The Senate on Wednesday voted mainly along party lines to confirm Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vote ends months of leadership uncertainty at the nation’s premier public health agency but leaves unresolved the central question that dominated her confirmation process: Will she preserve the agency’s scientific independence under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
The vote was 51-44, with Sen. Tim Kaine (Virginia) as the only Democrat to vote yes with all Republicans.
Schwartz, a physician and retired Navy rear admiral who served as deputy U.S. surgeon general during President Donald Trump’s first term, will take over as the CDC’s permanent director nearly a year after Trump fired Susan Monarez. Monarez refused to resign amid pressure by Kennedy to change vaccine policy.
The CDC since the start of the second Trump administration has faced extraordinary upheaval from workforce cuts, leadership turnover and vaccine policy changes directed by Kennedy.
Schwartz will take over as the CDC confronts the nation’s largest documented cyclosporiasis outbreak, the highest U.S. measles casecount in 35 years and continued concerns over H5N1 avian influenza and other emerging infectious diseases.
During her confirmation hearing, Schwartz was repeatedly press by senators on whether she would defend the CDC’s scientific integrity if political directives conflicted with the evidence. She pledged that she would “never betray the science” but stopped short of saying she would publicly oppose Kennedy if he directed the agency to take actions she believed were unsupported by scientific evidence.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, initially withheld his support before ultimately backing Schwartz after saying she had assured him she would uphold scientific standards. His endorsement helped clear the way for her confirmation after what had become an unusually rocky nomination process.
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