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The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform — known for partisan fireworks under the leadership of Darrell Issa, Republican of California — will turn its focus on Friday to the Obama administration’s handling of the Ebola crisis. Some Republican members of the committee have already called for a change in the administration’s approach to the epidemic (Siddons, 10/24)

As the Obama administration works to calm public anxiety over Ebola, congressional Republicans will take fresh aim Friday at its missteps in responding to the disease and its strategy for containing the virus. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee inquiry comes after lawmakers have already berated the administration, registering their outrage at its refusal to ban travel from African nations afflicted by Ebola and its failure to stop a nurse infected with Ebola from boarding a commercial airline in Texas. ( Halper, 10/24)

Lawmakers are expected to focus on protections for U.S. troops and aid workers deployed to West Africa to help treat Ebola as a House panel convenes Friday morning for a hearing on the U.S. response to the disease, the day after a physician in New York tested positive for the virus. The Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear testimony from two Defense Department officials, as well as Rabih Torbay, the senior vice president for international operations of International Medical Corps, a nonprofit group caring for Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone. (Radnofsky and Hughes, 10/24)

A House oversight panel on Friday will examine how well federal agencies are coordinating their response to the Ebola crisis. The hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is the third Congress has held on Ebola since the Oct. 8 death of Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas. Duncan was the first person to die of Ebola in the United States. Two of his nurses contracted the virus and are recovering. (Kelly, 10/24)

A doctor who had returned to New York City recently after treating Ebola patients in West Africa tested positive for the virus on Thursday, officials said, setting up a new front in the nation’s attempt to control the spread of the deadly disease. Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old physician who had worked with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea until returning to the U.S. a week ago, is the fourth patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. and the ninth to be treated here. (Dawsey, Tangel and McKay, 10/24)