Disbanded NSC Pandemic Preparedness Team
The Trump administration disbanded the NSC unit specifically created to prepare for pandemics. The team's absence significantly slowed the COVID-19 response. A 69-page pandemic playbook left by the Obama team went unused.
In May 2018, the Trump administration disbanded the National Security Council's Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense — the unit specifically created after the Ebola crisis to prepare the United States for the next pandemic.
Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, who led the team, was forced out as part of National Security Advisor John Bolton's NSC "streamlining." The pandemic preparedness function was folded into other offices and effectively deprioritized.
The Obama administration had also left a 69-page pandemic playbook — the "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents" — that outlined step-by-step government responses to various pandemic scenarios. The Trump administration did not use it.
Beth Cameron, former director of the directorate, later warned that the absence of this team significantly slowed the government's COVID-19 response. When asked about it in 2020, Trump said: "I don't know anything about it."
The disbanding of a team explicitly designed to prevent the catastrophe that then unfolded — killing over 400,000 Americans on Trump's watch — stands as one of the most consequential acts of negligence in presidential history.