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The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to serve as the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two Trump administration officials familiar with the decision told .
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee cancelled Weldon’s nomination hearing on Thursday, following the withdrawal. In the past, the CDC director has been appointed to lead the office. This was to be the first time the Senate has had a chance to vote on the nomination to lead the agency.
Trump officials had privately voiced concerns with Weldon’s recent comments expressing skepticism about vaccines. Even US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a long history of questioning vaccines, had concerns, the sources said.
Axios first reported on the White House’s decision to withdraw Weldon’s nomination.
Weldon’s nomination had been sharply criticized by health experts since it was announced last year. Weldon served 14 years in Congress, representing a Florida district near Tampa from 1995 to 2009, and had introduced legislation that would have shifted vaccine safety oversight away from the CDC. He also repeatedly raised questions about the safety of vaccines that had already been studied.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, told this week that Weldon repeated “debunked claims” about vaccines in a meeting last month. In a response to late Wednesday, Weldon rebutted her comments and said he assumed “she is like many other Republican and Democrat members of Congress she too might be in the pocket of big Pharma that has been desperate to scuttle the nomination of Bobbie Kennedy at HHS and me at CDC.” [sic]
has reached out to Weldon for a response to the withdrawal of the nomination.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
