michael Dwyer/AP The White House is moving forward with rules to govern AI in health – some are set to take effect next year. In the interim, it’s been busy securing promises. Most recently, two dozen health care providers and payers promised they’d ensure the safe, secure and trustworthy use of artificial intelligence in health care, the White House said Thursday.
By Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
It’s official: AI rules are coming in 2024
National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi has overseen development of the new AI rules. The Department of Health and Human Services has struck first in regulating the new artificial intelligence tools in health care The agency announced today it will require more transparency about artificial intelligence used in clinical settings, with the goal of helping providers understand algorithms’ potential risk, POLITICO’s Ben Leonard reports. Why?
Why your chatbot’s so racist
If the data undergirding AI relies on race-based medicine, its guidance will reflect it, researchers found. | Rebecca Blackwell/AP Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots can perpetuate harmful and debunked race-based medicine, researchers warn. Their study, published in the journal npj Digital Medicine, tested four commercially available AI chatbots from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.
AI’s arrived in rural health
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Bill Gassen. | Courtesy of Sanford Health Bill Gassen, president and CEO of Sanford Health, a South Dakota-based health system with hundreds of locations across the upper Midwest, isn’t waiting for the future of artificial intelligence. His health system is bringing the tech to every corner of its operations. That could mean significant changes for health providers of all sorts — not only in their clinical work but also in how they conduct business.
By Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Pharma: The AI boom cometh
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Pharma executives are hoping AI can juice their drug development. | Jean-Christophe Verhaegan/AFP/Getty Images Pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers expect artificial intelligence to have a profound impact on their businesses next year and are already experimenting with it, according to a Deloitte Center for Health Solutions survey of some 120 executives.
By Carmen Paun Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng, Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
AI could fuel Biden's cancer moonshot
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AI is already helping radiologists decipher scans. | AFP via Getty Images The White House is embracing artificial intelligence to help achieve President Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot goals. That’s according to Catherine Young, assistant director for cancer moonshot engagement and policy, who spoke during a Library of Congress panel discussion on Tuesday.
By Erin Schumaker Verified, Shawn Zeller Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Sacramento preps, Washington putters on AI
Daniel Payne is a health care reporter at POLITICO. Before becoming a health care reporter, he was a fellow at POLITICO. Before POLITICO, Daniel worked to push The DeSoto Times-Tribune toward a digital-first approach as the Mississippi newspaper’s executive editor. He emphasized aggressive accountability reporting on the pandemic and redesigned the newspaper, newsletters and social media accounts.
AI, real world edition
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Biden's tasked his agencies with devising rules to govern AI. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Evaluating artificial intelligence tools in health requires a wider lens than regulators have proposed to this point. That’s according to a pointed warning from researchers published in the data science journal Patterns. How so?
By Shawn Zeller Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Startup founder pans Biden’s AI order
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Punit Soni, CEO of Suki AI, thinks the White House missed the boat in its executive order on regulating artificial intelligence. His eight-year-old company has rolled out its AI dictation service to aid doctors’ clinical note-taking to some 200 health systems, groups and clinics, giving him a big stake in regulation of health care AI. Soni talked with Ruth about what regulators should consider as they move forward. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
By Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Hospitals on their health tech plans
Hackers have targeted hospitals, prompting industry executives to invest in cybersecurity. | Rob Engelaar/AFP via Getty Images Hospitals and other health care providers expect to invest extra money in 2024 on technology — cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, virtual care and more.
If AI steers a doctor wrong, who pays?
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Doctors could be reluctant to use AI tools if it opens them up to liability. | Getty Artificial intelligence tools for health care are improving at a rapid rate. But that creates a risk of its own if doctors trust the tech over their better judgment. “As we think that something is really good and working well, we tend to pay less attention and tend to outsource and have less oversight on it,” Dr. Maulik Purohit, chief information officer at Lehigh Valley Health Network, said.
By Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Virtual care settles into a new normal
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Telehealth use is down from its pandemic heights, but it remains a popular option for some types of visits. | Business Wire A telehealth pattern is emerging nearly four years after the Covid-19 pandemic supercharged virtual health care. Analysis from the research arm of Epic Systems, a health care software company, found that while virtual visits have declined since the initial peak early in the pandemic, usage levels remain well above pre-pandemic numbers. How so?
