Power & Security, Public Health, United States Trump cuts to national security staff may hurt coronavirus response, former officials say

Perry World House's Director of Communications and Research, John Gans, is citedi n this piece from NBC News.

President Donald Trump's decision to downsize the White House national security staff — and eliminate jobs addressing global pandemics — is likely to hamper the U.S. government's response to the coronavirus, according to veterans of past disease outbreaks and experts who have studied them.

"This is why you have a National Security Council," said John Gans, a former Pentagon speechwriter who wrote a book about the NSC, which has long been the principal advisory body inside the White House for national security affairs. "The changes have made it much harder for the NSC to do this."

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