The Senate confirmed Erica Schwartz CDC director on Aug. 5 in a 51-44 vote, installing a permanent leader at an agency depleted by layoffs, resignations and repeated leadership changes. The vote was nearly along party lines, NPR reported.
The confirmation settles the nomination, not the concerns raised during Schwartz’s July hearing. Claims that she damaged her reputation are opinion, not a verifiable outcome. The documented dispute was narrower: Democrats, independents and some public-health figures questioned whether she would defend evidence-based policy if it conflicted with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or the Trump administration.
What did Erica Schwartz say about political pressure at the CDC?
Schwartz told senators she would “never betray the science” and pledged “radical transparency,” according to PBS NewsHour. Yet she did not give direct answers to several questions about possible orders from Kennedy.
Asked how she would respond if Kennedy sought approval of recommendations without scientific support, Schwartz said she did not believe he would make such a request, NPR reported. Infectious-diseases physician Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, called that response an “evasion.”
Schwartz also said there was “overwhelming evidence” that vaccines do not cause autism, ABC News reported. But she would not commit to removing a CDC webpage discussed at the hearing that suggests a childhood-vaccine link to autism despite the existing medical evidence. Asked whether she would halt a flu-vaccination campaign at Kennedy’s direction during a severe flu season, she said she did not speak in hypotheticals. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., replied that such a direction had occurred, referring to internal CDC emails released by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The questions were not abstract Senate-theater debris. Susan Monarez, the first Senate-confirmed CDC director, was fired after less than a month. NPR reported that Monarez later told Congress Kennedy had pressured her to approve vaccine policies without reviewing scientific evidence.
Why did Bill Cassidy support Schwartz?
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., pressed Schwartz over whether she could reject political interference and “junk science.” He later voted to advance her nomination and to confirm her. Cassidy said that conversations with Schwartz, a review of the hearing transcript and discussions with people who had worked with her left him confident in her judgment, NPR reported.
Others read her hearing performance differently. Georges Benjamin, chief executive of the American Public Health Association, told NPR that officials in such jobs often need to build influence and should not expect to gain it by publicly confronting a prospective boss before taking office.
What does Schwartz inherit at the CDC?
Schwartz, a former Coast Guard chief medical officer and deputy surgeon general, is expected to be sworn in within days, according to NPR. She takes charge of an agency that PBS reported had lost more than 3,000 workers, over one-quarter of its workforce, largely through layoffs and resignations.
The CDC is also responding to rising measles cases, cyclosporiasis outbreaks and Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, NPR reported. Her stated commitments will now face the less ceremonial test: whether the agency’s scientific work can withstand political direction from above.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.