Last week, President Trump posted to Truth Social his plan to nominate Dr. Heidi Overton as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (The Contrarian covered the departure of her predecessor, Dr. Marty Makary, when he was pushed out in May.)
This nomination indicates the administration’s further normalization of gutting healthcare and drug safety — yes, its attempt to shift the Overton Window. (Given her last name, how can I resist?) The Overton Window theory reflects the efforts of deft politicians to deliberately mold public perception of a policy or idea — and its eventual support or rejection. Hence, the widening or closing of the Overton Window.
Overton’s record leaves no doubt this administration aims to smash the window altogether. She currently serves as deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and was part of the first Trump administration as well. Though she trained in surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, there’s been nothing subtle about her resume or affiliations since her residency — including and especially her prominent role at America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank that “exists to advance policies that … prioritize[e] free enterprise, national greatness, American military superiority, foreign-policy engagement in the American interest, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities.”
A highlight reel of her AFPI tenure: She publicly celebrated when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade with its Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, stating that the ruling “will allow Americans to reevaluate the value of the potential of every baby in the womb and choose life through a democratic process.” She has questioned the long-established safety record of mifepristone, indicating her opposition to the FDA’s approval for its availability via telehealth. She has authored research and papers opposing gender-affirming care for minors; in a 2024 Newsweek op-ed, Overton complained that Democrats “won’t even define what a woman is.”
Most recently, she participated in and spoke out in support of Trump’s executive order to change the number and sequence of childhood vaccines — calling it a “historic action” — while continuing to condemn entities like the American Academy of Pediatrics and tout debunked research linking vaccines to autism. Have a look at the AFPI press release about her nomination to see exactly where she and her colleagues stand.
What does her elevation and potential confirmation mean for a public health agency as critical as the FDA — especially when its oversight and management is in a crisis state, down thousands of employees thanks to the administration’s cuts? Here are a few areas where the FDA is either poised to take significant action and/or where its ability to be functional is paramount.
Let’s start with mifepristone — and the soon-to-be published review ordered by Health and Human Services. Republicans have been pressuring the agency to reverse the rule that allows mifepristone to prescribed and dispensed via telehealth and have been undermining its decades-long safety record, setting the stage to further limit or wholly curtail its availability, even in states where abortion is legal.
Other aspects of women’s health are also implicated. Last year, the FDA garnered rare bipartisan support for its removal of outdated and inaccurate warning labels on menopause hormone treatments — a move that brought the federal government in line with state policy progress. Now in the aftermath, manufacturers are (falsely) claiming a spike in demand is causing a shortage of certain formulations. We need the FDA to step up and fast; women across the country are in a state of despair, denied essential prescriptions. (Don’t believe me? Head to TikTok; the pain is real.) The FDA is also scheduled to convene a public panel next month on female-dosed testosterone — which doctors now must prescribe off-label in microdose amounts because it is not FDA-approved for women. It would be a real setback to lose all the momentum around treating menopause.
We are on the brink of especially dangerous interventions when it comes to pregnancy. Earlier this year, a series of conflicting and alarming announcements about Tylenol usage, including directly from the White House, caused the FDA to issue a memo and guidance regarding collection of pregnancy safety data. Just as we saw in the confirmation hearing for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz, who spoke favorably about “abortion surveillance,” a weaponized FDA stands to be exponentially devastating to the administration’s rising support for the surveillance of pregnancy and the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes.
Last but hardly least, food safety is another area where we are rapidly backsliding — and, as always, a major concern to women who are most likely to be heads of households, grocery shoppers, and preparers of meals. The cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce has sickened nearly 10,000 people in multiple states; baby formula, soft cheese, fruit popsicles, canned soup, and fresh blueberries are among the other foods tied to disease outbreaks.
Timing-wise, Overton’s nomination and confirmation will likely pick up when Congress returns from summer recess — perfect timing to make noise, from to how to pack back-to-school lunches to raising the roof on abortion pre-midterms, given the administration’s desire to keep its record hidden from voters.
If ever there was a moment to slam shut the Overton Window, this is it.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.
First Overton needs to be thrown out the window before we slam it.
I have to say this is a singularly poor description of the Overton window. The Overton window represents the range of views that are broadly seen as acceptable in public discourse. So the shifting of that window - often in one political direction or the other - occurs when beliefs that were formerly considered beyond the pale to express in public - say explicit racism or paternalism, dehumanization of political opposition, "Nazis good", etc. - even if still fringe can now be spoken without immediate and universal condemnation. So it is above all reflection of the cultural zeitgeist.