
White House to deploy response teams focused on combating Delta variant of Covid-19
CNN
The Biden administration is set to announce on Thursday that it is deploying response teams across the US to areas with a high spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 as concerns grow around the nation, a White House official told CNN.
These teams -- made up of officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- will go into communities where officials are worried about a potentially deadly combination: low vaccination rates and a significant presence of the highly transmissible form of the virus. The White House has deployed similar response teams in the past, but this is the first time they are focused on the Delta variant, a White House official said. These response teams will conduct surge testing, provide therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies and deploy federal personnel to areas that need support staff for vaccinations.
The US military’s strikes in Iran over the weekend prompted a swift response from across the federal government to react to any fallout, but current and former officials say the administration’s DOGE-driven cuts to a host of agencies have made it harder to grapple with the conflict and prepare for potential retaliation.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday said in a statement that the agency had obtained “a body of credible evidence [that] indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged” by recent strikes, underscoring a broad intelligence community effort is ongoing to determine the impact of the US strikes on three of the country’s nuclear sites on Saturday.

White House’s DOGE spending cuts request runs into criticism, questions from some Senate Republicans
The head of the White House budget office on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s push to enact sweeping cuts to federal funding, even as some Republican senators voiced concerns and raised questions about the breadth of them.