Report: Trump to Pick Heidi Overton to Lead FDA
The Spin
Republican narrative
Overton is the leader the FDA needs: a Johns Hopkins-trained clinical researcher with an MD, a direct line to the president and a proven record of putting patients first. She has already proved instrumental by building the administration's fertility affordability plan, doing the unglamorous work that actually moves the needle for families, and no doubt will continue to do so.
Democratic narrative
Overton is decidedly underqualified to be running the FDA. She has zero food safety experience, which, at a time when the FDA is buckling under a wave of recalls, spells disaster when thrown into an agency already too understaffed to meet its basic oversight duties. Rather than making the food and drug supply safer, it will almost certainly make the situation even worse.
