Qualifications: Physician, internal medicine; former Army veteran; former GOP House of Representatives member (1995-2009). He works at Health First Medical Group in Malabar, FL.

Disqualifications: Lacks public health training. Outspoken CDC critic who wants to gut the agency.

Views: While claiming he believes in vaccines, and having vaccinated his own children, Weldon touts the disproven claim that autism may be caused by vaccination to measles. While in Congress, he worked with RFK Jr. to remove trace mercury from childhood vaccines. On the positive side, he wants greater transparency about CDC conflicts of interest or financial ties that may undermine public faith in research. 

A Christian conservative and anti-abortion activist, he’s worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos and, in 2005, authored and introduced the Weldon amendment, a ‘religious freedom’ clause in annual HHS spending that would give protections to health care workers and groups who deny abortion services. As CDC head, Weldon has promised to work closely with RFK Jr. to gut the federal agency. His views suggest support for Project 2025’s call of scrubbing all agency funding and research of fetal cell lines or tissue – an anti-abortion goal – and curbing vaccine and pandemic preparedness research.