The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just hours before his scheduled confirmation hearing, following attacks from both Republican and Democratic senators about his past statements questioning some vaccine safety.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee announced Thursday morning that it had canceled Weldon’s hearing, though it would still proceed with votes on Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for National Institutes of Health (NIH) director and Dr. Marty Makary for Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It became clear that the votes weren’t there in the Senate for him to get confirmed. This would have been a futile effort,” a source familiar with the nomination told Fox News.
In a rare setback for the Trump administration in the Republican-controlled Senate, multiple GOP senators reportedly expressed concerns about Weldon’s preparedness for the role. According to one source, even HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Weldon “wasn’t ready” for the position.
Weldon, a medical doctor and former Florida congressman who served from 1995 through 2009, has a history of making statements questioning the safety of certain vaccines. In 2007, he issued a statement saying “legitimate questions persist regarding the possible association between the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, and the childhood epidemic of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including autism.”
Scientific consensus has found no evidence linking vaccines to autism. Thimerosal, while once used as a preservative in vaccines, was removed from childhood vaccines in 2001, according to the CDC.
During his time in Congress, Weldon co-sponsored legislation with former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that would have banned mercury from vaccines altogether.
It was enough to doom his nomination under Trump years later.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., stated that Weldon had “repeated debunked claims about vaccines” during their meeting last month. She called on the administration to select a nominee “who at bare minimum believes in basic science and will help lead CDC’s important work to monitor and prevent deadly outbreaks.”
There was confusion about when Weldon learned his nomination had been pulled. The Wall Street Journal reported he only discovered it upon arriving at the Capitol Thursday morning, though a source told Fox News that Weldon had been informed Wednesday night.
The withdrawal marks an unusual development in the Trump administration’s nomination process, as most of the president’s nominees have moved forward in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The CDC directorship is particularly crucial as the agency continues to monitor and respond to infectious disease threats worldwide.