Trump administration withdraws nomination of David Weldon for CDC director

NEW YORK (AP) — The White House withdrew the nomination of former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because he wasn’t assured of getting enough Republican support to be confirmed.

The Republican-controlled Senate health committee announced Thursday morning that it was canceling a planned hearing on Weldon’s nomination — less than an hour before it was scheduled to begin.

A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the White House pulled the nomination because it became clear Weldon did not have the votes for confirmation.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and committee member, told reporters she had relayed her concerns about Weldon’s vaccine skepticism both to him directly and to the White House. Two other Republicans who have voiced concerns about the administration’s direction on vaccines, Sens. Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins, said they had not decided whether to support or oppose his confirmation.

Weldon was considered to be closely aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary who for years has been one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine activists.

Weldon, 71, is an Army veteran and internal medicine doctor whose main claim to fame was representing a central Florida district in Congress from 1995 to 2009.

He was a leader of a Congressional push for research into autism’s causes, which began around 2000. But Weldon rejected studies that found no causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, and accused the CDC of short-circuiting research that might show otherwise.

Sen. Patty Murray, who is also on the health committee, said she had serious concerns about Weldon after meeting with him.

“I was deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines,” the Washington 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.”