The Trump administration has revoked several Biden-era health directives in a flurry of late night activity March 14.
The White House rescinded Executive Order 13394, Ensuring a Data-Driven Response to COVID-19 and Future High-Consequence Public Health Threats.
This executive order was established on Biden’s second day in office and directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary and other federal agencies to spearhead “work on COVID-19 and pandemic-related data issues” to “deter the spread of misinformation and disinformation,” the filing reads.
“It is the policy of my administration to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through effective approaches guided by the best available science and data, including by building back a better public health infrastructure,” said Biden in the executive order. “This stronger public health infrastructure must help the nation effectively prevent, detect and respond to future biological threats, both domestically and internationally.”
The HHS secretary was also required issue a report summarizing the interoperability of public health data systems and analyze mortality data from state, local and tribal governments.
The current administration's views of COVID-19 are less straightforward. Though President Donald Trump has previously painted Operation Warp Speed—a project to fast-track development of COVID-19 vaccines—among the achievements of his first term, his current Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the COVID-19 vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made,” a claim debunked by PolitiFact.
During Trump’s first week back in office, he also fired an inspector general who conducted oversight for COVID-19 relief efforts under HHS and axed a host of COVID-19 executive orders that already expired or were designed to give ongoing support to providers, drug researchers or future public health research. He then terminated an advisory committee on long COVID, a group that had not yet held meetings.
Also rescinded is a memo on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Persons Around the World.
The memo instructed agencies to “protect the human rights” and thwart international violence toward these individuals. It touched on supporting refugees and asylum seekers and expanding support for foreign aid programs through federal agencies like the HHS.
Trump’s HHS is shifting away from Biden-era health equity initiatives and is choosing to recognize only two sexes: male and female.
Rescinding an executive order does not reverse a policy directly, said Jeffrey Davis, a health policy director at consulting firm McDermott+. Instead, it signals a change in priority, likely through future rulemaking. Many health-related executive orders from Biden’s term are already rescinded.
“I do not think that President Trump will rescind any more healthcare-related Biden EOs (although it is possible…),” said Davis in an email to Fierce Healthcare. “Rather, I think this administration will continue to make its own stamp on policy, which includes, in part, new regulations and deregulatory activities that partially or completely unwind Biden-era policies."
Trump targets Biden's autopen-signed orders, placing Fauci, COVID task force pardons in doubt
Recent comments from Trump about Biden's presidential pardons, and the use of an autopen, underscore Trump's focus on reversing his predecessor's executive actions on public health and beyond.
Fearing retaliation from the new administration, President Joe Biden had issued preemptive pardons to members of this committee and others, including White House Coronavirus Task Force lead Anthony Fauci, M.D.
Trump pulled Fauci’s security detail once he regained the White House. The former official was still receiving a security detail due to death threats.
Trump then issued a statement on Truth Social March 16. In it, he said Biden’s pardons of members on the Jan. 6 House Select Committee was “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because the orders were completed by an autopen, a machine that automates signatures on documents. He also questioned Biden’s cognitive ability and reiterated his position when asked whether all Biden orders and pardons using the pen are null and void.
Fauci was pardoned at the same time Biden pardoned Jan. 6 committee members.
Alex Howard, a good governance advocate and former director of the Digital Democracy Project, said attempting to use the autopen argument as legal justification would have far-reaching effects.
“That’s going to be hugely complicated, because, of course, autopens are in use across the administration and within Congress,” he said, noting that any other document signed with an autopen would then, hypothetically, be in question.
Constitutional law experts have reacted skeptically to claims from Trump these pardons are not valid.
“There is no merit to any claim that pardons are not valid because a president used an auto pen,” said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina, in a statement to Fierce Healthcare. “They do that a lot, and it is telling that President Trump is casting about for a rationale to support his unsupported claim.”
“The presidential pardon power is as near absolute a power as exists,” added Howard, who noted he is convinced the country is in a constitutional crisis.