Senate panel presses Trump CDC pick on supporting vaccine safety

By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) – Erica Schwartz, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. CDC, faced sharp questioning over vaccines on Wednesday as the Senate health committee weighed whether the embattled agency can secure stable leadership after months of turmoil.

Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, repeatedly pressed Schwartz on whether she would exert full control over the agency and stand up to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including removing officials seeking to link vaccines to autism.

Schwartz declined to answer directly. As Cassidy kept pressing, she said only that she would never “compromise on” or “betray” science, adding that Kennedy will allow her to exercise her authority. “The secretary will absolutely allow me to be CDC director,” she said.

“You can be the CDC director and just take orders. We need a CDC director that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization,” Cassidy said.

In her opening statement, Schwartz, Trump’s first-term deputy surgeon general, said restoring public trust would be her first priority. “Public health is in my DNA,” she said, thanking Trump and Kennedy for nominating her.

“If confirmed, my first priority will be restoring trust in public health institutions through radical transparency and unwavering scientific integrity,” she said.

Cassidy, who has been skeptical of Kennedy’s vaccine overhaul, said he could not support any nominee who did not affirm vaccine safety.

“Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective. They have saved countless lives. Study after study shows they do not cause autism, whether given at birth or whether given later in life,” he said, adding that misinformation, including false claims linking the hepatitis B vaccine to autism, was undermining trust.

He said the CDC’s website should reflect the best available science “rather than the preferences of political appointees.”

The committee is also considering Sean Kaufman, Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary for preparedness and response, whose past comments questioning vaccines have drawn scrutiny.

KAUFMAN QUESTIONED ON PAST VACCINE REMARKS

Kaufman has questioned the infant hepatitis B vaccine and cited the disproven link between vaccines and autism. In a now-deleted May 2025 LinkedIn post, he wrote that anyone calling him “an antivaxxer” would force him “to call you a pedophile.”

Cassidy confronted him directly: “You want to lead ASPR, but you hate CDC. I mean, like, what the heck’s going on there?” Trump nominee for U.S. CDC director appears before Senate panel.

Kaufman, who appeared alongside Schwartz, sought to distance himself from those comments. “Let me be clear, vaccines save lives,” he said, calling them “safe and effective.”

He said he wanted to “accelerate the development of medical countermeasures, which includes vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics.”

Trump nominated Schwartz in April after multiple leadership shakeups at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has lacked a confirmed leader for all but a month of his second term.

CDC LEADERSHIP TURMOIL CONTINUES

Susan Monarez, confirmed last year, was fired less than a month later after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy. Trump withdrew his first nominee, former Florida Congressman and vaccine critic Dave Weldon, in March 2025 after it became clear he lacked the votes.

If confirmed, Schwartz would inherit an agency confronting the worst U.S. measles resurgence in three decades, driven by falling childhood immunization rates, and an international Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, now one of the largest on record, for which the CDC activated its highest-level emergency response.

Kaufman, the co-founder of a biosafety consulting firm, would, if confirmed, oversee national crisis countermeasures, including vaccines and personal protective equipment.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Alistair Bell, Louise Heavens and Aurora Ellis)