The White House suddenly withdrew President Donald Trump’s nomination to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday morning, hours before he was set to testify at a Senate confirmation hearing.
Dave Weldon, a Republican former congressman from Florida, was on his way to his scheduled appearance before the Senate health committee at the Capitol when Senate staffers informed him his nomination had been pulled, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The hearing, scheduled for 10 a.m., would have been the first time an agency director would have been subject to the confirmation process.
White House officials told the New York Times they decided to pull Weldon’s nomination on Wednesday evening upon learning he did not have enough votes to be confirmed.
However, Weldon, 71, reportedly only learned of that information around 9:15 a.m. on Thursday.
The Independent has asked the White House for comment.
Trump nominated Weldon, a little-known former politician, to serve as head of the CDC in November.
Weldon’s nomination was subject to scrutiny due to his casual link between vaccines and autism – a debunked theory. He had repeated the disproven claim that children could develop autism after being vaccinated against measles. Those views aligned with claims Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made in the past.
That arrives just as several states are battling highly contagious measles outbreaks among school-aged children.
Senate committee members were expected to grill Weldon about his views during the hearing.
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