President Trump has nominated retired Rear Adm. Erica Schwartz to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has been without a permanent chief for months. Schwartz, a physician and former senior Coast Guard medical official, needs Senate confirmation to hold the job at the beleaguered agency, per CNBC. Trump described Schwartz in a social media post on Thursday as "incredibly talented," the AP reports, adding, "She is a STAR!" She had the nonpolitical job of deputy surgeon general during Trump's first term.
The CDC has been overseen by an acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, whose temporary authority lapsed last month under the federal Vacancies Act, which caps acting service at 210 days for positions requiring Senate approval. That deadline was triggered when the previous director, Dr. Susan Monarez, was dismissed 210 days earlier. Monarez, the only Senate-confirmed CDC director so far in Trump's second term, held the post for less than a month last summer. The CDC has been dealing with leadership turnover, low morale, staff departures, and sweeping shifts in federal vaccine recommendations under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The agency was also the target of an Aug. 8 shooting attack at its Atlanta headquarters.
Trump aides are trying to muffle Kennedy's anti-vaccine stances as the midterms near, the Wall Street Journal points out, and were looking for a nominee who would help with that; Monarez said she was ousted over vaccine policy differences with Kennedy. "When I was a military physician, my job was all about readiness. It was all about public health prevention, vaccines, early detection," Schwartz said in a recent video for National Public Health Week. "If we get that right, we change lives before illness ever begins."
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