President Donald Trump nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz on Thursday to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, his third pick for a post that has had a confirmed director for 29 days of his second term. Within hours, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thanked Trump on X and said he looked forward to restoring “trust, accountability, and scientific integrity” at the agency. Aaron Siri, the attorney who has litigated vaccine cases alongside Kennedy for years, posted on the same platform that Schwartz would likely be a disaster and lacks the “basic ethics and morals” to run the CDC. Schwartz, a retired rear admiral, spent 24 years in uniform and served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term. The three statements — from the president, his health secretary, and Kennedy’s own vaccine lawyer — came within hours of one another.
Schwartz would inherit an agency under federal court order. On March 16, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction in American Academy of Pediatrics v. Kennedy, staying all 13 of Kennedy’s appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices as likely violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The order stayed every vote the reconstituted panel had taken, blocked a January 5 HHS memo cutting routine childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11, overturned a May 2025 directive on COVID-19 vaccines, and reversed the December downgrade of the hepatitis B recommendation for newborns. The agency has not appealed.
The job is open because Kennedy fired the last confirmed director, Susan Monarez. Her account and his account do not match. Monarez testified under oath to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on September 17 that Kennedy directed her on August 25 to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the evidence and to fire career vaccine-policy officials without cause. She refused. “Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology,” Monarez told the committee. Kennedy has said he fired her because she told him she was not a trustworthy person.
Her firing came 17 days after an August 8 gunman attack on CDC headquarters in Atlanta that killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose. The shooter, Monarez testified, blamed vaccines for his health problems. She also testified that on August 19, her office was informed CDC policy and personnel decisions would require prior approval from political staff.
Schwartz’s record includes the vaccine programs Siri cited. She earned her medical degree from Brown in 1998, then added a master’s in public health from the Uniformed Services University and a law degree from the University of Maryland. She served as chief medical officer for the Coast Guard, wrote its pandemic influenza policy, and led anthrax, smallpox, and seasonal flu vaccination programs for service members. During the first Trump administration she served as deputy surgeon general and helped coordinate the federal COVID-19 response, including nationwide drive-through testing.
Her former supervisor defended her on Thursday. Jerome Adams, Trump’s first-term surgeon general, posted on X that he personally selected Schwartz as his deputy and described her as a battle-tested leader with the expertise, credibility, and integrity to lead the CDC. Schwartz herself, in a video posted earlier this month for National Public Health Week, described vaccines as part of the readiness mission she learned as a military physician.
Schwartz will appear before the Senate HELP Committee, chaired by Louisiana physician Bill Cassidy. The committee has not voted on Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, since her February confirmation hearing circled repeatedly on her vaccine views. Cassidy’s committee pressed Monarez in September on what Kennedy had demanded. A hearing date for Schwartz has not been set.
Trump nominated a career military physician with decades of vaccine-administration experience to lead an agency whose recent vaccine policy a federal court has blocked. Kennedy supported the pick. Kennedy’s longtime vaccine lawyer opposed her the same day.
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