By Evan Peng, Daniel Payne Verified, Shawn Zeller Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Get real: Artificial intelligence in health
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Rohini Kosoglu | Courtesy of Rohini Kosoglu Rohini Kosoglu, formerly domestic policy adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, has turned her post-government career toward a pressing question: How will AI transform health care? Exploring answers is her focus as a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
By Evan Peng, Shawn Zeller Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
AI’s a surgeon’s X-ray vision
AI could give cancer surgeons a better view of tumors. Everyone talks about how artificial intelligence can assist doctors, but what does that mean? For Dr. Wayne Brisbane, assistant professor of urology at UCLA, it means he can approach prostate cancer surgeries with a more accurate picture of what he can expect to find. “Prostate cancer is a tricky disease,” he told Ruth, adding that it can be hard to know exactly how far a given tumor reaches. “I think about it like an octopus or crab.
AI’s got a trust issue in health care
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 27. People worry AI will remove the human touch from care. Consumers are more hesitant about artificial intelligence’s march into health care than they are about it making inroads in other sectors, a new survey of more than 28,000 consumers across the globe from software firm Qualtrics found.
A Meta whistleblower speaks up
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 27. Haugen's congressional testimony against her former employer, Meta, gave credence to concerns about social media's effects on teens. | Pool photo by Drew Angerer Frances Haugen, Meta’s first whistleblower and former product manager, said that Instagram was hurting teen mental health back in 2021.
By Ruth Reader Verified, Evan Peng, Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
AI, drug development, and big, big bucks
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Artificial intelligence can mine millions of research papers to find overlooked drug targets. Christophe Archambault | AFP via Getty Images A leading use case for artificial intelligence in health care is in the development of new drugs. Market researchers agree that employing AI to develop drugs is nascent, but they expect it to grow fast.
By Shawn Zeller Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Pandemic preparedness is in limbo
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Casey, left, has bipartisan support for his Senate pandemic preparedness bill, but the parties are divided in the House. | AP The Covid pandemic is fading into memory, and so is the impetus to do better next time. How so? The Biden administration seeks to water down language in a pandemic treaty the World Health Organization hopes to finalize next spring. A recent draft reviewed by POLITICO’s health team in Europe found the U.S. repeatedly asking that binding commitments be made optional.
By Shawn Zeller Verified, Evan Peng, Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Industry bugaboo: A patchwork of AI rules
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The telemedicine business sees consistent rules for AI as a must. | J Pat Carter/AP The telemedicine industry sees the importance of regulation when it comes to artificial intelligence in health care — it just wants the rules to be consistent. The American Telemedicine Association, which represents players in the industry, including Google, Facebook and Salesforce plus universities, health systems and doctors, has released principles it thinks should guide AI’s adoption.
By Shawn Zeller Verified, Evan Peng, Carmen Paun Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
When AI thinks surgeon, he’s a white man
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Surgeons are getting more diverse, but AI systems don't know it. | Getty Images Artificial intelligence systems designed to generate an image from a text request tend to think nearly all surgeons are white men. Researchers at Brown University, Mass General Hospital and other universities and hospitals came to that conclusion after testing three prominent text-to-image systems for a study published today in JAMA Surgery. How so?
By Shawn Zeller Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Evan Peng
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Future Pulse Newsletter
A nurse’s take on AI
Nurses don't see how AI can replace all they do. | AFP via Getty Images A major nurses’ union is making its position on artificial intelligence in health care plain: The tech comes with big risks. How so? National Nurses United brought the message to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s recent AI forum in which he heard from stakeholders likely to feel the impact of AI use.
To cure burnout, lend an ear
Doctors bear a heavy load. | AFP via Getty Images If you want to improve the conditions of health workers, you need to give their bosses tools for change: At least that’s the approach a new federal initiative is taking to stem burnout among doctors and nurses. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has launched its first federal campaign, called Impact Wellbeing, to improve the mental health of those working in hospitals.
Donald Trump wanted to end HIV in America. Congressional Republicans have lost interest.
When POLITICO asked Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), the chair of the subcommittee overseeing the Department of Health and Human Services’ budget, about the reasoning behind the cut, he cited a need to prioritize. “It’s one of those things where it’s like, what do you have to have and what would be nice to have?” said Aderholt.
Soothe a doc: AI won’t replace you
Big questions: Will AI cut health care costs? And if so, where will the savings come? | Seth Wenig/AP Photo Doctors mulled the AI-driven future at America’s Physician Groups’ fall conference in Washington and heard a reassuring case that it won’t replace them.
