{"id":11129,"date":"2025-07-09T16:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-panel-advances-trumps-nominee-to-lead-cdc\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T16:01:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:01:32","slug":"senate-panel-advances-trumps-nominee-to-lead-cdc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-panel-advances-trumps-nominee-to-lead-cdc\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate panel advances Trump\u2019s nominee to lead CDC"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one step closer to confirmation.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted to advance the nomination of Susan Monarez, a former agency acting director who has held various health-related roles in the federal government for 20 years.<\/p>\n

Monarez advanced along a 12-11 party-line vote. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe is committed to improving transparency to CDC and properly communicating health guidance to the American people,\u201d said Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) \u201cThis is especially crucial as the nations combat reemerging public health threats like measles, which has taken three lives in the United States this year \u2014 one that’s not included, but is tragic, is the Canadian woman who was pregnant, got exposed to measles and lost her child \u2014 and hospitalized many more due to misinformation regarding the measles vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public health experts also say that Monarez is well-qualified to lead the agency \u2014 and hope she could become a bulwark against some of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s vaccine policy changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a delicate dance that she will have to do if she wants to maintain her job,\u201d said Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting director of the CDC and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. \u201cUnderstanding how to push back and when to push back will be critical to her success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats, nonetheless, pushed back, citing Kennedy. \u201cDr. Monarez stood by while Secretary Kennedy spread misinformation about vaccines,\u201d said ranking member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)<\/p>\n

ACIP role:<\/b> In addition to running the CDC, Monarez will also have significant power over vaccine access if the full Senate confirms her.<\/p>\n

Last month, Kennedy fired all the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices \u2014 the expert panel that votes on updates to the childhood and adult vaccine schedules \u2014 and appointed new members more aligned with his views on vaccination. The panel later voted to stop recommending flu vaccines with thimerosal<\/a> \u2014 a preservative that has for decades been deemed safe by health agencies \u2014 to anyone.<\/p>\n

But before the panel\u2019s recommendations become official, the CDC director or the HHS secretary must sign off on them. <\/p>\n

Key context:<\/b> Monarez has advanced further in the confirmation process than Dr. Dave Weldon, Trump\u2019s first pick to run the agency. The administration dropped Weldon, a former Florida congressman with a long history of vaccine skepticism, when it became clear he did not have enough votes to advance.<\/p>\n

A full Senate vote has yet to be scheduled on the nomination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one step closer to confirmation. On Wednesday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted to advance the nomination of Susan Monarez, a former agency acting director who has held various health-related roles in the federal government for 20 years. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}