White House Announces It Has No Global Health Security Chief the Day After Ebola Outbreak Declared

According to HuffPost, Ziemer leaving came “amid a reshuffling” by new national security advisor and NSC head John Bolton, a man who is pretty singularly focused on getting the United States involved in another extremely dumb war. Nevertheless, an NSC spokesman told HuffPost that Ziemer left on “the warmest of terms.”

The news comes just one day after the World Health Organization announced a new outbreak of Ebola after two new cases were confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the past five weeks, HuffPost reported yesterday, the Central African country has seen 17 people die with Ebola-like symptoms.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced plans to send a rescission package to Congress, which included $252 million in unused funding for Ebola that was allocated in 2014. Trump, you’ll remember, signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut in December.

“It is unclear in his absence who at the White House would be in charge of a pandemic,” Ziemer’s predecessor, Beth Cameron, told HuffPost. Added Jeremy Koyndyk, who previously led the Obama administration’s response to the 2014 Ebola crisis: “I hope it’s not lost on anyone that it happened the exact week that we have new reports on the Ebola outbreak.”