As RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine ways turn toxic to GOP, CDC director is hard to find

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t had a director since August, and now it’s without even a temporary one after the Trump administration blew through a federal deadline on Wednesday to nominate someone for the permanent role.

According to federal law, there’s a 210-day limit on a Senate-confirmed position being filled by someone in an acting capacity. The clock started when anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Susan Monarez from her Senate-confirmed role as CDC director in late August—allegedly after she refused to rubber-stamp changes to CDC vaccine recommendations. Until yesterday, Jay Bhattacharya, who heads the National Institutes of Health, had stepped in to also be the acting director of the CDC. But he can no longer hold the position officially.

The void of leadership comes as the Trump administration is working to restrain Kennedy after finding his relentless anti-vaccine agenda is widely unpopular and potentially harmful to Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

Since taking office, Kennedy has made a series of moves to undermine vaccinations, including unilaterally rolling back recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding for promising mRNA vaccine technology, dramatically overhauling the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule, and firing all of CDC’s expert vaccine advisors, only to largely replace them with hand-selected anti-vaccine allies, who rolled back recommendations further, including for the life-saving birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.

Kennedy has also served as the country’s top health official amid several snowballing measles outbreaks, the likes of which the US hasn’t seen since measles was declared eliminated in 2000. The federal response to the outbreaks has been notably muted, and Kennedy himself has spread dangerous misinformation about the measles vaccine while touting unproven treatments.

Tough find

This is the situation awaiting a new director. And according to reports, the individual chosen for the role will need to walk an extremely fine line: having the necessary credentials to pass muster with the Senate, managing Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views without overtly taking anti-vaccine actions, and appeasing Kennedy’s politically influential Make America Healthy Again base.

So far, Kennedy seems to be struggling with the search. According to reporting from The Washington Post, sources close to the matter said the goal was to name a nominee before the deadline Wednesday, but Kennedy was unable to do so. Sources said around half a dozen people were being seriously considered for the role.

On Wednesday, Bhattacharya held an all-hands meeting with CDC staff in which he was expected to reveal a nominee. He did not, though he suggested a nominee could be named as early as Thursday. “But if not, I don’t think much will change,” he added, according to a leaked recording obtained by KFF News.

In response to questions from Ars Technica, the Department of Health and Human Services, which encompasses the CDC, declined to answer questions about why there was a delay in naming a nominee or if there is an expected timeline for the nomination.

A spokesperson said only that Kennedy and Chris Klomp, the operational leader of HHS and a close advisor to Kennedy, “are working with the White House on the CDC director search by evaluating candidates that can further the Trump administration’s objective of restoring the CDC to its original mission of fighting infectious disease.”

The spokesperson went on to say that Bhattacharya would stay on at the CDC without being the acting director but would perform the “delegable duties” of the position.

In the all-hands meeting on Wednesday, Bhattacharya joked about staying in the position as “either acting director or acting in the capacity of the director, whatever the heck that means.”

“It’s like an Office episode, you know?” he said.