It’s already several days gone by now since the White House unexpectedly and suddenly withdrew the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to serve as the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See: White House withdraws nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon to lead CDC, by Alayna Treene Meg Tirrell, March 13, 2025
Weldon’s nomination was pulled just before Weldon’s hearing was to take place before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The nomination was reported pulled by the White House because of its assessment that they didn’t have the votes in the Senate to confirm.
The withdrawal was widely understood to be a set back for Health and Human Services head Robert Kennedy, Jr. as the new Health Secretary, and for the MAHA or “Make America Health Again” plans he is pursuing.
The New York Times described Weldon as having “close ties” to Kennedy noting that they “have known each other for 25 years” and adding that they “both share a deep skepticism of the federal regulatory approach to vaccine safety.” Regular readers will recognize that, for the Times, “skepticism” about Big Pharma and the way the federal government ostensibly “regulates” it is a bad thing. And the Times dependably vilifies Kennedy and others for such skepticism.
Similarly, Forbes reported that Weldon was a friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who they said “holds similar and, in some cases, seemingly more extreme views on some health matters.”
Weldon in a statement said that Kennedy was “very upset” about the withdrawal.
Why
was the Weldon nomination withdrawn? Do we know the whole story?
That’s what this updating story investigates and will report on.
Weldon, posting a statement on Twitter (X), said, “The
concern of many people is that Big Pharma was behind this, which is
probably true. They are probably the most powerful lobbying organization
in Washington DC giving millions of dollars to politicians on both
sides of the aisle.”
Getting more granular, Weldon was
blaming two Republican senators for breaking ranks to hand Big Pharma a
win that it was desperate for: Maine Sen. Susan Collins’ and Sen. Bill
Cassidy, from Louisiana.
Those senators were leveling, as a charge against Weldon, the accusation that he was ‘antivax.’
Dr.
Weldon, practices internal medicine. He’s 71 and an Army veteran. He
represented Florida in Congress from 1995 to 2009. Weldon said he had
reminded the senators “that I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice.” (“Weldon” seems like such an interesting, trust-inspiring name of a practicing doctor.)
But, and here’s a big “but” for Big Pharma, in 2007, Weldon introduced the Vaccine Safety and Public Confidence Assurance Act, which aimed to create an “Agency for Vaccine Safety Evaluation” within HHS, independent of the CDC. Though the bill enumerated provisions
that would probably make sense to most people in terms of researching,
tracking, collecting data, and investigating the safety of vaccines, the
attack on Weldon is arguably good evidence that those kinds of measures
are scary to Big Pharma and to the senators like Cassidy and
Collins in service to that industry.
But politics are complicated. Are there other reasons, maybe more real reasons, that Weldon’s appointment was stymied?
One
thing to offer is that Weldon is pro-life or anti-abortion. Although
this would have had essentially no relationship to Weldon’s heading up
the CDC, it could give Democrats good cover for voting against Weldon.
But the Democrats are staunchly, reflexively, uniformly voting against
MAHA and in favor of Big Pharma and vaccines. Hence they don't need
that cover; it’s pure surplusage.
Here’s the fascinating thing
behind the scenes that wasn’t taken into account in terms of Weldon’s
defeat. Yes, Big Pharma has kept most of the Congress in line.
Recently, Big Pharma has suffered significant losses to the now
Trump-championed MAHA efforts, but this time, major political donor
($100+ million) Miriam Adelson (BTW: also physician), widow of Sheldon
Adelson, speaking for the state of Israel, was demanding something that
Trump wasn’t forthcoming with. Therefore, Cassidy and Collins were not
being brought to heel by a superior master.
Apparently it wasn’t the requirement that Trump set aside principles of free speech (some enunciated November 8, 2024) to crack down
on those criticizing the Israeli state, extending recently to arresting
and seeking to deport visitors and students in our country with green
cards and visas. No, apparently that was already just one more thing in
the works as something that Trump had promised Adelson/Israel.
Where
Trump was failing to change course fast enough to satisfy
Adelson/Israel demands is that Trump had already announced he was
changing the name of “The Gulf of Mexico” to “The Gulf of America.” Adelson on behalf of Israel was demanding that the new name that should be ushered in would be “The Gulf of Israel.”
Trump,
apparently not thinking that she or Israel could be serious about this,
apparently did not respond fast enough and thus, when push came to
shove, senators and Cassidy and Collins got the message that they were free to give Big Pharma the win it sought respecting Weldon’s defeat.
Indications are that we are presently going to see Trump come round to renaming The Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America one more time, to the “Gulf of Israel.” Requests have been made about how this will be depicted on maps. . . . We refer to America as “Red, White and Blue.” . .
.
. . The Adelson/Israel thinking is that the gulf should be depicted as
roiled by the tumult of many, many whitecap waves against blue water as
a reference to Israeli flag. Dissenters are proposing that maps of the
gulf should now show an ocean of deep bloody red as an emblem of
Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Maps reflecting “The Gulf of Israel” with proposals are due out today, April 1st.
