We Oppose the Nomination of Schwartz for CDC Director

The GOP Must Not Abandon the Vaccine Agenda or it will Kill Them in the Midterm Elections

By Michael Kane and John Gilmore

Teachers for Choice and Autism Action Network strongly oppose the nomination of Erica Schwartz to head the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After her nomination was announced, attorney Aaron Siri very quickly posted to X that it would be a “disaster” for her to head CDC since she forced Covid shot mandates on the military and is clearly opposed to informed consent. Siri also posted a lot of the receipts proving Schwartz is not MAHA aligned.

To quote Siri:

Schwartz led nationwide Covid-19 vaccine deployment and her long track record of directly issuing rights-crushing civilian and military vaccine mandates, including mandating injection of smallpox, anthrax, and flu vaccines into U.S. Forces, and discipling (sic) those that refused, reflects she lacks the basic ethics and morals to lead the CDC.

We deeply love and respect Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the MAHA agenda he is pushing forward to the best of his abilities. But the nomination of Schwartz clearly marks a moment where a powerful faction of the GOP is making painfully clear they are completely abandoning the agenda of vaccine reform in the federal health agencies, and abandoning the voters that agenda represents.

Vaccine Reform is Popular Among Voters

The faction in the administration trying to kill vaccine reform forgets that without the voters RFK Jr. brought with him in 2024 there would be no Trump administration or GOP majorities in both Houses.

These are swing voters who vote on issues, not party, and if they see no progress on the issues they care about in November they are very likely to just stay home. Without them the GOP can kiss Congress good-bye.

All the numbers show that support for the MAHA agenda and vaccine rights is bigger than ever.

Just a few days ago 314 Action, a rabidly anti-Kennedy, pharma-backed group published a poll showing that 50% of voters were more likely to vote for a candidate who supported parental vaccine choice for their children, as opposed to 35% who would be less likely.

The same poll found that 14% of likely voters considered themselves “part of the MAHA movement” and a further 39% said “they support many of its goals”.

Source: https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/4/14/maha-lacks-a-true-base-and-voters-reject-its-real-world-impact

These numbers are from a group trying to present the worst case scenario of support for MAHA, so reality is that support is much larger. Those who seek to muzzle Kennedy and MAHA are arguing for politcal suicide in November!

WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR:

1. Reject the nomination of Erica Schwartz to head the CDC

There is no way the medical freedom community and voters are going to be able to stomach Schwartz heading the CDC and thwarting any-and-all good recommendations that come from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Recently Secretary Kennedy amended the ACIP charter where he added four fantastic free-thinking medical organizations as official advisors, including Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC), Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs (MAPS), and the Association of American Physician and Surgeons (AAPS). However, if Schwartz heads the CDC she will simply refuse to implement any of the sound guidance that comes from ACIP, stopping vaccine reform dead in its tracks. At that point, it may be possible for Secretary Kennedy to overrule such decisions, but that will just end up being challenged in court, likely by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The AAP has currently stopped Kennedy’s very common sense changes to the childhood vaccine schedule with a temporary injunction issued by a federal court in Boston.

2. The Department of Justice (DOJ) & HHS must appeal the horrible decision in Boston ASAP!

As just stated, the AAP has sued HHS in a federal court in Boston. In late February, Judge Murphy granted an injunction to the AAP which temporarily disbanded Kennedy’s ACIP committee and put Kennedy’s changes to the CDC childhood vaccine schedule on pause for the time being. HHS and DOJ have yet to appeal this decision. They have put in a notice of appeal, but they have not appealed the case. Todd Blanche is now the Acting Attorney General for the DOJ, and he is on record saying they would be appealing this decision. We call on the DOJ and HHS to appeal this horrendous decision from an activist judge immediately, and defend the common sense changes Kennedy implemented and his supporters voted for.

3. If you do not do these things, expect a large portion of MAHA Voters to stay home during the midterms

Michael Kane and John Gilmore spent two years of our lives working to make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the next president of the United States. When Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, we supported Trump because we believed in MAHA. The overwhelming majority of our followers and Kennedy supporters supported Trump too, and that is what led to a massive red wave throughout the country in 2024.

THAT is the power that MAHA voters bring to elections! And the majority of those voters were pushing for vaccine reform.

If the agenda of vaccine reform is now dead on the federal level, this voting bloc is going to be completely deflated. The idea that vaccine reform is an unpopular voting issue is a lie propagated by Big Pharma interests who want to take the Republican Party back to the pre-Obama days of big fat Pharma checks for the GOP.