Republican chair of the Senate health panel says he has strong concerns about Trump’s FDA pick

President Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Wednesday that he will nominate Dr. Heidi Overton, a White House domestic policy official, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. The same day, the Republican who chairs the Senate committee that will handle the nomination said he had “strong concerns” about it.

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wrote on X that “while I respect Dr. Overton’s experience as a physician, I have strong concerns about her nomination to be FDA commissioner.” He said her “lack of managerial experience does not prepare her well for leading a large organization that is already dealing with staffing and morale issues,” and added that her “active role in last week’s nonsensical vaccine executive order calls into question her commitment to standing up for sound science and protecting children’s health. That alone is almost disqualifying.”

Cassidy is a gastroenterologist, and one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He finished third in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary in May, according to NPR, which reported that Trump recruited a challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and that Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming advanced to a June 27 runoff. NPR described Cassidy as the first Republican senator Trump has helped push out of office.

The HELP Committee’s own membership roster lists 12 Republicans and 11 members in the minority. The committee must advance a nomination before the full Senate can vote on it.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat on the same committee, said on social media that Overton is a “far-right, anti-abortion extremist who has no business leading the FDA.” Murray added: “The American people deserve someone who will put science and facts FIRST, not another Trump sycophant who will make it their mission to attack medication abortion. I will vote NO.”

The executive order Cassidy named

The order Cassidy referred to is Executive Order 14420, signed Aug. 10. Its text declares a set of “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” and names 11 immunizations as recommended for all children: measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus and varicella. Other vaccines, including hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, influenza and COVID-19, are moved into categories for high-risk groups or for “shared clinical decision-making.”

The order also states that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine “should be administered in three separate single-disease shots once such products are domestically available,” and that “to the maximum extent feasible, all childhood immunizations should be administered at separate medical visits.” It directs the HHS Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines to present plans within 90 days for offering core vaccines as single doses, “starting with MMR,” and to develop “additional alternative adjuvants to aluminum.”

Merck stopped supplying single, or monovalent, measles, mumps and rubella vaccines in the United States in 2008, CNN reported. The company told CNN there is no scientific reason to split the combination shot, and that “it could take years, potentially as many as 10, to meet the safety and efficacy requirements to obtain FDA approval and then begin manufacturing and commercialization.”

Overton stood beside Trump in the Oval Office at the signing. According to NBC News, she used the event to urge “blue states” that follow recommendations from outside bodies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics to adopt the administration’s schedule instead.

Her record before the White House

Overton holds an MD and a PhD and is board certified in public health and general preventive medicine, according to TIME, which reported that she previously served as chief policy officer at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. She now sits on the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement that Overton “has an extensive anti-abortion record,” that she called the overturning of Roe v. Wade a “huge victory,” and that at the America First Policy Institute she “authored a brief pushing disinformation about the safety of medication abortion and calling for additional, medically unnecessary restrictions on access to mifepristone.”

The group’s president, Mini Timmaraju, said Trump “is trying to put an anti-abortion extremist in charge of any agency that could seriously undermine reproductive healthcare, including the agency that could roll back access to mifepristone nationwide.” The FDA is conducting a safety review of mifepristone and has not published a report, NBC News reported.

NBC News also reported that in a 2024 Newsweek op-ed, Overton criticized then-Vice President Kamala Harris for having “refused to condemn late-term abortion.”

A third choice for a vacant post

Overton would replace Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned as commissioner in May. A senior administration official told NBC News that Overton was Trump’s third choice, and that former Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio and acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas both declined the job, Diamantas citing his young children and other personal reservations.

Reproductive Freedom for All said reports of Makary’s departure emerged just after a meeting between White House staff and anti-abortion groups, who the organization said were frustrated that the FDA had not moved to ban mifepristone outright.

Trump’s post called Overton “a ROCKSTAR in my Administration” and said she had worked with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. He wrote that she would “RAPIDLY deliver on my priorities of FASTER Cures, INCREASED American Innovation, MAJOR Clinical Trial Reforms, LOWER Drug Prices, and even more MAHA WINS!”

NBC News reported that if confirmed Overton would lead the agency “at a delicate time, with the recent multistate cyclospora outbreak raising concerns about the safety of the nation’s food supply.” The timing of the formal nomination paperwork has not been announced.