Senate Confirms Dr. Erica Schwartz as C.D.C. Director
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- The Senate voted 51-44 on Wednesday to confirm Dr. Erica Schwartz as CDC director, with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) the lone Democrat in favor, ending a nearly year-long vacancy at the agency.
- Dr. Erica Schwartz is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who holds both law and medical degrees and served as deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration.
- Schwartz was the Trump administration's third nominee for CDC director in two years, and the CDC has had a confirmed director for only one month since President Trump returned to the White House.
- The CDC has lost roughly a third of its staff to layoffs and resignations since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took office last year, survived a shooting at its Atlanta headquarters, and is battling outbreaks of cyclosporiasis in the U.S. and Ebola in Africa.
- Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said outbreaks are inevitable but the weakened CDC seems far less able to contain them than it once was.
- Schwartz had already cleared the Senate health committee on Thursday, making her full-Senate confirmation all but guaranteed.
Why it matters: Schwartz takes over an agency that has shed about a third of its workforce under Kennedy and lacks a confirmed director for nearly all of Trump's second term, even as it confronts active cyclosporiasis and Ebola outbreaks. Her public support for childhood vaccines positions her at odds with the Health Secretary who oversees her.
