Donald Trump has nominated his third FDA commissioner pick in a single term, and this time he went with a doctor who wants Congress to strictly regulate the abortion pill mifepristone 'to protect women and children' — which is a very specific kind of protection, the kind where women don't get to make their own medical decisions. Dr. Heidi Overton, currently serving as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, was announced Wednesday in a Truth Social post so aggressively capitalized it reads like a ransom note written by a very patriotic kindergartner.
Who Is Heidi Overton, Exactly
According to CBS News, Overton is a physician who completed her general surgery residency at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and earned her MD from the University of New Mexico. She was a White House fellow during Trump's first term and has spent this one working directly alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the television personality now running the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. A Johns Hopkins residency on paper, a MAHA true believer in practice.
Trump's Truth Social announcement described her as a 'ROCKSTAR' who is 'ALWAYS RIGHT,' citing a quote he attributed to Kennedy from an Oval Office conversation. She will, pending Senate confirmation, take over an agency responsible for regulating the nation's drugs, medical devices, and a significant chunk of its food supply. The current acting commissioner is Kyle Diamantas, a former corporate lawyer who was actually Trump's first choice for the permanent job before that plan quietly evaporated, per NBC News.
The Mifepristone Problem She Is Being Asked to Ignore
Here is where the nomination gets genuinely alarming. The FDA commissioner oversees the regulation of mifepristone, the medication used in the majority of abortions performed in the United States. The Guardian reports that in a 2023 policy brief, Overton described mifepristone as 'teleabortion' and 'abortion-on-demand' and called on Congress to strictly regulate it 'to protect women and children.'
This matters enormously because, as The Guardian points out, approximately 23 million women live in states with abortion bans. For many of them, mifepristone accessed through telehealth providers in other states is one of the only remaining pathways to abortion care. Putting a person who has publicly characterized that access as something requiring strict congressional limits in charge of the agency that regulates the drug is not a neutral bureaucratic appointment. It is a policy decision dressed up as a personnel announcement.
The FDA is an agency meant to evaluate drugs on evidence of safety and efficacy. Mifepristone has been approved since 2000, and the scientific record on its safety is about as settled as anything in pharmacology gets. None of that appears to be the relevant consideration here.
She Was Right There for the MMR Misinformation Tour
Overton's other big public moment this year came earlier in August, when Trump signed an executive order recommending that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine be split into three separate shots. Overton was in the Oval Office for the signing, per CBS News, and she showed up to defend it publicly. 'We do still recommend the measles vaccine for all children, but we want parents to be informed about the timing and to have the option to separate them out,' she said, according to The Guardian.
The American Academy of Pediatrics called the order 'not only disheartening but dangerous.' Health experts across the board said it would sow confusion at the worst possible time: the US is currently in the middle of its worst measles outbreak in 30 years. Trump used the press conference to claim, without any supporting evidence, that separating the shots would improve autism rates. Multiple studies have found no connection between vaccines and autism. Overton did not correct him. She praised him. 'Mr. President, this is a historic action,' she said.
She also took a shot at 'blue states' for following AAP guidance rather than the CDC's — which would be a reasonable critique if Kennedy hadn't fired the CDC's entire expert advisory panel on vaccines. She was criticizing states for listening to pediatricians instead of a panel that no longer exists because her boss dissolved it.
The FDA Has Been in Freefall — And Now This
The agency Overton is being asked to run has had a rough couple of years by any measure. The Guardian notes it has spent the bulk of the second Trump administration dealing with widespread job cuts and disease outbreaks. The previous confirmed commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, resigned in May, and CBS News reports that at least one source familiar with the situation said Makary left over an internal fight about flavored e-cigarettes — specifically, that he didn't want to approve them but was forced to by other members of the administration. Critics have long raised concerns about flavored vapes and their appeal to children.
So to recap: the FDA has lost staff to mass layoffs, watched disease outbreaks accelerate on its watch, seen its last commissioner apparently forced out over a product that attracts kids, and is now getting a nominee whose most notable public positions involve restricting abortion medication and nodding along while the president invents vaccine science. The agency tasked with keeping Americans safe from dangerous products is being assembled by people who seem genuinely unbothered by dangerous products, as long as the right people are making money from them.
The Third Time Is, Apparently, the Charm
Overton is Trump's third attempt at filling this seat, which tells you something about how the first two went. NBC News reported that Trump initially wanted Diamantas, the acting commissioner who is still holding the position now. Then the name Bret Wenstrup surfaced — an Ohio Republican congressman. Now Overton. Whatever disqualified the first two nominees in Trump's eyes, Overton apparently clears whatever bar they set.
She will need Senate confirmation to take the job. That process, in the current Senate, may or may not produce meaningful scrutiny of her record on abortion access or her performance standing next to a president who was actively spreading medical misinformation. The Senate confirmed RFK Jr. to run the entire Department of Health and Human Services, so the precedent here is not encouraging.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that nominating an abortion opponent to regulate the abortion pill is just a normal staffing decision. That standing beside a president while he tells the country vaccines cause autism and saying 'this is a historic action, Mr. President' is the kind of judgment we want at the top of our primary drug regulatory agency. That an agency that has already been gutted by layoffs and presided over a 30-year-worst measles outbreak just needs a little MAHA energy to turn things around.
It is not a normal staffing decision. The FDA commissioner does not just set policy in the abstract. She controls what drugs get approved, how they are regulated, what information reaches the public, and how aggressively the agency defends or restricts existing approvals. Putting someone with Overton's stated views on mifepristone in that chair is a direct attack on abortion access through administrative machinery, quieter than a legislative ban but potentially just as effective. The courts have spent years fighting over mifepristone's approval status. The new FDA commissioner doesn't need to win in court. She just needs to make the drug harder to access, one regulatory tweak at a time.
The MMR executive order appearance is the other thing that should not slide past anyone. Overton did not stand there silently and uncomfortably while the president lied about vaccines. She praised him. She called it historic. She criticized other doctors for following pediatric guidelines. That is not a person who will tell power what it needs to hear. That is a person who will tell power exactly what it wants to hear, every time, regardless of what the evidence says. At the FDA, that disposition does not just embarrass the country. It gets people killed.
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