CDC nominee Erica Schwartz pressed on whether she will resist RFK Jr’s vaccine agenda

Erica Schwartz during her Senate confirmation hearing to be the director of the CDC, in Washington DC on 15 July. Photograph: Mariam Zuhaib/AP View image in fullscreen Erica Schwartz during her Senate confirmation hearing to be the director of the CDC, in Washington DC on 15 July. Photograph: Mariam Zuhaib/AP CDC nominee Erica Schwartz pressed on whether she will resist RFK Jr’s vaccine agenda During confirmation hearing Wednesday, Trump’s pick tells Senate health committee she will ‘never betray the science’ Erica Schwartz, the Trump administration ’s latest nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), faced sharp questioning from senators who pressed her to say whether she would stand up to her boss, the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr . During her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Schwartz, a deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration , told the Senate health committee she “will never betray the science” and pledged to use “radical transparency” to rebuild public trust. But she repeatedly deflected questions about how she would handle pressure from Kennedy, a leader in the anti-vaccine movement who has overseen months of turmoil at the agency and made controversial changes to US vaccine policies. “We need a CDC director that will ⁠actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization,” said the committee’s chair, the senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and a physician. Schwartz told him that Kennedy “will absolutely allow me to be CDC director”. The committee appeared likely to approve Schwartz, 54, who was nominated by Trump in April, calling her “incredibly talented” in a post on Truth Social. Kennedy later approved the choice, but refused to commit to supporting whatever vaccine guidance she might issue. During the hearing, several senators focused their questions on Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism. Democratic senator Maggie Hassan asked whether she would, were Kennedy to order her, suspend promotion of a flu vaccination campaign during a deadly flu season. “Senator, I don’t speak in hypotheticals,” Schwartz responded. “It isn’t hypothetical. It happened,” said Hassan, referring to internal CDC emails , released by the senator Bernie Sanders in June, that documented such a directive from Kennedy to CDC staff last year. Schwartz said she agreed that the CDC should prioritize responding to infectious diseases. “I think over time, the CDC has had some mission creep, and it’s trying to be all things to all people,” she said. She said she had not seen a current CDC webpage that suggests a link between childhood vaccines and autism. Still, she declined to commit to taking the page down, though she agreed existing medical evidence had not found a link. The change on the CDC’s website, made last year, received backlash from scientists and advocates, with CDC staff saying the updated page did not go through the normal, scientific clearance process. Schwartz said s