A president who long shunned career government workers and preferred to rely on his gut faces a managerial challenge at a scale unseen by any American leader.
Everyone in the White House owns — or wants to own — a piece of the administration’s coronavirus response.
Vice President Mike Pence is officially running the coronavirus task force. Senior adviser Jared Kushner has propped up his own operation focused on increasing the testing capacity in the U.S., forging partnerships with private industries and business executives, and tracking down desperately needed medical supplies.
Health officials are sparring with economic aides over the White House’s internal deliberations about when and how to reopen parts of the U.S. economy. President Donald Trump himself is fielding calls from governors, Republican lawmakers, business executives and former aides as he crowdsources his decision-making on the best path forward to fight the virus.
The question now is whether the competing factions within the White House can offer the president an analytical approach by which he can make key decisions. White House staffers already worry about a messy chain of command — and the fact that key points or data will become lost in a mess of communication as individuals or different teams pursue their various projects, according to interviews with a dozen senior administration officials, Trump advisers and Republicans close to the White House.
Amid the confusing environment, the White House’s new chief of staff, Mark Meadows, officially begins his job on Monday. The chief-of-staff wing of the White House is in flux, with new aides to Meadows starting their positions while staffers aligned with his predecessor, Mick Mulvaney, have moved out of the West Wing and into offices in the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office building.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/29/trump-april-challenge-deep-state-155059