President Trump announced on Wednesday that he had nominated Dr. Heidi Overton, a White House domestic policy official and a proponent of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, to serve as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that has had significant staff turnover and political interference in recent months.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump called Dr. Overton “a ROCKSTAR in my Administration.” He said he needed her leadership at the F.D.A. to “ensure that the U.S. remains the WORLD LEADER for Scientific Discovery and CURES.” He also said he expected her to deliver on his priorities, including clinical trial reforms and lower drug prices.
Last week, Dr. Overton stood alongside President Trump as he signed a third executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccinations, which has no legal power and has been broadly criticized by public health experts.
During the event, Dr. Overton said the order could help states recognize “gold standard” recommendations and take steps to limit vaccines required for school entry.
“We are going to be working directly with states so that we’re not reliant on the court case to resolve,” Dr. Overton said, referring to ongoing litigation over pared-down vaccine recommendations. “We are doing it right away so that parents get the benefit from state laws changing.”
Requirements for vaccines upon school entry, which are set by states, are a bedrock of U.S. vaccine policy. Earlier this year, vaccine opponents attempted to overturn them in a number of states, without success.
Dr. Overton, a physician, is currently deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. A former chief policy officer at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, she has also written articles that denounced abortion as “corrosive” to women and called for more controls over the prescribing of abortion pills. She has called the pills “far more dangerous to women,” aligning with conservatives who have urged the F.D.A. to take steps to restrict access to abortion medication.
In September, Mr. Kennedy credited Dr. Overton and Calley Means, another top health adviser, with working on a MAHA strategy report that called for additional review of chemicals in food and an increase in oversight over pharmaceutical advertisements.
Dr. Overton has done little to intervene during a period of extraordinary interference into the independence of the F.D.A.. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pressured the F.D.A. to make unvetted peptide injections, which are marketed online for a wide range of claimed benefits, more broadly available. The president has exerted influence on tobacco policy, pushing the F.D.A. to allow sales of more brands of flavored e-cigarettes. Additionally, a donor to Mr. Kennedy’s presidential campaign and an affiliated PAC fund exerted outsize influence over the agency’s regulation of kratom, an addictive drug sold in gas stations.
The biotech and pharmaceutical investor community was less jubilant after news of her likely nomination first broke, noting that Dr. Overton has little work experience to prepare her to run a large agency that regulates the increasingly global food, drug, tobacco and medical device industries.
Dr. Overton is likely to “accelerate staff departures, discourage qualified candidates from accepting senior roles, and reinforce the perception that agency leadership is being driven primarily by political or personal considerations,” according to an investor note by Chris Meekins of Raymond James.
If she is confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Overton would succeed Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned as commissioner in May, citing his disagreement with a new policy allowing major tobacco and vape companies to sell flavored e-cigarettes.
Dr. Makary had been under pressure from the White House for months to authorize flavored vapes, a policy he objected to over concerns about their appeal to teenagers and young adults. The week after Mr. Trump had a golf course lunch with tobacco executives, the F.D.A. approved mango and blueberry vapes and unveiled the new policy.
The policy has since been challenged in court.
Dr. Makary had a tumultuous tenure as he rapidly rolled out a series of new initiatives, at times rankling career staff who were accustomed to a more methodical pace. He lifted warnings on some hormone replacement products for women, pushed to speed up drug approvals and supported staff who rejected drugs they deemed unsafe or ineffective.
Dr. Makary also had to contend with the fallout from the mass staffing cuts, which he defended early in his tenure, and the departures that followed. Recognizing the damage to an agency that regulates a global drug and food supply, he fought for approval to hire hundreds of staff back. But very few new staff members have come on board.
Since his departure, Kyle Diamantas, the agency’s food division leader and a former corporate lawyer, has been running the agency as acting commissioner. Mr. Diamantas, who was well liked, declined to be a candidate for the permanent position.
He notched a recent win by introducing a new proposal to require food makers to notify the agency when introducing new ingredients to the food supply. However, the F.D.A. has also been under the spotlight for its investigation of the sprawling outbreak of cyclospora illness tied to lettuce processed in Mexico.
Dr. Overton earned her medical degree from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a doctorate in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
