White House Orders Cabinet Secretaries To Notify When They Can’t Perform Duties After Austin Illness

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House chief of workers on Tuesday ordered Cabinet members or secretaries to inform his workplace in the event that they ever can’t carry out their duties, because the Biden administration, reeling from studying of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s shock sickness final week, mounts a coverage evaluate.

Jeff Zients, in a memo to Cabinet secretaries, directed that they ship the White House any current procedures for delegating authority within the occasion of incapacitation or lack of communication by Friday. While the evaluate is ongoing, he’s requiring businesses to inform his workplace and the workplace of Cabinet affairs on the White House if an company experiences or plans to expertise a circumstance through which a Cabinet head can’t carry out their duties.

The memo comes after President Joe Biden and different prime officers weren’t knowledgeable for days that Austin had been hospitalized and had turned over energy to his deputy. A Pentagon spokesman blamed the lapse on a key staffer being out sick with the flu.

“Agencies should ensure that delegations are issued when a Cabinet Member is traveling to areas with limited or no access to communication, undergoing hospitalization or a medical procedure requiring general anesthesia, or otherwise in a circumstance when he or she may be unreachable,” Zients’ memo states. It additionally requires that businesses doc when any such switch of authorities happens and that the particular person serving within the appearing function promptly set up contact with related White House workers.

A replica of the memo was obtained by the Associated Press.

Austin, 70, went to the hospital on Dec. 22 for what the Pentagon press secretary referred to as an “elective procedure” however one critical sufficient that Austin briefly transferred a few of his authorities to his deputy, with out telling her or different U.S. leaders why. He went dwelling the next day.

He additionally transferred a few of his authorities to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks after experiencing extreme ache and being taken again to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center by ambulance and put into intensive care on Jan. 1. The White House was not knowledgeable he was within the hospital till Jan. 4.