By Liz Essley Whyte, Natalie Andrews and Dominique Mosbergen

The White House plans to withdraw President Trump's nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Republican familiar with the nomination said Dr. Dave Weldon didn't have the votes in the Senate to be confirmed.

Weldon was on his way to the Capitol on Thursday morning for his confirmation hearing before the Senate's health committee. He hadn't heard his nomination would be withdrawn when a Wall Street Journal reporter reached him at 9:01 a.m. About 15 minutes later a Senate staffer told people waiting outside the hearing room that it had been canceled.

The White House decided at the last minute to pull his nomination, a person familiar with the matter said. Axios earlier reported that the White House had withdrawn Weldon's nomination to lead the CDC.

Weldon, a former Republican congressman who has expressed skepticism about vaccine safety in the past, is an internist who served in Congress from 1995 to 2002 representing Florida's 15th congressional district. He has since been in private practice.

This is the first time that a CDC nominee requires Senate confirmation after Congress in recent years added the requirement for leaders of the agency responsible for investigating infectious disease and guarding public health.

The CDC, with roughly 10,000 employees, is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services overseen by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy and Weldon have both questioned vaccine safety in the past. Kennedy backed vaccines in his own confirmation hearings this year. Since Kennedy has taken charge of HHS, the department has scuttled meetings of infectious-disease experts and begun scrutinizing vaccine contracts.

Weldon in 2007 introduced a bill that would have moved some responsibility for vaccine-safety research from the CDC to an independent HHS office. He suggested in congressional testimony in 2002 that vaccines might cause autism. Many large studies have established no link between vaccines and autism.

Weldon told Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) in February that he was concerned that vaccines could be causing toxic buildups of mercury in children, a person familiar with the conversation said. Weldon subsequently struck a more moderate tone on vaccines in meetings with senators, people familiar with the conversations said.

Vaccine skeptics have made that claim since the 1990s. Thimerosal, a form of mercury used as a preservative in some shots, was removed from childhood vaccines in 2001 out of an abundance of caution, scientists have said.

Trump's other picks to lead agencies within the health department include Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, to lead the Food and Drug Administration; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, to lead the National Institutes of Health; and Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon best known as the host of TV's "The Dr. Oz Show," to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Each would need to be confirmed by a majority vote in the Senate. Republicans have 53 seats there to the Democrats' 47.

Write to Liz Essley Whyte at liz.whyte@wsj.com, Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com and Dominique Mosbergen at dominique.mosbergen@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 13, 2025 10:24 ET (14:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.