The White House has withdrawn Dave Weldon’s nomination for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Fox News Digital has confirmed. Weldon had been scheduled to appear for his confirmation hearing on Thursday.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee announced Thursday morning that it had canceled the hearing.
However, the committee confirmed that lawmakers would still proceed with votes on the nominations of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr. Marty Makary for Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“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 process told Fox News Digital. However, there has been no official statement on why the nomination was withdrawn.
Weldon was reportedly unaware that his nomination had been rescinded until he arrived at the Capitol on Thursday morning.
Dave Weldon (Photo: AP)
Weldon, a medical doctor and former Florida congressman, has previously made statements expressing skepticism about vaccines, a topic that was expected to come up during his hearing.
In a 2007 statement, he suggested that there were “legitimate questions” regarding potential links between vaccines and childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.
During his tenure in Congress, Weldon also co-sponsored legislation with former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that sought to ban mercury from vaccines.
The issue of vaccine skepticism also arose during the confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Democrats on the Senate HELP Committee repeatedly questioned Kennedy about his claims linking vaccines to autism.
They also scrutinized his tenure as chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization known for opposing vaccines and engaging in multiple lawsuits against the federal government.
