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Donald Trump spent his presidential campaign running from Project 2025. Now, he’s using it to stock his White House and administration. In recent days, Trump has tapped nearly a half-dozen Project 2025 authors and contributors, including Brendan Carr, who Trump picked this week to lead the FCC; former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who got the nod for ambassador to Canada; and John Ratcliffe, who was tapped for director of the CIA. One of Trump’s first selections — Tom Homan as “border czar” — was also a Project 2025 contributor. (Wren, Bade, Ollstein and Allison, 11/21)

Donald Trump’s transition team has rejected a push to install a prominent Project 2025 author in a senior role at the Department of Health and Human Services over concerns that his strident anti-abortion views would prove too controversial. Anti-abortion groups had been lobbying Trump’s HHS secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to select Roger Severino, a longtime anti-abortion stalwart, as the department’s deputy secretary. The installation of Severino, director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights during the first Trump administration, was aimed at allaying some of the groups’ concerns about Kennedy’s abortion record. But senior Trump officials rejected Severino because of the anti-abortion policies he outlined in the health care section of Project 2025, according to six people familiar with the situation. (Messerly and Cancryn, 11/21)

Republican senators are pouring cold water on the idea that President-elect Trump could force the Senate into an extended recess next year so that he would be able to fill key positions in his Cabinet without going through the Senate confirmation process. Republican senators and aides say that Trump allies who claim that the incoming president would have power under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution to force an extended recess don’t understand how Congress really works. (Bolton, 11/22)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his advisers are considering an overhaul of Medicare’s decades-old payment formula, a bid to shift the health system’s incentives toward primary care and prevention, said four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The discussions are in their early stages, the people said, and have involved a plan to review the thousands of billing codes that determine how much physicians get paid for performing procedures and services. (Diamond, 11/21)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: TV’s Dr. Oz Invested In Businesses Regulated By Agency Trump Wants Him To Lead

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to run the sprawling government agency that administers Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act marketplace — celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz — recently held broad investments in health care, tech, and food companies that would pose significant conflicts of interest. Oz’s holdings, some shared with family, included a stake in UnitedHealth Group worth as much as $600,000, as well as shares of pharmaceutical firms and tech companies with business in the health care sector, such as Amazon. (Tahir, 11/21)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What The Health?': Trump’s Nontraditional Health Picks

Not only has President-elect Donald Trump chosen prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump also has said he will nominate controversial TV host Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees coverage for nearly half of Americans. Meanwhile, the lame-duck Congress is back in Washington with just a few weeks to figure out how to wrap up work for the year. (Rovner, 11/21)