President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he will nominate White House domestic policy adviser Heidi Overton to lead the Food and Drug Administration.<\/p>\n
If confirmed by the Senate, Overton would oversee an agency that has dealt with massive layoffs after the administration\u2019s widespread reduction-in-force efforts last year. The agency has also dealt with high-level turnover and faced political pressure<\/a> on regulatory issues like vaccines, peptides and flavored vapes.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is known to take on the HARDEST issues, and bring me solutions that work best for the Country,\u201d Trump said on Truth Social.<\/p>\n Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned from the post earlier this spring after facing pressure from the administration over a host of issues, including abortion medication and flavored vapes. The agency has been led by acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas since May.<\/p>\n Overton currently serves as the White House deputy domestic policy director and has appeared alongside Trump for health policy announcements. Earlier this month, she was part of an Oval Office event announcing an executive order<\/a> that seeks to stagger childhood immunizations. The order has little weight in practice since states individually make school vaccine mandates and are not required to follow federal guidance.<\/p>\n Overton opined during the event that many Democrat-led states have worked with outside organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics to set their specific policies. She said states should instead look to the executive order for guidance.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the gold-standard childhood vaccine recommendations, and you should put this into your state law so that when parents go to enroll their kids in school, they do not have to meet some of the requirements for the vaccines that are no longer recommended for all children,\u201d she said at the event.<\/p>\n Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said there was \u201ca pantheon of superstar candidates\u201d that made the choice one of the toughest during his tenure at HHS, but that he was \u201cconfident President Trump and I chose the best person for the job.\u201d<\/p>\n Overton will face the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, led by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who has sparred with the administration over its decisions on vaccines. Cassidy earlier this month slammed the White House over the vaccine executive order.<\/p>\n Cassidy on Wednesday said Overton\u2019s support of the executive order on vaccines calls into question her commitment\u00a0to science and children\u2019s health, saying that alone may be enough to disqualify her.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I respect Dr. Overton\u2019s experience as a physician, I have strong concerns about her nomination to be FDA Commissioner,\u201d he said on X. \u201cHer lack of managerial experience does not prepare her well for leading a large organization that is already dealing with staffing and morale issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Before joining the White House, Overton worked at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank, where she served as a chief policy officer and deputy director for its Center for a Healthy America.<\/p>\n In 2022, she celebrated the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, calling it a \u201chuge victory for life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s decision today will allow Americans to reevaluate the value of the potential of every baby in the womb and choose life through a democratic process. Human life is not disposable, but a precious gift from God with inherent worth and dignity,\u201d she said in a statement from June 2022.<\/p>\n She also authored several articles against medication abortion<\/a> and gender-affirming surgeries<\/a> for children.<\/p>\n She holds a medical degree from University of New Mexico and a Ph.D. in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.<\/p>\n If confirmed, Overton would also oversee the next reauthorization of the FDA user fee legislation, which is set to expire in 2027. The legislation authorizes the agency to collect fees from medical product sponsors in exchange for reviewing their products.<\/p>\n The administration has already announced its intention to use next year\u2019s prescription drug user fee reauthorization to add incentives for carrying out clinical trials in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump announced Wednesday he will nominate White House domestic policy adviser Heidi Overton to lead the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3007,3372,4041,927,3333,3009,180,4331,276,56,62,21,8933,1781,8256,929,8934,930,228,382,323,1269,406,23,22,1270,71,24,20,19],"class_list":["post-9425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-white-house-executive-branch","tag-3007","tag-abortion","tag-agency","tag-american","tag-bill-cassidy","tag-brand-safety","tag-democrats","tag-department-of-health-and-human-services","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-donald-trump","tag-education","tag-executive-branch","tag-fda","tag-food","tag-food-and-drug-administration","tag-health","tag-health-and-human-services","tag-healthcare","tag-house","tag-human-services","tag-louisiana","tag-new-mexico","tag-policy","tag-potus","tag-president-of-the-united-states","tag-science","tag-senate","tag-trump","tag-white-house","tag-white-house-executive-branch"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedStates\/117372609007673277","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}