New York (AP) – The White House pulled the appointment of the former MEP of Florida Dr. David Weldon back to lead the centers for the control and prevention of diseases because he was not sure that he had supported enough Republicans to confirm.
The Senate’s Republican Health Committee announced on Thursday morning that there is a planned hearing to nominate Weldon can be rejected than an hour before it should begin.
An assistant to the White House announced Weldon on Wednesday evening that his nomination was withdrawn because “there was not enough voices to confirm me,” said the ex-congressman in a statement.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican and committee member in Alaska, said reporters that she passed on her concerns about Weldon’s skepticism of vaccine both directly and in the White House. Two other Republicans who pronounced concerns about the government’s instructions on vaccines, Sens. Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins, said they did not decide whether they should support or reject his confirmation.
Weldon was closely in line with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US Health Secretary, who has been one of the leading activists of the nation for years.
The 71 -year -old Weldon is a veteran of the army and internal medicine, whose main entitlement from 1995 to 2009 represented a district in central florida in the congress.
He was a leader of a congress for the research of the causes of autism that began around 2000. However, Weldon rejected studies in which no causal connection between vaccines in childhood and autism was found, and accused the CDC of low -circuit research, which could otherwise show.
“My great sin was that as a congress member I had the boldness 25 years ago to take over the security questions of CDC and Big Pharma,” Weldon wrote in his four -sided explanation.
Weldon said Kennedy told him that Collins, a Maine Republican, expressed reservations against nomination. He also believes that Cassidy, the Republican from Louisiana, chairman of the health committee, was against his appointment.
Collins said: “I had some reservations, but I had certainly not reached a final judgment.”
Cassidy said that he had not asked Weldon’s withdrawal and was surprised.
“I was looking forward to the hearing,” said Cassidy in an explanation. “His bad reaction to this situation shows that the pressure to be CDC director would have been too much.”
Senator Patty Murray, also a member of the Health Committee, said that she had solemn concerns about Weldon after having met him.
“I was deeply heard to hear how Dr. Weldon repeated the claims about vaccines,” said the Washington Democrat in an explanation. “It is dangerous to blame someone at the CDC who believes that the lie that our strictly tested children’s vaccination plan for children is somehow to cause children toxic mercury level or autism.”
The White House did not spend an explanation in which the withdrawal was explained, and Trump did not address it during a press availability on Thursday afternoon. The Department of Health and Human Services did not answer a request for comments.
With a core budget of $ 9.2 billion, the CDC, based in Atlanta, is commissioned to protect the Americans from outbreaks and other threats to public health.
For decades, it enjoyed a call from Sterling as the world’s leading provider of disease control and reliable health information source, with some of the best experts in the world. But the agency was attacked during the Covid 19 pandemic, which was repeatedly responsible for how it dealt with communication, masking of guidelines and other aspects of its pandemic reaction.
This week, Cassidy and other Republican leaders started a working group to examine potential legislative reforms for the agency, which was registered in the state-wide Job Schneider-Push, which was led by the President and his billionaire consultant Elon Musk.
Weldon should be the first CDC director candidate who has to go through confirmation of the Senate -the result of a legislative determination in a law that was passed during the bid administration. The 20 former directors of the agency were all appointed.
He becomes the third candidate of the Trump Administration, who did not make it to a confirmation hearing. Previously, the former US representative Matt Gaetz withdrew from the consideration for Attorney General and Chad Chron Minister for Drug Enforcement Administration.
Susan Monarez has been the incumbent director of the CDC since the end of January and is ready to stay in the agency after a director has been confirmed.
Two other nominees for top -class federal health positions are on the right track for confirmation.
On Thursday, the Senate’s health committee voted for it, the nomination of Dr. Marty Makary as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Democratic sens. Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire and John Hickenlooper from Colorado joined the Republicans to support the surgeon and researcher. According to party borders, the same committee also voted for the appointment of Dr. Jay Bhattcharya, a health economist and professor at Stanford University to head the National Institutes of Health.
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Associated Press Writers Zeke Miller and Stephen Grove in Washington contributed to this report.
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