Experts

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Fast Facts

  • Director, Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government and visiting fellow with Governance Studies, Brookings Institution
  • Host, Democracy in Question podcast, Brookings Institution
  • Advisory board member, White House Transition Project 

Areas Of Expertise

  • The First Year
  • Governance
  • Elections
  • Leadership
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas is director of the Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government and a visiting fellow with Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She is also an advisory board member of the White House Transition Project.

Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing and turnover, presidential transitions, and the intersection of politics and policy within the presidency (e.g., presidential reelection campaigns, trends in presidential travel, and polling). She is the author of Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the Presidential Campaign and has published more than 80 articles, book chapters, and papers on these topics.

Tenpas earned her BA degree from Georgetown University and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Virginia.
 

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed

Our overview reveals that en bloc voting will not significantly speed up the overall process, but can have an impact at the final stage, the floor vote.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas The Brookings Institution
Of the president’s 98 Senate-confirmed appointees to the administration’s most senior leadership roles in its first 200 days, only two percent are Black, according to statistics compiled for the Brookings Institution by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas The New York Times
President Trump has been awarding trusted aides with more than one job. But how does this affect the function of those positions?
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas NPR
The percentage of women among Trump’s confirmed nominees is about half that of Bush, Obama, and Trump’s first term, and much lower than Biden’s.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas The Brookings Institution
The situation Trump faces is hardly unique to his White House. Blocking diplomatic nominees is now a common tactic. “This is just not unique to Trump,” said Tenpas.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Semafor
“What has happened in this administration, is that there is more of a focus on Cabinet secretary loyalty, as opposed to their prior experience,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a presidential scholar and senior research fellow at both the Miller Center and the Brookings Institute.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Deseret News