Republican lawmakers may not have considered avowed anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be too radical to run a federal health agency—but it turns out that Dr. Dave Weldon is.
On Thursday, the White House reportedly withdrew the nomination of the 71-year-old physician and former GOP representative from Florida to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just hours before his initial committee confirmation hearing was set to take place, according to Axios, which was the first to report the news, and a statement from Weldon. As I reported back in December, Weldon, who spent more than a decade representing Florida in the House of Representatives before returning to practice as a physician, has a staunch anti-vaccine record. This is what may have reportedly posed a barrier to his confirmation in light of the measles outbreak across several states, especially Texas and New Mexico, that has led to more than 250 cases and killed two people, including an unvaccinated child (though the cause of one of the deaths is under investigation, according to the CDC).
After the withdrawal of former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, Weldon is the first Trump nominee who failed to make it through the Senate confirmation process—though there has been no shortage of unqualified nominees. The webpage for the Senate Health Committee notes that his Thursday morning hearing has been canceled. Spokespeople for the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Thursday morning.
As I previously wrote of Weldon’s history:
The physician and ex–Florida congressman’s track record includes introducing legislation that would have stripped the CDC of its authority to conduct research on vaccine safety and instead given it to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Weldon has also promoted the unfounded theory that vaccines lead to childhood autism—a false claim boosted infamously in the past by Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
After he was catapulted to national attention following Trump’s November announcement of his nomination, Weldon seemed to try to soften his stance, telling the New York Times, “I believe in vaccination.” But as I previously reported, anti-vaxxers still celebrated his nomination. “He is one of us!! Since before our movement had momentum,” the co-director of the anti-vax group Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights wrote on social media.
“He is one of us!! Since before our movement had momentum.”
No word from those groups on Weldon’s withdrawal—but Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccination group founded by RFK Jr., said the group was “disappointed” with the decision. Democrats, on the other hand, celebrated it. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a post on X: “During one of the worst measles outbreaks in years because of Trump, Weldon should NEVER have even been under consideration to lead CDC.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones that Weldon “was not the right choice to lead the CDC.”
“President Trump should nominate someone who is an experienced public health practitioner who has a successful history of managing a complex public health organization,” Benjamin said. “The individual must be someone who will support the full range of health promotion and disease prevention programs the agency runs.”
Weldon’s anti-abortion record left Democrats and abortion rights supporters opposed to his nomination. For them, Weldon’s withdrawal came as a rare “win for public health and reproductive freedom,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, which last week sent a letter to senators signed by more than 80 organizations opposing Weldon’s nomination.
As I reported in December:
And on abortion, Weldon is responsible for an eponymous federal law that prohibits HHS from funding any entities that “discriminate” against health care providers, hospitals, or insurance plans who opt out of providing abortion care—which the Trump administration “weaponized” to enact its anti-abortion agenda during his first term, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Weldon introduced the amendment in the House in 2004, and it has been passed as part of the HHS spending bill every year since 2005.
While in Congress, Weldon also co-sponsored legislation that sought to bar HHS from providing any Title X family planning funding to entities that provide abortions. (Then-Rep. Mike Pence sponsored that bill, and Trump enacted that policy in office, when Pence was vice president.) Weldon also supported a bill that proposed studying unsubstantiated links between abortion and depression.
In a lengthy statement released Thursday, Weldon said he got the news from the White House last night that he did not have enough votes to be confirmed because Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)—a physician and chair of the Senate Health Committee—were planning to oppose him. A staffer for Cassidy told Mother Jones that “the decision to pull Dr. Weldon’s nomination did not come at the request of Senator Cassidy.” A spokesperson for Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Weldon also suggested other forces were at play: “The concern of many people is that big Pharma was behind this which was probably true.”
But Weldon’s withdrawal does not mean RFK Jr. is suddenly in favor of evidence-based research about vaccines. Weldon alleged in his statement that RFK Jr. was “very upset” when he told him his nomination was dead, adding, “[Kennedy] said I was the perfect person for the job.”
Earlier this month, RFK Jr. wrote an op-ed for Fox in which he called for making measles vaccines “readily accessible for all those who want them”—but also said it was a “personal” decision. Soon after, he said in an interview that steroids and cod liver oil could be used to treat measles, despite there being no supporting evidence. He spoke with Texans who were working to distribute these and other unproven disproven measles remedies, as my colleague Kiera Butler reported.
This week, the Washington Post reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is terminating or limiting more than 40 grants related to researching vaccine hesitancy, and Reuters reported that the CDC is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, despite the fact that theories of such links have been disproven. Those moves have made CDC employees working on vaccine research and public health responses fearful that their work could be targeted, as I reported yesterday. Now, it appears they’ll have one less militant anti-vax leader whose agenda they will have to fight—at least until the next nominee is announced.
Update, March 13: This story was updated with a statement from the executive director of the American Public Health Association.