14. Department of Health and Human Services · Minor
Restrict pharmaceutical executives from moving into regulatory agencies
Printed page 452 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“Similarly, pharmaceutical company executives should be restricted from moving from industry into positions within regulatory agencies.”
What has happened
- Not started
The one instrument that restricted the industry-to-government direction was revoked on day one and not replaced. EO 14148 §2 revoked EO 13989 of 2021 (Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel), whose pledge barred every incoming appointee for two years from participating in any particular matter "directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts" (¶2), imposed a further set of bars on anyone who had been a registered lobbyist in the preceding two years (¶3), and prohibited the golden parachute — any payment from a former employer conditioned on taking a government job (¶7). A full-text Federal Register search for "ethics pledge" since 2025-01-20 returns zero documents, and the only in-window document naming "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel" is the revocation. What remains is the government-wide statutory floor — the 18 U.S.C. 208 conflict-of-interest recusal and the OGE financial-disclosure rules — which is neither a restriction on hiring industry executives nor specific to pharmaceutical companies or to HHS. No HHS, FDA, NIH or CDC policy of the window adds one.
- Executive Order 14148: Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions (§2 revokes EO 13989, Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel)
- Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions — White House text, §2 revocation list naming Executive Order 13989 of January 20, 2021 (Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel)
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- This is the entering-government half of the same revocation that answers #1203; the two share Evidence and each is leveled on its own Quote. #1203 turns on pledge ¶¶4–6 (leaving government), this one on ¶¶2, 3 and 7 (entering it).
- §2’s revocation list is not in the govinfo HTML of the Federal Register text — it was published as a graphic — so the whitehouse.gov text is cited alongside the Federal Register page. See #1203’s notes.
- Full-text Federal Register search since 2025-01-20 for “pharmaceutical executive” returns 0 documents and for “revolving door” returns 1 (an unrelated Sunshine Act meeting notice).
- No appointment question is being answered here: the ask is for a restriction, not for a person, so the roster of people the Mandate credits does not bear on it.
- One shared search covered the p. 452 asks, #1202–#1205.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- pharmaceutical executives entering regulatory agencies
- ID
- 1204