Experts

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Practitioner Senior Fellow
TenpasVitaSEPT2020.pdf

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

Presidents as Candidates
Presidents as Candidates

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed

CNN
Joe Biden’s nominees are facing a Senate blockade
Joe Biden’s nominees are facing a Senate blockade — led by Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas CNN
Bloomberg Government
Democrats Rush to Confirm Biden Picks as Year-End Deadline Looms
A recent Brookings analysis also said Biden’s nominees are advancing at a “snail’s pace.” But Kathryn Dunn Tenpas said her analysis shows Biden’s commitment to diversity represents a “historic breakthrough.” Tenpas said that at the 300-day mark women represent half of the 140 confirmed appointees, and 39% of the nominees are nonwhite.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Bloomberg Government
The Hill
GOP holds on Biden nominees set back gains for women in top positions
As of Nov. 17, 50 percent of Biden’s nominees the Senate has confirmed have been women. That’s compared to 23 percent in the same time frame under the Trump administration and 29 percent in the Obama administration, according to data compiled by Kathryn Tenpas, a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas The Hill
Brookings
Biden’s confirmations progress at the 300-day mark
The Biden administration’s effort to staff the federal government is proceeding at a snail’s pace compared to previous administrations. Such a leadership vacuum inhibits the administration’s ability to implement their agenda, and while the Senate plays a key role in the process and pace, it is the president who suffers most from this incredibly slow pace.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Brookings
The Hill
Democrats frustrated by vacancies across government
Kathryn Tenpas, an expert in executive confirmations at the Brookings Institution, said that Biden is lagging behind former Presidents Trump, Obama and George W. Bush when it comes to the number of confirmed nominees in the first 300 days of his presidency “by extremely significant points.”
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas The Hill
NPR
Time has run out on some Biden administration appointees
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution says no other country works like this. "We are very peculiar in the sense that every four or every eight years we basically lop off the top of the pyramid and then it takes several months to get leadership in place to go forward," she said.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas NPR