A physician currently serving as a White House adviser, Dr. Heidi Overton has worked on a series of Trump health initiatives.
By Catholics for Catholics
The physician who is President Donald Trump’s top candidate for leading the Food and Drug Administration says she supports the security of tried-and-true vaccines, as senators quizzed her about the White House’s efforts to overturn childhood immunizations.
A physician currently serving as a White House adviser, Dr. Heidi Overton has worked on a series of Trump health initiatives, including an executive order last month that called for splitting up and spacing out decades-old childhood vaccinations, according to a story by Newsmax. She backed the President in the Oval Office when he mentioned that the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is “quite lethal.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Senate Health Committee Chairman and a physician from Louisiana, pressed Overton to reject that statement and affirm the safety of FDA-approved vaccines.
“Right now every vaccine that is on the market has been determined to be safe and effective,” including the MMR vaccine, Overton said.
Again and again, Cassidy has tried to obtain commitments from Trump health nominees to uphold vaccine standards, including from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., only to see the Republican administration push forward with efforts undermining their use.
“Kennedy gave me guarantees, and he did not keep them,” said Cassidy, a Republican. “If the president asks you to do something that goes against those guarantees you give us today, what will you do?”
Sen. @PattyMurray (D-WA) calls out FDA Commissioner Nominee Dr. Heidi Overton for previously saying in an article "abortion medication is dangerous to women" pic.twitter.com/DlunfXcB3B
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 24, 2026
Still, Overton said she would “follow the statutory requirements” for FDA commissioners and give Trump her best advice.
If confirmed by the Senate, Overton would inherit a raft of other controversial projects at the agency, including a safety review of the nation’s principal abortion drug and new rules that make it easier to sell flavored electronic cigarettes. Both issues were a focus for Republicans and Democrats on the panel, who will vote on Overton’s nomination.
A telling sign of the power of the FDA, it was this government organization that approved the abortion pill mifepristone in 2000 and has continuously affirmed its safety while broadening access, including permitting it to be sent through the mail. But Kennedy ordered an FDA review of the drug’s safety last year, following calls from anti-abortion groups and lawmakers favoring abortion restrictions.
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