Trump withdraws CDC director nominee

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The White House on Thursday pulled President Donald Trump's nomination of Dr. David Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, multiple sources told ABC News.

The withdrawal came just before Weldon was to appear for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, where he was expected to be grilled on his past comments questioning vaccine safety. The room was all set for the hearing before the developments, which was first reported by Axios.

Weldon was pulled because he didn't have the votes to be confirmed, according to two sources familiar with his nomination. This was the first time a CDC director nominee had to be be Senate-confirmed.

Weldon, a physician who served in Congress from 1995 until 2009, had kept a relatively low profile for years until being nominated by Trump in November.

But his skepticism of established science around vaccines made him a popular pick among allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

As recently as 2019, Weldon promoted the unsubstantiated theory that vaccines could cause autism.

In 2007, Weldon co-authored a "vaccine safety bill" with former Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, which sought to give control over vaccine safety to an independent agency within HHS.

The bill, which stalled in a House subcommittee, would "provide the independence necessary to ensure that vaccine safety research is robust, unbiased, free from conflict of interest criticism, and broadly accepted by the public at large," Weldon said in a press release announcing the bill.

Weldon was being considered as a measles outbreak sweeps across the U.S.

Democrat Sen. Patty Murray, former chair of the committee Weldon was going to testify before, said that he raised concerning anti-vaccine sentiment during their private meeting.