“We saw what happened with Susan,” Debra Houry, CDC’s former chief medical officer who resigned in protest of Kennedy’s political interference, told Stat News. “She couldn’t make staffing or policy decisions. What has changed? Kennedy hasn’t changed.”

“A disaster”

Reporting by The Washington Post noted that amid the search for a new CDC director, some well-qualified candidates sought promises of autonomy to be able to fire and hire staff and to keep science insulated from political influence. Those candidates were not selected, sources told the Post.

Trump announced Schwartz’s nomination in a social media post on Wednesday, calling her “a STAR,” and announced nominations for three other positions at the agency. “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 responded with a much more measured message, 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, didn’t hold back, saying Schwartz’s leadership at the CDC would “likely be a disaster.”

“Schwartz led nationwide Covid-19 vaccine deployment and her long track record of directly issuing rights-crushing civilian and military vaccine mandates, including mandating injection of smallpox, anthrax, and flu vaccines into US Forces, and disciplining those that refused, reflects she lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC,” Siri wrote.

“Her prior promotion, let alone mandates, of nearly a dozen different vaccines leave little hope she will objectively oversee CDC’s vaccine program…” he concluded.