Dr. Erica Schwartz faces a Senate confirmation hearing for the role of CDC director.
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Dr. Erica Schwartz, Trump’s latest nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was grilled by a Senate committee Wednesday morning about her vision and qualifications for the role.
The confirmation hearing, with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, was Schwartz’s first public appearance since Trump nominated her for the role in mid-April.
“If confirmed, my first priority will be restoring trust in public health institutions through radical transparency and unwavering scientific integrity,” Schwartz said, “As CDC director, my sacred responsibility is to provide the American people with public health guidance that is clear, honest and evidence based. I will never betray the science.”
Schwartz is Trump’s third nominee to lead the nation’s beleaguered public health agency, which has not had a permanent director for most of Trump’s second term in office.
If confirmed, Schwartz will work under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.
Schwartz is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, with degrees in medicine, law and public health. She previously served as chief medical officer of the U.S. Coast Guard and as deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration.
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate HELP committee praised her qualifications. She also faced tough questions on how she would navigate potential disagreements with Kennedy, and how she would stand up for science when faced with challenging political directives.
“While I think you are immensely qualified, I am very, very concerned that even qualified people have either had to change their positions or quit,” said Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del. “I wish us all luck on our public health at the moment.”
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The role comes with major challenges and pitfalls.
Health secretary Kennedy came into office with an agenda to change vaccine policy.
In recent months, Kennedy’s changes have largely been blocked by a federal judge, but the intention remains, Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, told NPR. “The political agenda is still there,” he says.
Still, the political winds have shifted a bit. “The president said he was going to let the secretary go wild, and he did. He’s now had to pull him back because it is creating political damage,” Benjamin says, adding that it may give the next CDC leader some space to follow the evidence with less political interference.
Earlier this year, on Instagram, Schwartz voiced her support for vaccines as tools to prevent illness and promote readiness in the military. (Her Instagram page was removed soon after she was nominated for the CDC director role.)
The HELP committee will now decide whether to advance Schwartz’s nomination for a full Senate vote. She is expected to clear the Senate confirmation process.
Roadblocks for an early director
Trump’s first pick for CDC head was Dr. Dave Weldon; his nomination was withdrawn shortly before his confirmation hearing because he did not have the votes to pass.
Trump’s second pick, Susan Monarez, received Senate confirmation but served in the role for less than a month last summer before she was fired by Kennedy.
The next director would be tasked with turning around a CDC that’s been through an exceptionally tough period, including facing pressure to bend to political directives and cuts to staffing and capacity while needing to respond to pressing outbreaks on several fronts.
A recent trove of internal CDC emails, released by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, shed insights into Monarez’s brief, rocky tenure and the chaotic months preceding it.
They show select, high-level exchanges between top CDC officials during a tumultuous period from January through August 2025, as the CDC lost thousands of staffers to cuts and attrition, faced public criticism from Secretary Kennedy, upended typical procedures and adjusted to new levels of political oversight.
The last director lacked autonomy in making policy and hiring decisions. For instance, on Aug. 19, 2025, Matt Buckham, then chief-of-staff to Secretary Kennedy, sent an email to Susan Monarez, the recently confirmed CDC director. “I wanted to elevate the absolute need for political review of major policy decisions at CDC,” by the immediate office of the secretary and political leadership at CDC, he wrote. “Please err on the side of caution,” he wrote, before signing off with “Make America Great!”
Other exchanges chronicled confusion from HHS over who was leading the CDC, the pervasive disorganization around reductions in force, and how Kennedy’s delegates worked to direct vaccine policy outcomes against the legal and scientific advice of CDC scientists and general counsel.
Leadership challenges ahead
In an internal CDC all-hands meeting last month, new leadership at the agency addressed the impacts of all that’s happened on remaining employees.
“I’ve heard a lot … from people about what the morale is like here, how we’ve gotten to a point where it’s not as happy as it used to be, the stress level’s extremely high,” said Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart executive and now the CDC’s deputy director and chief operating officer, in a recording of the meeting reviewed by NPR.
NPR obtained this recording from a current CDC employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of professional repercussions.
“If any organization went through one of the things you’ve had to endure in the last year and a half, it would be traumatic to that organization, institution, for years to come. You’ve had multiple ones,” he said.
Slovenski pledged to proceed with an upcoming reorganization with care. “I’m not promising that everyone will be happy. What I’m promising is that everyone will be clear,” he said. “Everyone will know what’s coming and they’ll know it was done in the most thoughtful manner.”
How Schwartz will navigate these challenges remains to be seen. But public health veterans say she has the credentials and experience to lead the agency. “People are very optimistic about her candidacy and are supportive of her potentially being in the role,” says Dr. Marcus Plescia, district health director for Fulton County, which includes Atlanta where the CDC is headquartered.
“What we really need right now is a CDC director who can step in and be a spokesperson on some of the emerging issues we’re facing,” says Plescia, “We need somebody in that position who can get in and establish themselves and be there to stay.”
Also up for confirmation: Head of preparedness and response
Wednesday’s session also includes a confirmation hearing for Sean Kaufman, nominated by the White House to serve as the assistant secretary for strategic preparedness and response at HHS.
Kaufman is a senior adviser for global affairs at the CDC and has previously responded to infectious disease outbreaks including anthrax and West Nile virus. He has also served as an expert witness in multiple cases defending people who faced professional consequences for refusing COVID vaccines, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Kaufman faced tough questions from Senator Bill Cassidy, R-La., over past statements and posts in which he supported canceling funding for mRNA vaccine development, questioned the safety and need for universal COVID and hepatitis B vaccines, and said he “hated” the CDC.
The head of ASPR oversees the development of vaccines and countermeasures against pandemics and emerging threats.
Kaufman confirmed that he had made these statements in the past, but said he was nonetheless currently supportive of vaccine research and the CDC.
