President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration faces a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, and a key Republican has made clear she'll need to break with the president on a key issue to win his support.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is considered a crucial vote on Dr. Heidi Overton's nomination, and he has made clear that she must disavow the president's position on the measles vaccine, reported NBC News.
Cassidy, who lost his Republican primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger, said Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that Overton must acknowledge that Trump's claim that the measles vaccine is lethal is "absurd." Trump made the remark in August while signing an executive order aimed at reducing the number of vaccines routinely recommended for children.
Overton stood alongside Trump at that event, and he nominated her to run the FDA days later.
Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert and law professor at UC Law San Francisco, told NBC News that senators are likely to press Overton on her own views.
"I think she made it clear she's a supporter of Kennedy's vaccine agenda, at least," Reiss said, referring to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Reiss also questioned Overton's credentials, saying she doesn't appear to have experience running clinical trials, managing a large agency or working with the products the FDA oversees. She called her "another example of an appointee who is, primarily, appointed for political opinions."
The White House defended the pick. Spokesman Kush Desai said Overton, an MD/PhD, helped Trump deliver Operation Warp Speed during his first term and would ensure that FDA policy is "guided solely by Gold Standard Science."
Overton, a preventive medicine physician, now works as a domestic policy official at the White House. She was previously chief policy officer at the conservative America First Policy Institute, where she praised the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade and called medication abortion "dangerous to women," although research has found that the abortion pill mifepristone is safe and effective, even when taken at home.
On that issue, Overton appears to be aligned with Cassidy, who has pushed the administration to end a Biden-era rule allowing mifepristone to be prescribed through telemedicine and sent by mail.
If confirmed, Overton would take over an agency that has had no permanent commissioner since Dr. Marty Makary resigned in May.
She would also inherit a string of foodborne illness outbreaks, including a cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce that has sickened more than 12,000 people.