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Dr. Erica Schwartz, President Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), picked up a key endorsement from Senate Health Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) Thursday morning, but a scheduled vote on her nomination was postponed.
“I’m confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not,” Cassidy said when the committee convened.
During her confirmation hearing last week, Cassidy questioned Schwartz about whether she could protect the agency from political meddling and stand up to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he asked her to take action that was not supported by scientific evidence.
Her predecessor, Susan Monarez, pushed back against Kennedy’s vaccine agenda and was fired after being on the job less than a month.
Cassidy noted that “as a sign of good faith,” the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had modified the CDC’s website on vaccines and autism, which Kennedy ordered to be changed last year to include a disclaimer that vaccines do not cause autism “is not an evidence-based claim.”
“There’s more to do to repair the damage that has been done to the U.S. public health response, but this is a start,” Cassidy said.
The Republican senator, who voted to confirm Kennedy despite misgivings, has since become one of the secretary’s main GOP critics after losing his primary election to Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), who was backed by Trump.
Cassidy seemed unsatisfied with Schwartz’s answers last week, and it wasn’t immediately clear if he would support her nomination. His support makes it likely Schwartz will advance to the full Senate.
However, that will need to wait until next week as the vote Thursday was postponed over attendance issues.
The panel’s minority leader, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said that while he was “impressed” with Schwartz’s career as a public health civil servant, he did not share Cassidy’s optimism about her ability to stand up to Kennedy and would vote against her.
“Will we have people in the Trump administration who have the guts to stand up to people who are anti-science and into conspiracy theories? And I am afraid that right now, within HHS, we have a secretary who will not tolerate this,” Sanders said.
“I will be voting against Dr. Schwartz because we need people in this country who are going to stand up, protect the American people, and I don’t think you can see that right now with Secretary Kennedy in his position,” Sanders added.
The committee earlier Thursday delayed a vote on a Trump administration nominee to lead an agency focused on public health preparedness because of a lack of support.
Sean Kaufman, nominated to lead the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, was confronted by tough questions during a confirmation hearing last week over his views on vaccines.
“There are ongoing conversations with the administration on the path forward for Mr. Kaufman’s nomination,” a spokesperson for the committee said in a statement.
In a series of posts over the past several years, Kaufman argued against giving the hepatitis B vaccine at birth and cited the disproven link between vaccines and autism.
During the hearing, Kaufman admitted to having authored a LinkedIn post saying he would “rather perish” than give his children the COVID-19 vaccine.
Kaufman sought to distance himself from those past comments during the hearing and insisted he believed “vaccines save lives.” But he waffled when pressed by a number of senators about whether he supported the HHS’s decision to defund mRNA vaccine research and said it was important to study the risks and benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine, citing some rare adverse events.
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