The Trump administration has quietly filled two positions at the top of the federal government’s vertically integrated pandemic-response architecture.
Sara Brenner is now leading the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR).
Brenner arrives at OPPR with deep ties to the government’s COVID-19 orchestration, including what FDA describes as coordinating “whole-of-government operations” involving medical countermeasures, diagnostics, regulation, preparedness and data.
Rachel Idowu has been appointed National Security Council (NSC) director for bioresponse.
Idowu returns to the NSC after previously directing biological-threat surveillance and response during the H5N1 bird-flu era and providing input to a federally supported H5N1 modeling project.
The White House confirmed both appointments just last month.
Together, the two White House posts provide an unprecedented top-level mechanism for orchestrating pandemic “preparedness” and response across federal agencies whose surveillance, research, regulatory, procurement, and medical-countermeasure powers appear otherwise divided.
Brenner and Idowu arrive as this website for years has been exclusively documenting and warning of ongoing government-led influenza/bird flu pandemic orchestration in the post-COVID-19 era: simultaneous 1) federal threat-centric messaging about, surveillance of, and gain-of-function experiments on influenza/bird flu pathogens, and 2) influenza/bird flu countermeasure (vaccines and other drugs) development.
The same orchestration methodology characterized the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s coronavirus projects in the preceding decades.
It’s worth mentioning:
Trump appointed a military-grade influenza pandemic architect, Erica Schwartz, in April to lead the CDC.
And that the Trump/Kennedy FDA this month approved Moderna’s mRNA-1010 influenza shot ‘mFLUSIVA’ despite showing less than 1% absolute benefit and six times more severe reactions.
And that a new Trump admin policy permits funding gain-of-function experiments under a new definition, ‘Potential Dangerous GOF Research.’
And that HHS is so confident an influenza pandemic will be declared that the agency is developing “Day One” influenza pandemic vaccines.
The appointments raise obvious questions:
Why now?
What is the government preparing this newly staffed orchestration layer to coordinate?
And why have officials with deep COVID-19 and H5N1 ties been selected to lead it?
The significance of the appointments becomes even clearer when the positions are placed inside the government’s pandemic-response hierarchy.
Follow us on Instagram @realjonfleetwood & Twitter/X @JonMFleetwood.
If you value this reporting, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
For advertising & sponsorship opportunities, contact us by clicking below.
Congress created OPPR in 2022 and placed it inside the Executive Office of the President.
The law makes its director the president’s “principal advisor” on pandemic preparedness and response.
It also gives the director responsibility to coordinate Federal activities and provide strategic direction to applicable federal departments, agencies and White House offices.
In simplified linear form:
President
↓
OPPR / NSC
↓
HHS / DoD / USDA / DHS / other departments
↓
ASPR / BARDA / NIH / CDC / FDA / DoD components
↓
programs / contracts / laboratories / manufacturers
The departments retain their own legal and acquisition authorities.
But the White House sits above the departmental silos for government-wide coordination.
Trump has now filled both the OPPR and NSC bioresponse positions in that top layer.
Brenner already has experience inside that kind of government-wide pandemic machinery.
Before COVID, she worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, coordinating biological and health-science policy across federal agencies and White House offices.
She subsequently moved to FDA.
Then COVID arrived.
FDA’s official biography says Brenner supported the national COVID-19 response from February 2020 through May 2023.
More importantly, FDA describes her experience as:
“coordinating whole-of-government operations”
involving medical countermeasures, technological innovation, regulation, public-health preparedness and data analytics.
Brenner also became the Diagnostic Data Lead for the HHS Data Strategy and Execution Workgroup, helping connect COVID diagnostic data, federal reporting systems, and government decision-making.
She eventually rose to acting FDA commissioner and principal deputy commissioner.
Trump has now put her in charge of the White House office legally responsible for coordinating the government’s next pandemic response.
Idowu comes from the surveillance and outbreak-response side of the system.
She is a CDC-trained epidemiologist who worked on Ebola response, helped develop Africa CDC, and worked extensively on infectious-disease surveillance.
Then, from 2024 through 2025, Idowu served as the NSC’s:
Director of Biological Threat Surveillance & Response
That put Idowu inside the White House purported biological-threat apparatus during the federal response to H5N1 bird flu.
But her H5N1 connection goes further than overlapping dates.
During Idowu’s NSC tenure, University of Virginia researchers developed DiTTO (Digital Twin for Transboundary OneHealth).
The federally supported system digitally modeled interactions among:
wild birds → livestock → farms → humans
and incorporated H5N1 incidence data to study avian-influenza transmission and risk.
The project’s acknowledgments specifically thank Rachel Idowu, another NSC official, OPPR personnel and CDC officials for:
“thoughtful comments and suggestions.”
The project received support associated with CDC, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, USDA, and NSF.
We cannot say Idowu commissioned or controlled DiTTO.
We can say she personally provided input to an H5N1-relevant federal modeling project while serving as the NSC official responsible for biological-threat surveillance and response.
Trump has now returned her to the NSC as director for bioresponse.
The appointments therefore create a remarkably simple chain.
Sara Brenner
COVID response
→ diagnostics/data
→ medical countermeasures
→ “whole-of-government operations”
→ OPPR
Rachel Idowu
outbreak surveillance
→ NSC biological-threat surveillance
→ H5N1 response period
→ H5N1 modeling input
→ NSC Bioresponse
And both now sit here:
PRESIDENT TRUMP
↓
WHITE HOUSE PANDEMIC/BIORESPONSE COORDINATION
↓
BRENNER — OPPR | IDOWU — NSC
↓
HHS | DoD | USDA | DHS | other agencies
↓
surveillance | research | regulation | countermeasures | procurement | response
Trump has now filled two positions at the top of the federal government’s vertically integrated pandemic-response apparatus.
Brenner previously helped coordinate whole-of-government COVID-19 operations and now leads the White House office Congress created to coordinate pandemic activity across federal agencies.
Idowu previously directed biological-threat surveillance and response at the NSC during the H5N1 bird-flu era, provided input to a federally supported H5N1 modeling project, and has now returned as NSC director for bioresponse.
Their appointments also follow Trump’s selection of Erica Schwartz, whose military career included influenza pandemic preparedness, to lead the CDC.
The personnel now taking control of key nodes in the government’s pandemic apparatus therefore carry backgrounds spanning COVID-19 orchestration, H5N1 surveillance and modeling, and influenza pandemic preparedness.
That convergence comes as the same federal machinery beneath them continues to simultaneously surveil and “study” influenza threats while developing vaccines, drugs, and other countermeasures for them.
The question is no longer whether the government possesses a vertically integrated apparatus capable of orchestrating another pandemic response.
It does.
The question is what that apparatus is now being positioned to do.
And why Trump has chosen officials with such direct COVID-19 and influenza/bird-flu backgrounds to lead its most consequential nodes.
Follow us on Instagram @realjonfleetwood & Twitter/X @JonMFleetwood.
If you value this reporting, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
For advertising & sponsorship opportunities, contact us by clicking below.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.