President Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Heidi Overton, deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, to serve as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, according to reporting first published by Bloomberg on Tuesday and since matched by multiple outlets citing people familiar with the decision. The White House, the FDA, and Overton had not commented publicly as of this writing, and no formal nomination has been transmitted to the Senate.
The timing matters more than the personnel news alone. Whoever takes the job inherits an agency that has lost more than 3,000 staff over the past year, including division heads, according to Reuters, while simultaneously running several active foodborne illness investigations that have produced hundreds of confirmed cases and a recall list touching most major American grocery chains.
