“We witnessed what happened with Susan,” Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer who resigned in protest over Kennedy’s political meddling, told Stat News. “She was unable to make staffing or policy choices. What’s different now? Kennedy hasn’t changed.”
“A disaster”
Reporting by The Washington Post said that during the search for a new CDC director, several well-qualified contenders demanded guarantees of independence — including authority to hire and fire staff and protections to keep science free from political interference. Sources told the Post those candidates were passed over.
Trump revealed Schwartz’s nomination in a social media post on Wednesday, calling her “a STAR,” and announced nominees for three other agency roles. “These Highly Respected Doctors of Medicine have the knowledge, experience, and TOP degrees to restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC,” he wrote.
Kennedy replied with a more tempered statement, writing: “I congratulate Dr. Schwartz and the new CDC leadership team. I look forward to working together to restore trust, accountability, and scientific integrity at the CDC so we can return it to its core mission and Make America Healthy Again.”
Kennedy’s close anti-vaccine ally and former personal lawyer, Aaron Siri, meanwhile, was blunt, predicting Schwartz’s tenure at the CDC would “likely be a disaster.”
Siri accused Schwartz of overseeing the nationwide Covid-19 vaccine rollout and, he said, having a long history of imposing what he described as rights-eroding civilian and military vaccine mandates — including ordering smallpox, anthrax, and flu shots for US forces and disciplining those who declined — which, he argued, demonstrates she lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC.
He added that her previous promotion, and even mandates, of nearly a dozen vaccines leaves little reason to expect she will impartially oversee the CDC’s vaccine program.
