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President Joe Biden is trying to jump-start progress on his stalled domestic agenda by refocusing attention on one of his most popular proposals, limiting the cost of prescription drugs. Biden is traveling to Culpeper, Virginia, on Thursday, where White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will call attention to the “unacceptable” cost of medications. (Megerian, 2/10)

President Biden will visit Culpeper, Virginia, Thursday and is expected to call attention to the "unacceptable" cost of medications in the U.S. as part of his effort to fulfill one of his key agenda proposals: limiting the cost of prescription drugs. The trip is seen as a chance to get his stalled domestic agenda back on track. Biden’s trip will also be an opportunity for him to start promoting his party’s candidates in November’s midterm elections. He’s expected to appear alongside Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., who is in danger of losing her seat representing a central Virginia district. Prescription drugs will be a focal point for Biden’s visit. (Martin, 2/10)

The Biden administration on Wednesday pushed back on what it called "misinformation," saying a federal grant program meant to reduce harm to drug users does not include taxpayer funding for pipes that can be used to smoke crack or meth. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put out a statement clarifying "no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits." (Samuels, 2/9)

Dousing a social media firestorm, the Biden administration said Wednesday that a grant program to counter harm from illicit drugs will not pay for safer pipes to smoke crack or meth. The White House was put on the defensive as outrage from the political right, some of it with racial overtones, was cresting online. “No federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and White House drug policy adviser Rahul Gupta said in a joint statement. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Dupuy, 2/9)

Serving as Biden’s top science adviser, Eric Lander, the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, publicly promoted Covid-19 vaccination efforts while having a significant financial investment in one of the vaccine makers, according to financial disclosures. Under the White House’s ethics agreement Lander signed, he had 90 days to divest his stocks after he was confirmed by the Senate on May 28. While Lander shed the bulk of that stock in June — including shares of BioNTech SE, the German biotechnology company and Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine partner — he waited until Aug. 5 to sell the remaining $500,000 to $1 million worth of stock he held in that company. When Lander ultimately sold the stock 69 days after his confirmation, it was the company’s second-highest stock price ever at $404.92 a share, having shot up more than $50 a share from two days prior. (Thompson, 2/9)

The resignation of Eric Lander as President Biden’s lead scientific adviser is not just a blow to one president’s plans for advancing research, but a signpost on the death march of a certain way of doing science. It’s not quite “big science,” which isn’t going anywhere. Call it “big ego.” In science, “big ego” isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. But in recent decades it grew with the emergence of researchers who could both handle the kind of gloves-off debate that can mark academic discourse and marshal vast resources to make certain types of scientific discoveries, like mapping genomes or understanding how molecular changes in a cell lead to cancer. (Herper, 2/9)