The Senate voted on Tuesday evening to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee for the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez.

Monarez was confirmed along partisan lines by a vote of 51 to 47, winning overwhelming support from Republicans despite reservations from some on the Right about her long tenure in a public health establishment that is the target of the Make America Health Again agenda.

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No Democrats crossed party lines to support Trump’s pick.

Once sworn in, Monarez will be the first CDC director without a medical degree, instead holding a doctorate in microbiology and immunology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Monarez served as the interim director for the CDC prior to being nominated by Trump to run the agency full-time. Appointment rules prohibit presidential nominees from serving in the role for which they are seeking confirmation. 

During Monarez’s absence, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken a strong hand in guiding the public health agency’s policy, most notably with removing recommendations for healthy children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Last month, Kennedy also fired all 17 of the members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, ostensibly due to financial conflicts of interest between board members and the pharmaceutical industry.

Within days of the firing, he replaced the members with eight outsiders more aligned with his skepticism toward vaccines. The new ACIP board, during its first meeting at the end of June, launched a review of the “cumulative effects” of ingredients in the childhood vaccine schedule and voted no longer to recommend a small section of flu vaccines containing the controversial mercury-based preservative thimerosal.

Trump tapped Monarez for the directorship after abruptly withdrawing his first choice, former congressman Dr. David Weldon, who was heavily scrutinized for his past false claims that vaccines cause autism. 

Monarez is more of a traditional choice than Trump’s other health agency picks, like Kennedy or National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who drew criticism from the public health establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic for his stance against restrictions.

Before her CDC nomination, Monarez served at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health under HHS, in various White House advisory positions, and in biomedical research capacities with the Department of Homeland Security.

During her roughly two-hour long confirmation hearing before the Senate health committee last month, Monarez flatly rejected the notion that vaccines cause autism but steered clear of saying she would directly challenge Kennedy should their vaccine policies differ.

Monarez said during her confirmation hearing that Kennedy “values independent thinking.” 

““I am an independent thinker and a scientist,” Monarez said in June.