The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, giving the agency a permanent director again after roughly a year of acting leadership. Schwartz now takes over an agency that has been moving through temporary hands while disease outbreaks sharpen the pressure on the nation’s public health response.
The confirmation puts Schwartz in charge at a moment when the United States has recorded its highest number of measles cases in 35 years, and a growing cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to shredded iceberg lettuce is still expanding. She will oversee the country’s public health response, approve vaccine recommendations and help contain outbreaks, making the job immediately consequential rather than ceremonial.
That role had been left in limbo since August 2025, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Susan Monarez after 29 days in the post. Jay Bhattacharya has led the agency since February while also directing the National Institutes of Health, and federal law required the Trump administration to name a permanent CDC director in March. Schwartz’s nomination came a month after that deadline, and she is now the first permanent director in roughly a year.
Her hearing left behind a sharper question than the confirmation vote did. Schwartz told senators vaccines are safe and effective, but she said she was unaware of some of Kennedy’s vaccine policy changes and sidestepped questions about whether she supported them. Bill Cassidy pressed her on whether she would challenge Kennedy if he tried to undermine science, and later backed her nomination after speaking with her again and with people who served with her and know her well.
The dispute did not end with the hearing. The Department of Health and Human Services modified a CDC webpage about vaccines and autism so it now says studies have not ruled out a link between childhood vaccines and autism, and it also says scientists have not identified the root causes of autism. Since November, that page had carried the same claim about the studies not ruling out a link. Public health critics said last month that Schwartz had not clearly committed to protecting CDC guidance from political pressure, but the Senate vote means she will now have to do that work inside the agency, not from the witness table.
