Practitioner Senior Fellow
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.
A recent recipient of a Packard Foundation grant, Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing and turnover and presidential transitions. She also studies interbranch relations, particularly the complex relationship between federal courts and Congress. 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.
Featured Publications
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed
The University’s Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted a webinar Monday night about the future of relations between the U.S. and China, arguing that the Trump administration was responsible for worsening tensions between the two countries. The webinar consisted of a panel of eight scholars and politicians. Five panelists from the Miller Center and Center for Politics at the University were joined by three panelists from the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, a partner institution of the University.
The Cavalier Daily
The portfolio Harris takes on during her tenure as vice president will illuminate which areas she is trying to strengthen in preparation for a future run, said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. And Biden, a former vice president himself, will likely be willing to support those future ambitions. “I suspect because of Biden’s age, the fact that he’s been in government for so many years and because Biden cares a lot about the Democratic Party, that I think he will do what he can to empower her,” Dunn Tenpas said. “ . . . I don’t think they need to tell her not to overshadow Biden. A vice president has a pretty tough time overshadowing a president.”
The Washington Post
Each president decides which officials are part of the cabinet. For consistency across administrations, Brookings senior fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and research assistant Grant Koehl looked at only the cabinet-level positions in the line of presidential succession and didn’t include certain positions that presidents sometimes give more importance, such as United Nations ambassador, which Mr. Biden has made a cabinet position. The number of cabinet members in the line of succession increased with the addition of the Veterans Affairs Department under former President George H.W. Bush and the Department of Homeland Security under former President George W. Bush, bringing the total to 15.
The Wall Streeet Journal
Despite the truncated transition brought on by President Trump’s refusal to concede the election and Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration, also refusing to certify the transition for nearly three weeks—the delay has not affected the pace of President-elect Biden’s appointments. In fact, the Biden transition is well ahead of his seven predecessors. As of Jan. 7, the transition had publicly identified the top 15 Cabinet members. The completion of these highly visible appointments provides the opportunity to compare the relative diversity (in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, and age) of the Biden Cabinet to his six predecessors at the start of their administrations.
Brookings
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Senior Fellow at the Miller Center, University of Virginia, discusses moves to remove Donald Trump, why impeachment is important even if it may not be achieved by 20th January, how recent events will change the Republican Party, and the risk of escalating violence.
BFM Malaysian Radio
Not having those positions filled “inhibits any kind of long-range planning,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a Brookings Institution expert and a senior research director for the White House Transition Project. And it burns time off the four-year clock that Biden faces before the next election to implement his policies.
Talking Points Memo