CDC nominee withdrawn

Politico

13-03-2025

Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices
With Adam Cancryn and Sophie Gardner
Driving The Day
DAVE IS OUT — The White House withdrew its nominee to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an abrupt move just hours before his confirmation hearing, our Adam Cancryn reports.
Trump officials were expected to inform the Senate Thursday morning that Dave Weldon, a former Florida representative, will no longer be its pick for the agency, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to POLITICO.
Weldon had faced growing scrutiny over his anti-vaccine views, including an extensive record during his time in Congress of raising questions about the safety of vaccines and their potential links to autism. That history had prompted concerns within the Senate and others close to the process, fueling constant rumors over the past several weeks that he would be withdrawn.
But the decision to kill his nomination just before his testimony in front of the Senate health committee indicates it became clear to the White House that Weldon did not have enough support among Republicans to have any path to confirmation.
Axios first reported the White House's decision.
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In Congress
NIH, FDA VOTE — The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will vote on two other key HHS appointees today.
The committee will vote whether to approve Dr. Marty Makary as FDA commissioner and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as NIH director.
During his hearing, Bhattacharya promised to cut 'frivolous' NIH spending and indicated he wanted to make science move faster at the agency.
Makary pledged his decisions would be data-driven as head of the FDA, but he carefully sidestepped questions about the abortion pill mifepristone, FDA staffing and vaccine advisers.
Both are expected to clear the committee.
HEALTH BILL TALKS — A bipartisan Senate health care package is in the works, a key lawmaker told POLITICO's Ben Leonard and Daniel Payne.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee leading the talks on reviving the package, said in an interview Wednesday that he's hopeful Republicans are ready to pass it.
'They really know it's the right thing to do,' he said. 'They just are debating their internal politics.'
The bipartisan deal, which was scrapped at the last minute from a year-end government funding bill, would have reupped the opioid-fighting SUPPORT Act and the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act.
The legislation would have extended several eased rules implemented during the pandemic: Medicare's telehealth rules, allowances for in-home hospital care and provisions letting employers cover telehealth services for patients in high-deductible health plans before meeting their deductibles.
The agreement would have also provided funding for community health centers and imposed new requirements for transparency for pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate drug costs.
But when the bill was first introduced as part of the December package, Elon Musk, and then-President-elect Donald Trump, said too many extraneous provisions muddied up the funding bill and got congressional Republicans to pull it.
What's next? Republicans were noncommittal when asked Wednesday about talks with Wyden to move the health care package at this time. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo of Idaho declined to comment.
A day earlier, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters he'd 'love' to see a standalone vote but was unsure about the path forward.
Despite that the original package was initially part of cross-party collaboration, not all Republicans want to move ahead in a bipartisan way.
AROUND THE AGENCIES
NIH OUSTER — John Burklow, a nearly 40-year veteran of the National Institutes of Health, is being removed as the agency's chief of staff and replaced by a political appointee, according to three people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity because the decision isn't yet public, POLITICO's Adam Cancryn and Erin Schumaker report.
The agency is expected to appoint Seana Cranston as the NIH's new chief of staff, two of the people said, though they cautioned it's not final and could change. Cranston is a former deputy chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and also spent several years as the lawmaker's legislative director.
The move would represent a sharp departure from the NIH's longtime practice of appointing career officials as chief of staff to the agency's director. Burklow, who's held the role since 2021, previously spent 20 years as a senior communications official at NIH — a tenure that spanned Republican and Democratic administrations.
Trump health officials have signaled plans to drastically overhaul the NIH, including refocusing its research, revamping its workforce and slashing funding for universities and grantees. Last month, Trump aides ordered the NIH to impose a blanket cap on funding to universities for administrative and facilities costs — prompting lawsuits and warnings that the move would force schools to shutter laboratories and lay off staff. The decision has since been blocked by the courts. More recently, the NIH canceled $250 million in grants to Columbia University.
President Donald Trump's pick to run the NIH, Stanford Medical School professor Jay Bhattacharya, has long criticized the agency for ceding too much power to career officials.
An NIH spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
FIRED CDC STAFFERS: 'REHIRE US' — One hundred fired CDC employees have asked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy to rehire them, arguing in a letter that their firing was unlawful, Sophie reports.
The employees were placed on administrative leave — along with hundreds of their colleagues — in mid-February, and their terminations will become official on Friday.
But the employees argue that their firings weren't legal, citing revised OPM guidance from March 4 specifying that 'OPM is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees. Agencies have ultimate decision-making authority over, and responsibility for, such personnel actions.'
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The employees also wrote that their termination letters cited inadequate performance, saying it was 'a claim which was unsubstantiated.'
'We maintain that the manner in which we were terminated did not follow due process requirements and should be found as not lawful,' fired employees wrote in a letter addressed to Kennedy on Wednesday. 'We respectfully request that the Agency continue to follow through on its high standards for accountability and commitment to transparency and lawful professional conduct.'
Names in the News
Dr. Nirav Shah is joining the faculty of Maine's Colby College, where he will help design public health curricula. Shah was most recently principal deputy director of the CDC and, for a brief time, acting director.
WHAT WE'RE READING
POLITICO reports on the Trump administration's move to pull Biden-era drug price models.
The New York Times reports on cuts to SAMHSA services.
NPR reports on the search for answers to long Covid five years after the pandemic's start.
The Associated Press goes inside a study on the impacts of ultraprocessed foods.