Agency has lacked a commissioner since May and lost 20% of staff
President Donald Trump has nominated Heidi Overton, his White House aide and doctor, to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, putting her at the center of a Senate confirmation battle while she inherits an agency that has been without a commissioner for nearly three and a half months. The nomination lands in a summer in which the United States has recorded more than 17,000 confirmed cyclospora cases — up from 1,180 the previous year — linked to lettuce from Taylor Farms, alongside E. coli and salmonella outbreaks traced to alfalfa sprouts, eggs, jalapeños, frozen blueberries and other products.
Food-safety specialists and former FDA officials have connected the scale and pace of the outbreaks to deep staffing cuts imposed last year, sharpening the stakes of Overton’s confirmation and the broader debate over how the federal government regulates roughly 80 percent of the nation’s food supply.
Overton is a former general surgery resident at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and chief policy officer at the conservative America First Policy Institute. Trump has called her a “rockstar” future leader of the FDA. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement to the BBC that Overton “has been integral to ensuring that the Administration’s policies are correct, consistent, and grounded in Gold Standard Science.” The White House, Desai added, “looks forward to her swift confirmation by the Senate.”
Overton must clear the Senate health committee, chaired by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician. Cassidy has expressed “strong concerns” about Overton because of her support for Trump’s orders to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule, and no date has been set for her hearing. Her nomination has also drawn skepticism from some supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement, particularly after MAHA influencer Alex Clark accused Overton on social media last week of being heavily involved in a Trump executive order to increase domestic production of glyphosate, an allegation the White House denies.
Jacqueline Capriotti, who identifies with the MAHA movement, said some in the movement had moved too quickly to criticize the nominee, noting Overton is a well-respected doctor and that she would like to give her a chance. But Capriotti added that food safety must remain central to the agency’s mission. “We’re encouraging — ‘eat real food’ — well we have to make sure that that food is safe,” she said, referencing Kennedy’s nutritional message to Americans.
The summer’s foodborne-illness toll has been unusually severe. Cyclospora, a parasite that causes severe, prolonged diarrhea, has driven the bulk of the case count, with separate outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella traced to alfalfa sprouts, eggs, jalapeños and frozen blueberries as well. The recalls have left Americans uncertain about what is safe to eat, according to food-safety experts. Sarah Sorscher, a food-safety advocate at the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said consumers had reason to be upset. “People are definitely upset about the outbreaks this summer, and they have a reason to be,” she said.
Food-safety specialists have tied the outbreak response to the deep cuts at the FDA. Kennedy, the health secretary, fired 20 percent of the agency’s employees last year as part of the administration’s broader effort to slash the federal workforce. Former commissioner Marty Makary resigned over a reported clash with the White House after he refused to support Trump’s plan to lift a ban on flavored vapes, citing concerns about youth addiction; several senior leaders left the agency shortly after his departure.
In the cyclospora outbreak, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first health alert on July 14 — 10 weeks after the first cases appeared in early May. John Swartzberg, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, said the agency Overton would inherit has low morale. “She’s taking over an agency where the morale is low,” Swartzberg said. “This is going to be very difficult for her to improve.”
Jerold Mande, a former FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture official who teaches nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the delay in public communication has unsettled consumers. “It’s resulted in a public that’s a little more on edge and panic about what’s going on because of the poor communication,” Mande said. Sorscher added that the staffing losses have pushed the agency past its limits. “This is already a system that was teetering on the brink, and the cuts from the past year and the disruptions from the past year are pushing it over the edge,” she said.
Texas resident David Hargrave, 59, has had diarrhea every day for about six weeks after contracting cyclospora around the Fourth of July. “It puts the scare into you,” he said of not knowing what is safe to eat. Toby Davis, another cyclospora patient who went to an emergency room after eating at Taco Bell, said he believes the loss of experienced federal workers slowed the response. “This is the result of those bad mistakes,” said Davis, who described himself as an independent voter. “Do I believe we’ll contract more things from their negligence? Absolutely.”
The Department of Health and Human Services disputed the characterization of the outbreak response. “The Trump Administration has mounted a robust response to each outbreak,” an HHS spokesperson said. “FDA has the staff needed to continue investigating outbreaks, as no FDA investigators were affected by staffing changes or reductions in force.”
If confirmed, Overton would lead an agency that regulates roughly 80 percent of America’s food supply at a time when Trump officials are pushing ahead on several contested regulatory matters, including vaccine policy and abortion medication. Swartzberg, the Berkeley professor, said he worries Overton will put the president’s agenda ahead of science, though Capriotti and other MAHA supporters urged patience as her confirmation process unfolds.