In the 14 months that have elapsed since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Kellyanne Conway has slowly transitioned from one of the administration's most visible public faces to a new role as its token "BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY" person, who is released from the West Wing storage closet in which she presumably sits only when the White House needs one of her patented inane talking-head interviews to divert attention from its latest humiliating scandal. Unfortunately, it turns out that instead of disappearing from public life altogether, Conway has busied herself in recent months with the task of running the government's response to the opioid epidemic—a public health emergency that kills 175 Americans every day—into the goddamn ground. From Politico:

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has taken control of the opioids agenda, quietly freezing out drug policy professionals and relying instead on political staff to address a lethal crisis claiming about 175 lives a day. The main response so far has been to call for a border wall and to promise a "just say no” campaign.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy has been without a permanent director since the president's first nominee for that position, Pennsylvania congressman Tom Marino, withdrew from consideration in light of history of zealous advocacy for legislation friendly to narcotics manufacturers. As a result, the ONDCP was briefly led by a 24-year-old former campaign staffer who lied on his résumé about the length of time he served as vice president of his college fraternity—a distinction that makes him the least-qualified person to hold a White House job who did not marry one of the president's children.

Conway, for some reason, has stepped into this void, steering the administration's opioid response strategy with the help of a "skeleton crew" of political appointees who possess no relevant experience.