Trump nominates vaccine Erica Schwartz to lead CDC amid turmoil

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held Dr. Erica Schwartz’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday, putting a doctor with mainstream vaccine credentials before lawmakers at a moment when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already shaken the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The hearing was set for 10:00 a.m. in Room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and it came nearly eight months after the agency last had an official director.

Trump nominated Schwartz on April 16, 2026, to lead the CDC. If confirmed, she would replace Dr. Susan Monarez, who was sworn in as CDC director on July 31, 2025, and then left office in August 2025 after a clash with Kennedy over vaccines. Jay Bhattacharya has been serving as acting CDC director since February 2026, leaving the agency under temporary leadership while its vaccine policy work continued to face pressure from HHS.

Schwartz entered the hearing with a résumé that public health groups have used to argue she is a credible, evidence-based pick. She is a former deputy surgeon general and has also served as chief medical officer with the U.S. Coast Guard. The American Public Health Association backed her nomination, saying she has the medical background and public health knowledge to understand that the CDC must be guided by evidence-based science.

Her nomination also landed after Kennedy pushed the CDC’s immunization system into deeper upheaval. In June 2025, he removed all 17 original members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the panel that has long helped shape vaccine recommendations for doctors, insurers and state health departments. That move, along with new layers of political review inside the department, has left the CDC’s vaccine apparatus operating under tighter control from the HHS secretary’s office.

That is why Schwartz’s confirmation hearing was more than a routine personnel test. It was a measure of whether a CDC director can still steer policy independently when the secretary above her has already shown a willingness to rewrite vaccine governance from the top down. Schwartz’s supporters see a mainstream scientist who could restore some stability; skeptics are focused on how much authority she would actually have inside Kennedy’s department.