Trump CDC nominee Erica Schwartz faces Senate hearing amid turmoil

Erica Schwartz faced the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Wednesday as Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CDC, in a hearing shaped less by biography than by the agency’s fragile condition. The committee set the session for 10:00 a.m. ET in Room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and paired Schwartz’s nomination with Sean Kaufman’s in a joint hearing.

Schwartz, a board-certified preventive medicine physician and Trump’s former deputy surgeon general, entered as a more conventional pick than some of the administration’s earlier choices and with no public record of opposing vaccines. Trump nominated her in April 2026, after withdrawing former Florida congressman Dave Weldon when it became clear he lacked support. The CDC then went through another upheaval when Susan Monarez, confirmed last year, was fired less than a month later after clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy. Jay Bhattacharya has served as acting CDC director since February 2026, leaving the agency in interim hands again.

If confirmed, Schwartz would inherit a CDC confronting one of the most difficult stretches in recent years. The agency updated its measles tracking page on July 10, 2026, and says the outbreak remains active. Early July reporting put U.S. measles cases at roughly 2,170 to 2,200, with more than 30 active outbreaks, bringing the country close to its 2025 record and raising questions about whether elimination status could be at risk later this year.

The vaccination picture is also worsening. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers reported that non-medical exemptions among kindergartners reached 3.4% in the 2024-25 school year, about 138,000 children. That level leaves public health officials trying to contain measles spread while childhood immunization rates remain uneven.

The CDC director will also have to manage outbreaks beyond U.S. borders. The World Health Organization said the Bundibugyo virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda was confirmed in May 2026, with 1,460 confirmed cases and 452 deaths in Congo as of July 1 and 20 confirmed cases, including two deaths, in Uganda as of July 2. The CDC says no U.S. cases have been confirmed and the risk to the American public remains low, but WHO says the virus has no vaccine or specific treatment.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who is leading the hearing, called Schwartz “very impressive” after a previous meeting. His committee’s decision will determine whether the CDC gets a permanent director after months of leadership churn, or stays locked in the political and public trust crisis that has defined much of Trump’s second term.