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  "path": "/post/206739/donald-trump-jay-bhattacharya-cdc-critic-temporary-head",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-18T20:35:35.000Z",
  "site": "https://newrepublic.com",
  "tags": [
    "Breaking News",
    "Politics",
    "Republican Party",
    "Donald Trump",
    "Health",
    "Public Health",
    "CDC",
    "Centers for Disease Control",
    "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention",
    "Jay Bhattacharya",
    "Covid-19",
    "Coronavirus",
    "_The Washington Post_",
    "criticized",
    "Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill",
    "also has the support",
    "was ousted",
    "testified"
  ],
  "textContent": "Jay Bhattacharya has been tapped to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—after spending years criticizing its pandemic response.\n\nBhattacharya will continue his role as the director of the National Institutes of Health, as well as leading the CDC on an acting basis, four people familiar with personnel decisions told _The Washington Post_ Wednesday.\n\nBhattacharya has a history of undermining the CDC’s pandemic guidance. In 2020, the then NIH head, Dr. Francis Collins, labeled the former Stanford University physician and economist “fringe,” after Bhattacharya helped author the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which called for the end of the coronavirus lockdowns. In 2024, Bhattacharya criticized the CDC’s recommendation for widespread masking during the Covid-19 pandemic, calling it “pseudo science.”\n\nBhattacharya will replace former Deputy Health Secretary Jim O’Neill, a market-fundamentalist Silicon Valley investor and longtime associate of billionaire Peter Thiel. Bhattacharya also has the support of powerful figures among Trump supporters, including Thiel, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk, who claims Twitter suppressed Bhattacharya’s views before the Tesla founder bought the platform.\n\nO’Neill replaced Susan Monarez, the last Senate-approved CDC director, who was fired last summer after only 28 days in office. Monarez was ousted after she refused “to commit, in advance, to approving every” recommendation by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “regardless of scientific evidence” and “to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause.”\n\nBut Bhattacharya may not be in lockstep with his boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., either. Earlier this month, Bhattacharya put himself at odds with the health secretary when he testified that he’d seen no evidence that vaccines cause autism.\n\n_This story has been updated._",
  "title": "Trump Appoints CDC Critic as Temporary Agency Head"
}