The White House has decided to withdraw the nomination of its pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Dave Weldon, a Republican former congressman, who was to have appeared at a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday morning, according to a White House official and an administration official.

Dr. Weldon, who learned of the decision last night, said he had been told by a White House official that “they didn’t have the votes to confirm” his nomination.

The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee announced it has canceled Weldon’s nomination hearing, originally set for 10 a.m. EDT Thursday, following the withdrawal.

Dalvin Modore walked as if there was broken glass beneath his feet, stepping gingerly, his frail shoulders hunched against the anticipation of pain. His trousers had become so loose that he had to hold them up as he inched around his small farm in western Kenya.

Mr. Modore has tuberculosis. He is 40, a tall man whose weight has dropped to 110 pounds. He has a wracking cough and sometimes vomits blood. He fears the disease will kill him and has been desperate to be on medication to treat it.

President Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH) faced questions from senators Wednesday on his plans for vaccine research, ideas for pushing down drug prices, and response to recent firings and funding cuts at the agency. 

Jay Bhattacharya appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for his confirmation hearing, with Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, set to be grilled on Thursday. 

In an unprecedented move to funnel more public tax dollars toward groups that oppose abortion, Republican lawmakers in Missouri are advancing a plan to allow residents to donate to pregnancy resource centers instead of paying any state income taxes.

The proposal would establish a 100% tax credit, up from 70%, and a $50,000 annual cap per taxpayer. The result: Nearly all Missouri households — except those with the highest incomes — could fully satisfy their state tax bill by redirecting their payment from the state to pregnancy centers.

With Texas experiencing a measles outbreak, some might expect RFK to play down vaccines or damn them with faint praise. Nope. He wrote an op-ed piece for Fox News praising the MMR vaccines — in a manner consistent with his belief that the decision to inoculate should be a matter of choice. From “Measles Outbreak Is Call to Action for All of Us:”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist ― appeared to strike a drastically different tone in a new Fox News op-ed published Sunday in which he advocated for the MMR vaccine amid a growing measles outbreak in Texas.

The op-ed, titled “Measles Outbreak Is A Call To Action For All Of Us,” carried the subheadline: “MMR Vaccine Is Crucial To Avoiding Potentially Deadly Disease.”

In the anti-vaccine world, few immunizations are as demonized as the measles, mumps, and rubella or MMR shot. For years, vaccine “skeptics” have falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine causes autism, or sickens children with the very diseases it protects them against. But this week, the anti-vax world faced a reckoning when Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F.