President Trump nominated Dr. Erica Schwartz, a retired Rear Admiral and former Coast Guard chief medical officer, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House announced this week.
Schwartz served as deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term and holds degrees from Brown University, the University of Maryland School of Law, and the Uniformed Services University. She’s a board-certified preventive medicine physician with a master’s in public health. If the Senate confirms her, she’ll report to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The CDC has gone without a confirmed director for nearly all of Trump’s second term. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who also runs the National Institutes of Health, has been serving as acting CDC director since February and is expected to stay in that role while the Senate works through the confirmation process, which could stretch several months.
Trump announced the nomination on Truth Social, calling Schwartz “a STAR” and crediting her “distinguished career” in the military. He also named three additional appointments to CDC leadership: Sean Slovenski, a former Walmart executive, as deputy director and chief operating officer; Dr. Jennifer Shuford, the Texas health commissioner, as deputy director and chief medical officer; and Dr. Sara Brenner, a senior official at the Food and Drug Administration, as senior counselor for public health to the health secretary. Trump said their combined credentials would “restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC.”
Schwartz’s supporters are vocal.
Admiral Brett Giroir, who supervised her during the first Trump administration as assistant health secretary, said she was central to the national COVID testing strategy. “Rear Admiral Schwartz is really an outstanding person in all regards. Her academic training and intellect is second to none,” Giroir told reporters covering the nomination. “She’s a person of the highest integrity and commitment to service to this country.”
Admiral Paul Zukunft, the former commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, chose Schwartz as chief medical officer back in 2015 and praised her skill across two very different fields. He pointed to her ability to communicate complex science without losing the room. “She was not in the least bit reticent when it came to talking truth to power,” Zukunft said.
That combination of legal training and medical expertise is unusual at the CDC director level. Most of the agency’s past leaders have come from epidemiology or academic medicine backgrounds. Schwartz’s law degree from the University of Maryland and her years in military public health give her a profile that’s hard to compare to recent predecessors.
Running the CDC right now won’t be easy. The agency has faced budget pressure and staffing cuts under Kennedy’s leadership of HHS, and public trust in federal health institutions has been shaky since the COVID pandemic. The CDC’s own data infrastructure, which states rely on for disease tracking and outbreak response, has seen disruptions that concerned state and local health officials earlier this year.
The Senate confirmation timeline matters to California specifically. The state runs one of the country’s largest public health systems, and California’s Department of Public Health coordinates with the CDC on everything from flu surveillance to foodborne illness outbreaks. A leadership vacuum at the top of the federal agency creates real friction for those partnerships.
Schwartz would take over an agency that’s also mid-reorganization. Kennedy has pushed to restructure HHS broadly, and the CDC has not been exempt from those changes. What her actual authority looks like, and how much latitude she gets from Kennedy’s office, will matter as much as her qualifications once she’s seated.
For now, Bhattacharya holds the job in an acting capacity while managing NIH simultaneously. That split responsibility was always meant to be temporary, and the Schwartz nomination signals the administration is ready to formalize CDC leadership after months of uncertainty. Giroir, who watched Schwartz navigate the early chaos of the COVID pandemic from inside the administration, said he doesn’t have doubts about her ability to handle pressure. The confirmation hearings, whenever they’re scheduled, will be the first real public test of whether senators agree.