"Ralph Abraham has been appointed as the CDC’s principal deputy director."

"A Louisiana health official who ordered his health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations this past winter during a surge in influenza cases has been tapped to serve as the new No. 2 leader at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ralph Abraham, who is Louisiana’s surgeon general, has been hired to be the principal deputy director at the CDC, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, who confirmed the appointment. It is not clear when Abraham begins in the position. He is listed in the CDC’s internal directory as principal deputy director; a CDC email listed for him does not work.

The nation’s top public health agency currently has no permanent director, and Abraham would essentially be running the agency. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez this summer after she resisted his requests to agree to vaccine recommendations he wanted an influential CDC advisory committee to make. HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill is serving as acting CDC director.

Abraham adds to the vaccine critics working at the CDC under Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist before becoming the country’s top health official. Kennedy fired all of the CDC’s federal vaccine advisers and replaced them with people who have criticized coronavirus and other shots."

Lena H. Sun reports for the Washington Post November 25, 2025. [2]