NEW YORK — A Senate committee on Thursday advanced Dr. Erica Schwartz’s nomination to be director of the nation’s top public health agency, setting aside concerns that she will not stand up to political meddling.
If confirmed by the full Senate, the 54-year-old would become the 22nd director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats. Her resume includes medical and law degrees, a stint as deputy surgeon general, and a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard.
Schwartz appeared to be on shaky ground after a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this month. The chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and others questioned whether she would be willing to stand up to Republican President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., if he ordered CDC to do something that was unsupported by science and good public health practice.
But when the committee met last week, Cassidy said he had spoken with Schwartz after that hearing and to others who knew her.
“I’m confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not,” said Cassidy, whose support was necessary for the nomination to go forward.
The committee’s near party-line vote Thursday moved Schwartz’s nomination ahead.
Among those who opposed her was Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent.
“The issue at hand is not complicated,” Sanders said last week. “Will we have people in the Trump administration who have the guts to stand up to people who are anti-science and into conspiracy theories?”
The CDC has been in turmoil since Trump returned to office last year.
Largely due to layoffs and resignations, the agency has lost 3,000-plus employees, more than one-quarter of its workforce. Morale has plummeted as a succession of mostly temporary leaders have come and gone. The front office has been staffed by political appointees with little or no training in medicine or public health.
When Schwartz was nominated in April, public health experts were cautiously optimistic, citing her background. They also noted she was the choice of Trump and not Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before he was tapped to oversee the CDC and other federal health agencies.
Kennedy had promised not to change the nation’s vaccination schedule but later attempted a substantial rewrite of vaccine recommendations for kids. Some of those efforts were put on hold this year by a federal judge.
Kennedy’s actions have rankled Cassidy, a physician who initially expressed doubts about Kennedy as Trump’s pick to be health secretary. Cassidy ultimately signed off on the nomination after Kennedy promised not to change the nation’s childhood vaccine recommendations.
At Schwartz’s hearing in July, Cassidy and some other senators asked her what she would do if Kennedy or other political appointees instructed the CDC to make changes that were not supported by science. Schwartz pledged to “never betray the science,” but she repeatedly declined to dissent from some of the actions Kennedy has taken.
The National Public Health Coalition, an organization of former and current CDC workers, was not reassured by her responses.
“The public needed to hear clear commitments about how she would protect CDC guidance from political pressure,” the group said in a statement. “Too often, her stated commitments were incomplete, vague, or missing.”
The group said senators should require specific written commitments from Schwartz on scientific independence, evidence-based vaccine policy, conflicts of interest and other issues.
At the hearing, Schwartz said she was unaware that CDC programs that worked to prevent smoking and promote vaccinations had been curtailed. She declined to commit to taking down a CDC website that suggests a link between childhood vaccines and autism. She said she had not seen it, though she agreed existing medical evidence has not found a link.
Last week, Cassidy said that “as a sign of good faith” officials at the Department of Health and Human Services had modified the page. But this week, it continued to argue that “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim, despite numerous studies that have found no such link.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, interpreted Schwartz’s performance as someone trying to please different factions. He disagreed with how she answered several questions, but continued to support her nomination.
Schwartz is qualified, might be able to rebuild the CDC’s depleted command structure and could start to rebuild public trust in the agency by focusing on bipartisan concerns such as foodborne disease outbreaks, he said in a recent interview.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, a former top CDC official who resigned from the agency in August, echoed that.
If Schwartz is not confirmed, “it will mean a continued rudderless journey for CDC,” he said.
For Kennedy, “having to start over is probably what he wants — many more months with no one stopping him from pursuing the same anti-science and anti-vaccine efforts he has been pursuing,” Jernigan said.
Schwartz was the third Trump nominee for the office in the past 18 months.
The first was a former Florida congressman, Dr. David Weldon. His Senate hearing in March 2025 was canceled an hour before it was to begin. Weldon said at the time that he had been told not enough senators were willing to vote for him.
The White House then moved on to Susan Monarez, who had been serving as the CDC’s acting director. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but she was ousted in less than a month. Trump administration officials said she was not aligned with the president’s agenda so they terminated her.
Since then there have been a series of HHS officials as acting CDC director.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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