AI dominates Milken Summit onstage and off
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Biden's got a plan to regulate AI, but Milken summit panelists were skeptical government can keep pace. | Getty Images The health care industry’s rapid adoption of artificial intelligence is cause for enthusiasm and worry. That was our top takeaway at this week’s Milken Institute Future of Health Summit in Washington where Future Pulse reporters covered the newsmakers onstage and took the temperature of industry denizens offstage. What did we hear?
By Daniel Payne Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Evan Peng, Ruth Reader Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
AI dominates Milken Summit onstage and off
AI dominates Milken Summit onstage and off The ideas and innovators shaping Health care Nov 09, 2023 View in browser By Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun, Evan Peng, Ruth Reader and Erin Schumaker Biden's got a plan to regulate AI, but Milken summit panelists were skeptical government can keep pace. | Getty Images The health care industry’s rapid adoption of artificial intelligence is cause for enthusiasm and worry.
The anti-junk food coalition is bipartisan
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Marshall sees the case for government promoting healthy eating. | Evan Peng/POLITICO Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) wants Americans to eat healthier — and sees a role for government in promoting better diets. Doc Marshall, who practiced medicine as an OB/GYN before entering Congress, told a Milken Institute 2023 Future of Health Summit audience today that he was concerned about increases in diet-related health problems and an American menu rife with processed foods packed with salt and sugar.
By Evan Peng, Carmen Paun Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Ruth Reader Verified, Daniel Payne Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Hunch: Health AI will live in the shadows
AI regulations are coming, but industry is skeptical. | Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images There’s lots of optimism about the role AI can play in health care. Panelists at the Milken Institute’s 2023 Future of Health Summit said it can help alleviate doctor burnout, diversify clinical trials and better reach patients. Even so: They’re concerned it will be hard to regulate.
The mad scientists of AI
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The White House sees a threat in AI-driven manipulation of DNA. | AP Artificial intelligence designs a new toxin that doesn’t exist in nature. Someone then uses a machine the size of a microwave — called a benchtop DNA synthetic device — to produce it and spread it, potentially triggering a new pandemic. This might sound like science fiction but experts warn that it could happen if governments don’t set rules for how AI is used in synthetic biology. The White House is taking a crack at it.
By Carmen Paun Verified, Erin Schumaker Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Evan Peng, Ruth Reader Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
New rules for health agencies that use AI
Biden's all in on AI regulation. | Evan Vucci/AP Federal agencies that use artificial intelligence to approve drugs and medical devices or decide who gets access to health care in government programs would have to follow new protocols under a draft White House directive released yesterday. How so? The memo from the Office of Management and Budget defines decisions it views as either “rights-impacting” or “safety-impacting” and spells out what agencies must do when they use AI to make such choices.
Kamala Harris calls out insurers on AI
Harris talked tough about AI regulation in London today. | Getty Images Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the Biden administration’s concerns about unsafe AI used by hospitals and other medical facilities and warned insurers about AI-driven decisions that harm patients during remarks today at the U.S. embassy in London. “When a senior is kicked off his health care plan because of a faulty AI algorithm, is that not existential for him?” she asked.
The AI sheriff is coming for health care
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Biden's got big plans for AI regulation in health care. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence is a warning to those developing AI systems in health care: The government’s laissez-faire approach is ending.
By Shawn Zeller Verified, Daniel Payne Verified, Carmen Paun Verified, Evan Peng, Erin Schumaker Verified
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Future Pulse Newsletter
Where the FDA is on AI
Advanced AI is already transforming medicine. | Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images The Biden administration hasn’t decided how to handle emerging tools like chatbots that interact with patients and answer doctors’ questions – even though some are already in use.
Fall could bring SUPPORT for opioid care
Guthrie's House bill to reup the opioid-fighting SUPPORT Act could come to the floor anytime. | Getty Images Congress allowed its landmark opioid-fighting law, the SUPPORT Act, to expire on Sept. 30, but advocates for substance use treatment hope to see some progress on new legislation this fall. Where it stands: Dysfunction in the House, which narrowly avoided a government shutdown last month before Republicans ousted their speaker, brought legislating to a standstill. But with Rep.
The new CDC director’s got a to-do list
Dr. Mandy Cohen has embraced a visible role promoting public health at the CDC. | Cliff Owen/AP Photo Dr. Mandy Cohen is on a national tour promoting vaccination and, at the same time, is working to shore up relationships on Capitol Hill, where the agency she directs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, needs allies. In an interview with POLITICO’s Chelsea Cirruzzo this week, she outlined other key initiatives she’s focused on since taking the CDC job in July. What are they?
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