Senate Confirms Dr. Erica Schwartz as CDC Director in 51-44 Vote

The Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday by a vote of 51 to 44, giving the agency its first permanent leader in roughly a year, according to NBC News and the Washington Informer. The vote was largely along party lines. Republicans supported her and Democrats opposed her, with one exception: Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia voted with the Republicans, NBC reported. Kaine said last month that he regretted voting against the previous director, Susan Monarez, and had apologized to her.

Schwartz served as deputy surgeon general in President Trump’s first term, and earlier as a Navy physician and as chief medical officer of the Coast Guard, NBC reported. The Washington Informer reported that she is a retired rear admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the first Black woman to lead the CDC and its 22nd director.

She takes over an agency that has been without a Senate-confirmed head since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Monarez in August 2025, 29 days into the job, according to NBC. Several acting directors followed; Jay Bhattacharya, who also directs the National Institutes of Health, has led the CDC since February. Federal law required a nominee by March, and Schwartz was named about a month after that deadline.

Her path through the Senate turned on one question: how independent the CDC would be from the secretary who supervises it. At her hearing she called vaccines safe and effective and pledged, “I will never betray the science.” Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the health committee, ultimately backed her nomination after seeking assurances about evidence-based science. “I am confident that she knows what she is doing,” he said, according to NBC.

Critics were not satisfied. The National Public Health Coalition, a group of former CDC employees, said it would not support her based on her hearing performance, calling her commitments “incomplete, vague, or missing.” Democrats, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said they remained worried about the agency’s independence, the Washington Informer reported. An HHS spokesperson, Emily Hilliard, said Schwartz’s record “speaks for itself” and called the criticism of her answers “political theater.” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said her experience makes her “uniquely qualified to lead CDC during this critical time.”

The in-box she inherits is full. NBC reported that the country is in the midst of a measles outbreak with the highest U.S. case count in 35 years and a growing outbreak of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness, linked to shredded iceberg lettuce. Kennedy changed the childhood immunization schedule in January to recommend fewer universal shots, and a federal judge blocked the change in March, NBC said. A CDC webpage on vaccines and autism has said since November that studies have not ruled out a link; HHS later added that scientists have not identified autism’s root causes, but the original claim remains, NBC reported.

The agency is also rebuilding after staff losses and reorganization over the past year, and public confidence in health institutions has fallen, the Washington Informer reported.