WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has selected Dave Weldon, a physician and former congressman who has questioned vaccine safety and fought for abortion limits, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Weldon represented a Florida district in the House of Representatives for more than two decades, including stints with the Appropriations Committee and the panel on oversight and reform. Trump nodded to those roles in his announcement, saying that Weldon has been a “respected conservative leader on fiscal and social issues.”
Weldon will be the first CDC director nominee to go through the Senate confirmation process. “I have firmly advocated for reforming the CDC,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is slated to run the health committee that will hold Weldon’s confirmation hearing, wrote on X after the announcement. “I look forward to learning about Doctor Weldon’s vision for the CDC.”
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