Meet Trump’s New, Homophobic Public Health Quack

The extraordinarily disruptive turnover in the Trump administration’s senior staff has officially reached the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The White House, having already cycled through one CDC director, has named its second: Robert Redfield, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and former University of Maryland opioids and AIDS researcher.

He is exactly the wrong person for the job. Amid an exploding influenza epidemic across the United States, an opioids crisis that has decreased the statistical life expectancy of Americans, and a budget crisis that twice compelled closure of critical laboratory and disease-fighting services, the CDC desperately needs a leader who can promise stability and expertise. Redfield represents the opposite; he is someone whose track record in HIV research and public health policy has been a scientific and moral failure.