President Donald Trump is expected to nominate White House aide Heidi Overton to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to multiple media reports. The decision was first reported by Bloomberg.
The FDA has been without an official leader during a summer beset by a number of foodborne illness outbreaks that have raised concerns about food safety.
Overton currently serves as deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She holds a medical degree from the University of New Mexico, as well as a Ph.D. in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Overton has closes ties to both the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movements, and she previously served as chief policy officer for the conservative think tank America First Policy Institute.
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Overton was among those present in the Oval Office last week when Trump announced an executive order aimed at altering the childhood vaccine schedule. The order seeks to break up the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate shots, despite decades of research showing that the MMR vaccine is safe and effective.
There are signs, however, that Overton isn’t fully onboard with some of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s policies. The pair apparently disagreed over how Kennedy reshaped the U.S. food pyramid, as well as on how best to regulate the booming peptide industry, according to an Atlantic report.
If her nomination is confirmed, Overton will take over an agency that has been without a leader since May, when former FDA commissioner Marty Makary resigned after splitting from Trump over approving certain flavored vape products. Since then the agency has had a busy summer: Tens of thousands of Americans have become ill with cyclosporiasis, an illness caused by a parasite that spreads through food and water contaminated with human feces. Two people have died in connection with the outbreaks, which led to recalls of products containing potentially infected lettuce.
Food was also at the center of another illness: hundreds of people got sick from Salmonella after they were exposed to infected jalapeños. As a result of the outbreak, Chipotle and QDOBA removed peppers from one jalapeño distributor from their stores.
In February the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report that the FDA is facing staffing shortages, which has made it increasingly difficult to execute its mission of ensuring the safety of the U.S. food supply.