The White House won’t meet an expected Wednesday deadline to nominate a new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been acting director of the CDC, but that title will expire Thursday under federal law, which says the government can have an acting director position for only a set period.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the administration wasn’t required to name a new candidate for director and that Bhattacharya “will continue to oversee the CDC by performing the delegable duties of the CDC director.”
He also said Bhattacharya is helping in the search for a potential nominee by “evaluating candidates that can further the Trump administration’s objective of restoring the CDC to its original mission of fighting infectious disease.”
The Washington Post first reported the delay.
Some CDC staffers said they expected an announcement would be made during an agencywide meeting Wednesday with Bhattacharya. That didn’t happen.
Instead, Bhattacharya took questions from the staff on a variety of other topics, including vaccines. Audio portions of the nearly hourlong meeting were shared with NBC News.
While Bhattacharya generally spoke favorably about vaccines, one CDC official who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution said, he claimed that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supported measles vaccination during a massive outbreak in West Texas last year.
That “landed pretty flat,” the CDC staffer said.
Kennedy has frequently downplayed the severity of the virus, which killed two young girls.
Bhattacharya’s taking “45 minutes of unvetted questions was brave,” the staffer said. “But there is a huge gulf in trust between him and staff.”
Both Kennedy and Bhattacharya have long been critical of the CDC, largely focusing on Covid missteps, but they haven’t offered ways to support or strengthen the agency, CDC staffers said.
“They keep saying over and over again that CDC has a lot of work to do to earn back the public’s trust,” said another scientist who also asked not to be identified. “I don’t think blaming the civil service employee is the way to fix that.”
The White House and HHS have been mum on potential nominees. The Washington Post reported that Mississippi’s health director, Dr. Daniel Edney, is on a short list of names.
Dr. David Margolius, Cleveland’s director of public health and a member of the Big Cities Health Coalition, said he had a chance to work with Edney during a CDC-led meeting of health officials from across the country in 2024.
“He was really thoughtful, and it was clear that what drove him was his desire to improve the health of folks in his home state,” Margolius said. That kind of focus on public health would be a key attribute for the next CDC head, he said. “We don’t need a TV personality. We don’t need a social media spokesperson. We need someone who is collaborating and putting the health of the residents of the country first, not their ego.”
Other potential nominees circulating within CDC rumor mills include a former director, Dr. Robert Redfield, who served during President Donald Trump’s first term. He recently spoke to people living in Ave Maria, Florida, about an ongoing measles outbreak in that community, encouraging them to get vaccinated.
Relentless outbreaks have put the U.S. close to losing its measles elimination status, although childhood vaccination — and the CDC in general — don’t appear to be the White House’s focus ahead of the November midterm elections. Kennedy has instead highlighted efforts to drive down drug prices, the new dietary guidelines and America’s reliance on ultra-processed foods, policies driven by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
‘Spinning its wheels’
Beyond the director, other top jobs remain unfilled, including principal deputy director and chief medical officer.
Those positions are critical in part because they prioritize which projects get funding and resources.
“Usually, the director comes up with what the main priorities are, and then the entire agency gets shifted to be able to achieve those priorities,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “But the agency’s had no new priorities. It’s just sitting there, spinning its wheels, putting out fires. You have a captainless ship.”
Susan Monarez has been the only person to hold the title of CDC director during Trump’s second term, filling the position for just 29 days last summer. Monarez was fired, she said in congressional testimony, because she refused to cave to Kennedy’s demands to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations without scientific backing.
Her ousting led to a cascade of high-profile resignations at the CDC, including those of the chief medical officer, Dr. Debra Houry; Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who headed the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases; and Daskalakis. None of their roles has been filled.
Before Trump’s second term, presidents simply named their own CDC directors and didn’t need Senate approval. That changed with the CDC Leadership Accountability Act of 2023, which was meant, as the name suggests, to boost accountability at the agency following missteps during the pandemic.
In March 2025, the White House withdrew Trump’s first nomination for CDC head, Dr. Dave Weldon, a Republican former congressman from Florida, the night before his confirmation hearing. It appeared he wouldn’t have the votes to be confirmed, sources said at the time.
Once Monarez left the position, acting directors could be in place for only 210 days. That deadline was Wednesday.
The CDC has had several acting directors since last summer, most recently Bhattacharya, who is also head of the National Institutes of Health. While Bhattacharya has been critical of the CDC and pandemic-related lockdowns, his tone appears to have softened.
“There’s a tremendous amount of professionals at the CDC that care deeply about public health,” Bhattacharya said at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on March 17. “What I found was that there was a real openness to discuss things where there are disagreements within public health — a real sense of professionalism.”
As staffers await new leadership, projects have floundered, many in a holding pattern awaiting funding.
“Things sit on people’s desks for months, just waiting for the director’s office to sign off,” the senior official said. Supplies are expiring or getting thrown out as staff members wait for word on whether work can move forward, employees told NBC News.
It’s critical that whoever is ultimately nominated, CDC staffers said, work with career scientists instead of against them. At the very least, one person said, it should be “someone who isn’t going to make life more miserable than it already is.”
Any nominee would eventually need to be confirmed by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and the full Senate before the appointment is official.
“There’s a lot of people who are just ready to get back to work,” a senior official said. “The American public deserves a world-class CDC. I just really hope we get leadership that believes in that, as well.”
