The White House has withdrawn US President Donald Trump’s nomination of former Florida representative Dr David Weldon to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as announced by the Republican-controlled Senate health committee on Thursday.
The decision to withdraw the nomination came less than an hour before he was set to appear before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for his confirmation hearing.
The decision was made because Weldon lacked the necessary votes for confirmation, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Who is David Weldon?
- David Weldon, 71, is an internal medicine physician best known for serving as a congressional representative for a central Florida district from 1995 to 2009.
- Though he maintained a relatively low profile in recent years, he resurfaced in the public eye when President Trump nominated him for CDC director in November.
- Weldon’s stance on vaccines made him a favored candidate among allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new Secretary of Health and Human Services.
- He has expressed skepticism toward established vaccine science, and as recently as 2019, he promoted the unsubstantiated theory that vaccines could cause autism.
- In 2007, Weldon co-authored a “
vaccine safety bill” alongside former Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney. - The proposed bill aimed to “provide the independence necessary to ensure that vaccine safety research is robust, unbiased, free from conflict of interest criticism, and broadly accepted by the public at large,” Weldon said in a press release announcing the bill.
Earlier, Senator Patty Murray, a health committee member, expressed grave concerns about Weldon following their meeting. “I was deeply disturbed to hear Dr Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines,” the Democrat said in a statement.
“It’s dangerous to put someone in charge at CDC who believes the lie that our rigorously tested childhood vaccine schedule is somehow exposing kids to toxic levels of mercury or causing autism,” Murray continued.
“As we face one of the worst measles outbreaks in years thanks to President Trump, a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health,” she added.
Weldon is the third Trump administration nominee to withdraw before a confirmation hearing, following former US Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Chad Chronister for the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to the Associated Press.
