WASHINGTON — Heidi Overton, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, was grilled by senators on hot button topics like China, vaccines, and abortion access in her hearing before the committee that will decide whether to send her nomination for a vote of the full Senate.
Throughout the two-hour hearing, Overton, a preventive medicine physician from rural New Mexico who worked in the White House during both Trump terms, revealed very little of her own feelings on top issues facing the FDA. Instead, she referred repeatedly to existing agency guidance and approvals for products like childhood vaccines and the abortion drug mifepristone — without saying whether she would endorse updating those guidance or altering approvals to satisfy the desires of Trump or health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“You’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding answering questions so far,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) observed during his questioning.
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