By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) – Erica Schwartz, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. CDC, will appear before the Senate health committee on Wednesday for a confirmation hearing that will test whether the embattled agency can secure stable leadership after months of turmoil.
Trump nominated Schwartz, his first-term deputy surgeon general, in April, after multiple leadership shakeups at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has lacked a confirmed leader for all but a month of Trump’s second term.
The hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is the first step toward confirming a permanent director since Susan Monarez’s confirmation last year.
Monarez was fired less than a month later after clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy.
Before Monarez, Trump had in March 2025 withdrawn his first CDC nominee, Florida Republican former Congressman Dave Weldon, a physician long critical of vaccines, hours before his scheduled hearing after it became clear he lacked the votes.
Schwartz, a board-certified preventive medicine physician with no public record of opposing vaccines, is a more conventional pick.
If confirmed, she will inherit an agency confronting the country’s worst measles resurgence in over three decades, an international Ebola outbreak, and eroding public confidence in vaccines.
U.S. measles cases this year are on track to surpass 2025’s total, the highest since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000, driven largely by falling childhood immunization rates.
The CDC has also activated its highest emergency response to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, now one of the largest on record.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician skeptical of Kennedy’s vaccine overhaul, will lead the hearing. He called Schwartz “very impressive” after a meeting last month.
The committee will also hold a hearing for Sean Kaufman, Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary for preparedness and response. His nomination has drawn scrutiny over past comments questioning vaccines, a contrast with Schwartz.
Kaufman has questioned the hepatitis B vaccine in infants and cited the disproven link between vaccines and autism in past comments.
In a now-deleted May 2025 LinkedIn post arguing against the infant hepatitis B shot, he wrote that anyone calling him “an antivaxxer” would force him “to call you a pedophile.”
The co-founder of a biosafety consulting firm, Kaufman would, if confirmed, oversee national crisis countermeasures, including vaccines and personal protective equipment.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Alistair Bell)
