Congress Must Protect the CDC From Politics

详细摘要

Americans deserve a CDC whose science they can trust, whose expertise is protected, and whose ability to safeguard their health does not depend on who occupies the White House, writes Nikki Romanik.

Democrats and Republicans in the new Congress will disagree about plenty in health policy. However, they should agree that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should be a scientific agency whose judgments hold steady no matter who occupies the White House. In January, Congress will have the chance to write that principle into law.

For decades, the scientific independence of America’s public health agencies rested on a bipartisan understanding. Presidential administrations disagreed about health policy, sometimes profoundly, but their health secretaries generally respected the expertise and established processes of agencies like the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration.

Earlier administrations of both parties—including those of Republican Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Democratic Secretary Xavier Becerra—faced charges of political interference, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some had merit. But I would argue that none have even approached the scale and scope of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s interventions. The safeguards that existed were administrative policies, and a new secretary can discard them.

In June 2025, Kennedy dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with his own appointees. No prior secretary had done this. Congress had given U.S. Health and Human Services secretaries broad authority and relied on their restraint. Restraint is a tradition, and the past year shows it can end.

Elected leaders have a legitimate role in setting national health priorities and holding agencies accountable. That role ends where scientific judgment begins, and Congress should draw the line in statute:

These rules must bind every future secretary, including those appointed by the party that controls Congress today. A protection that works against only one party’s appointees will not last.

The CDC has lost more than a quarter of its workforce since 2024.

Congress should…

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