Jay Bhattacharya to Serve As Acting CDC Director

Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, is now serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following Jim O’Neill’s departure amid a broader leadership reshuffle at Health and Human Services.

Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the National Institutes of Health, will become acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following the dismissal last week of Jim O’Neill, according to a White House official and an administration official.

Bhattacharya “will serve temporarily as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until President Trump selects a permanent CDC director,” while remaining in his NIH post. O'Neill, in turn, is expected to be nominated by the president to lead the National Science Foundation.

This is not simply an interim staffing move. It marks a reversal in who gets to define public health orthodoxy at the federal level. Bhattacharya rose to national prominence as a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued for ending widespread lockdowns and focusing protection on vulnerable populations. The backlash was swift. One former NIH director labeled Bhattacharya and his co-authors “fringe epidemiologists,” a line that “fuel[ed] anger among conservatives.”

That history matters. During the pandemic, dissent from official guidance was often portrayed as irresponsible or outside the scientific mainstream. The split between Trump and then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci became one of the defining political ruptures of the pandemic. In January 2025, well after COVID lockdown restricts lifted, Trump acrimoniously ended Fauci’s federal security detail and told reporters: “You can't have a security detail for the rest of your life because you worked for government.”

Against that backdrop, Bhattacharya’s elevation reads as both a repudiation of the lockdown approach and a signal to voters who believed federal public health authorities overreached.

At the same time, Bhattacharya’s record complicates attempts to cast him as anti-vaccine.

“I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism,” Bhattacharya told a Senate panel.

He also told Congress people should get vaccinated against measles amid the largest outbreak in decades. His criticism focused on lockdowns, masking mandates, and centralized pandemic policy, not on rejecting vaccines outright.

As NIH director, Bhattacharya has emphasized scientific rigor and openness to debate.

He “has also encouraged scientists to pursue ‘high-risk, high-reward ideas’ and called for more replication of studies to validate their results.”

That emphasis on replication and intellectual diversity speaks directly to a credibility crisis that emerged during COVID. For millions of Americans, pandemic policy was not just a disagreement over tactics. It became a broader referendum on trust in federal institutions.

The leadership changes at Health and Human Services are unfolding as health policy looms large ahead of the midterm elections. In that environment, COVID-era trust fractures are not abstract history. They remain active political fault lines. Elevating a prominent lockdown critic to lead the CDC allows the administration to argue that it is correcting course inside institutions that many voters came to distrust.

Employees Locked Out and Executives Sent to Indian Reservations As the Purge at HHS Hits Its Stride

Bhattacharya’s elevation can therefore be read two ways at once. For lockdown skeptics, it represents vindication after years of being dismissed as “fringe.” For the White House, it is a strategic acknowledgment that pandemic policy is still electorally potent.

The debate over how COVID was handled is no longer happening from the outside. It is now unfolding inside the CDC itself.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy RedState’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join RedState VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!