Monarez during her Senate confirmation hearing in June. Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Susan Monarez to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a party line vote of 51 to 47.
Why it matters: The vote gives the agency a politically appointed leader as it faces turmoil over HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial changes to vaccine policy and other areas.
- Monarez also will have to contend with the effects of layoffs and spending cuts that have hit the agency's Atlanta headquarters.
Driving the news: Monarez is a career government researcher who is viewed as more mainstream than President Trump's first pick for the job, Dave Weldon, whose nomination was pulled in March.
- She previously was deputy director of ARPA-H, the new research agency created under former President Biden.
- Monarez will have to navigate a tricky path as the point person on the government's infectious disease response who reports to Kennedy.
- She tried to walk that line in her confirmation hearing in June, avoiding directly contradicting Kennedy while also making statements like saying she had not seen a link between vaccines and autism.
The big picture: The narrow vote illustrates how divided public health management has become since the onset of the pandemic.
- Monarez will have to work with Kennedy's hand-picked vaccine advisory panel to the CDC that took shape after he fired the previous panel of experts.
