What: The Trump nominee to lead the CDC, Dave Weldon, dropped out right before his nomination hearing was set to begin today. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters that she let the White House know that she had problems with Weldon’s vaccine skepticism. Without her vote, he wouldn’t make it out of committee consideration.

Key line: “Weldon, 71, is an Army veteran and internal medicine doctor whose main claim to fame was representing a central Florida district in Congress from 1995 to 2009. He was a leader of a Congressional push for research into autism’s causes, which began around 2000. But Weldon rejected studies that found no causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, and accused the CDC of short-circuiting research that might show otherwise.”

Source: AP