The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by a 51-44 vote, giving the Atlanta-based agency its first Senate-confirmed leader in nearly a year and placing a retired Navy rear admiral atop a public health workforce that has shrunk by more than one-quarter since President Trump returned to office.
Schwartz, 54, becomes the 22nd CDC director. She takes over from National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who has doubled as acting CDC head since February, and inherits the country's largest measles outbreak in 35 years, a growing cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce and an Ebola outbreak in Africa, NBC News and CBS News reported.
What shifted
Schwartz's nomination looked shaky after a July 15 hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, at which chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., pressed her on whether she would resist Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he ordered actions unsupported by science. Schwartz repeatedly declined to break with Kennedy's past moves. She was the third Trump nominee for the job in 18 months, after former Florida Rep. David Weldon's hearing was scrapped in March 2025 and Susan Monarez was fired after 29 days last August.
Cassidy reversed last month, saying he had spoken again with Schwartz and with people who had worked with her. "I am confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not," Cassidy said at a July 23 committee meeting, NBC News reported. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia was the only Democrat to vote yes; he said last month he regretted voting against Monarez and had apologized to her.
On the record
At her hearing, Schwartz pledged "radical transparency" and told senators, "I will never betray the science." Pressed by Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire on whether she would suspend a flu-vaccination campaign during a deadly season if Kennedy ordered it, Schwartz replied, "Senator, I don't speak in hypotheticals." She also told the panel the agency had suffered "some mission creep" and was "trying to be all things to all people."
Financial disclosures Schwartz filed last month show she will leave UnitedHealth Group, where she was earning about $850,000 in salary and bonus, and resign from the boards of Butterfly Network, Aveanna Healthcare and the Searching for Solutions Institute.
The Republican case
Republicans supporting Schwartz cited her résumé — medical and law degrees from Brown and the University of Maryland, a term as deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration, and Coast Guard clinical leadership over 41 clinics and 150 sick bays — as the stability the agency has lacked through three nominations and a revolving door of acting directors. Cassidy, a physician, said HHS had modified a CDC webpage on childhood vaccines and autism "as a sign of good faith" ahead of the vote. Kennedy told an April congressional hearing he approved of Trump's pick, though he refused to commit to backing whatever vaccine guidance Schwartz might issue. No lean-right outlet appeared in the wire coverage of Wednesday's confirmation reviewed for this article.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not say when Schwartz would start work or disclose her salary, the Associated Press reported. Schwartz will be the first Black woman to run the CDC, according to CBS News.