{"id":722,"date":"2025-03-13T16:10:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T17:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/?p=722"},"modified":"2025-03-14T14:29:36","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T14:29:36","slug":"murkowski-collins-expressed-concerns-prior-to-white-house-pulling-weldon-nomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/13\/murkowski-collins-expressed-concerns-prior-to-white-house-pulling-weldon-nomination\/","title":{"rendered":"Murkowski, Collins expressed concerns prior to White House pulling Weldon nomination"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) and Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) expressed their concerns over Dave Weldon\u2019s nomination to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prior to senior Trump administration officials deciding to withdraw it<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Murkowski relayed her concerns about Weldon directly to the White House, while Collins made an offhand remark about the nominee to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., though she had not reached a final decision on how she would vote.<\/p>\n

Murkowski told reporters Thursday that she expressed her concerns about Weldon to the White House.<\/p>\n

Asked if she had concerns about Weldon heading a leading public health agency, Murkowski replied, \u201cYes, I did, and I shared those.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she wasn\u2019t surprised by the decision to withdraw his nomination.<\/p>\n

Collins also raised concerns about Trump\u2019s choice of Weldon<\/a>, an outspoken critic of vaccine safety, to head the nation\u2019s science-based service organization in charge of protecting the public\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some areas of disagreement, and I look forward to the public hearing when I will be able to question him in public and in more depth on issues like vaccine recommendations,\u201d Collins told Bloomberg earlier this month.  <\/p>\n

Weldon, in a statement reacting to the withdrawal of his nomination, said that Kennedy alerted him Wednesday that Collins had expressed concern over his record.<\/p>\n

\u201cBobby told me that earlier that morning he had breakfast with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who said she now had reservations about my nomination and was considering voting no,\u201d Weldon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a very pleasant meeting with her two weeks prior where she expressed no reservations about my nomination, but at my meeting with her staff on March 11 they were suddenly very hostile \u2014 a bad sign,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

Collins happened to sit next to Kennedy at an early St. Patrick\u2019s Day breakfast hosted by Vice President Vance on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Collins, however, told reporters Thursday she was surprised Weldon\u2019s nomination had been withdrawn shortly before his scheduled confirmation hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe news came as a surprise to me. I was on my way to the markup, which was going to be followed by the hearing on his nomination. It was not something I anticipated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said she did not express her concerns to the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly had not reached a final judgment. I followed my normal practice of waiting until the hearing was scheduled, so he can respond in a public forum,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Weldon was scheduled to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday morning, before his nomination was suddenly pulled.<\/p>\n

Murkowski and Collins both sit on that panel, on which Republicans control a 12-11 majority. If either of them had voted no, it would have been enough to bottle the nominee up in committee.<\/p>\n

Some Republican lawmakers, however, thought Weldon\u2019s nomination would become a political liability given the negative publicity surrounding a measles outbreak across multiple states.<\/p>\n

A school-aged child who was not vaccinated died in Texas last month, sending a wave of alarming headlines through the media.<\/p>\n

Other Republicans said they weren\u2019t surprised to hear the White House decided to pull Weldon\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it makes sense,\u201d Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters. \u201cSome of us who had some concerns with [Secretary] Kennedy\u2019s previous statements got past that because we believed that scientists running some of these three-letter health agencies are going to be driven by data, are going to be driven by science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tillis said Weldon\u2019s \u201cpast comments have raised enough questions\u201d to sow doubts whether policies at the CDC would be driven by science.<\/p>\n

Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida, has a long history of supporting anti-vaccine theories.  <\/p>\n

He has argued in the past that vaccinating children against the flu could poise a poisoning risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents should not be forced to choose between the risk of the mercury containing preservative thimerosal \u2014 whether real or perceived and the risk of contracting influenza,\u201d he wrote in a letter to the House Appropriations chair in 2007, according to Statnews.com. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) and Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) expressed their concerns over Dave Weldon\u2019s nomination to head the Centers for Disease Control and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thenewamore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}