If confirmed by the Senate, the trio of doctors would oversee two of the nation’s key health agencies and command some of the most influential pulpits in public heath.

The three announcements, made separately, hit on similar themes: Trump criticized federal agencies’ past work, said they’d lost Americans’ trust and called for leaders to refocus on chronic disease — a priority of his ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Given the current Chronic Health Crisis in our Country, the CDC must step up and correct past errors to focus on the Prevention of Disease,” Trump said in a statement announcing Weldon’s selection.

Makary emerged as a prominent critic of the FDA and other public health agencies during the coronavirus pandemic, contending that officials pursued overly harsh vaccination mandates and did not countenance alternative strategies, such as the protections conferred by infections, also known as “natural immunity.”

Weldon, as a congressman in the 2000s, sought to remove vaccine safety oversight from the CDC and transfer it to an independent agency, arguing that the CDC suffered from conflicts of interest.

Public health officials and outside experts have been wary of the incoming administration’s pledges to overhaul the nation’s public health infrastructure. FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf recently defended his agency’s staff amid criticism from Kennedy.

“I want to stand by the people who work at FDA,” Califf said in mid-November at an event hosted by the nonprofit Friends of Cancer Research. “They’re good people, they’re hardworking and they want what’s best for the American public.”

Makary and Nesheiwat have been Fox News contributors, an emerging theme in Trump’s selections across the government. The president-elect has picked at least seven people who have been hosts or frequent commentators on the conservative TV channel.

The CDC and FDA picks bore the imprint of Kennedy, whom Trump has tapped to serve as the nation’s top health official and who has laid out a “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Weldon and Makary were recommended by Kennedy’s advisers, according to a person familiar with the choices who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The surgeon general selection, meanwhile, has connections to Trump and people in his direct orbit. Nesheiwat, who has a limited national profile, is the sister-in-law of Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida), whom Trump has chosen as his national security adviser. Her sister Julia Nesheiwat served as homeland security adviser in the first Trump administration.

FDA: a top target for Kennedy and his allies

The FDA approves vaccines, drugs and devices; ensures the safety of the nation’s food supply; and regulates tobacco products — and has been a top target of Kennedy, who recently posted on X that the agency’s employees should preserve their records and pack their bags. He has blamed the explosion of chronic disease on corruption within federal agencies, claiming they have become “sock puppets for the industries that they’re supposed to regulate.”

“FDA has lost the trust of Americans, and has lost sight of its primary goal as a regulator,” Trump said in a statement on Friday night. “The Agency needs Dr. Marty Makary, a Highly Respected Johns Hopkins Surgical Oncologist and Health Policy Expert, to course-correct and refocus the Agency.”

Makary has a long-standing relationship with former Trump officials, having worked with them on health policy issues during Trump’s first administration, including advising on efforts to increase health-care price transparency. He also has forged a bond with Kennedy, supporting his Make America Healthy Again agenda to address chronic disease and childhood illness and joining him to criticize the medical establishment.

Makary’s ties with Trump officials and Kennedy helped him emerge as the consensus pick for FDA commissioner, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations during the selection process.

The frequent TV pundit also possesses another quality prized by Trump: experience on Fox News, where Makary has weighed in on President Joe Biden’s cognitive health, the state of modern medicine and popular-science questions such as what happens when you stop drinking alcohol as a New Year’s resolution.

Makary published a book in September titled “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.” His critique centers on mistakes in public health “dogma,” such as warnings against some children consuming peanuts in the 1990s and 2000s that he said inadvertently sparked many more peanut allergies.

But outside public health experts have panned Makary’s commentary about the coronavirus, including his overly optimistic projections about when the pandemic would be over.

“At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April [2021], allowing Americans to resume normal life,” Makary wrote in a February 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed. The virus instead continued to menace Americans for months, particularly when its omicron variant emerged in November 2021 and led to record-high hospitalizations linked to the virus.

The FDA is charged with regulating mifepristone, a key abortion drug that antiabortion advocates are seeking to limit. The Biden administration has taken steps to ease access to medication abortion, which accounts for more than half of the nation’s abortions, by allowing mifepristone to be sent by mail and sold in certain pharmacies. It is unclear where Makary stands on the drug.

The day Roe v. Wade was overturned, Makary told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he had witnessed abortions performed as a medical student, an experience he said weighs on his conscience.

CDC: under pandemic pressure

The Atlanta-based CDC, which has a budget of roughly $9 billion, played a central role during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, offering recommendations on when Americans should wear masks, get vaccinated and engage in social distancing. The agency also received much backlash, particularly among conservatives and independents who accused it of overreach.

“Americans have lost trust in the CDC and in our Federal Health Authorities, who have engaged in censorship, data manipulation, and misinformation,” Trump said in a statement Friday night.

Weldon, who represented a Florida district in Congress from 1995 to 2009, was frequently called upon to provide a physician’s perspective as lawmakers debated Medicare changes, bioethical concerns and other health-care policies, a role he detailed in a 2005 piece for the American Medical Association’s ethics journal.

He attracted national attention for his involvement in the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband’s attempts to remove her feeding tubes and end her life attracted national attention — and prompted interventions by congressional Republicans. The attempt to remove Schiavo’s feeding tubes was a “grave injustice,” Weldon said on the House floor in 2003. He petitioned her family in 2005 to personally review her case.

Terri Schiavo’s husband, Michael, fought the interventions by Congress and said his wife would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially.

Weldon, a staunch critic of abortion, also wrote 2005 legislation that bars federal funding from going to any state or local government if they discriminate against health-care entities that refuse to provide or refer patients for abortions. Known as the Weldon amendment, the legislation has sparked years of legislative and political battles, with the first Trump administration invoking it in fights with Democrats over abortion funding and access.

Surgeon general: an influential pulpit

Sometimes called the “nation’s doctor,” the surgeon general serves as the federal government’s chief advocate for public health, a title that offers a bully pulpit to raise awareness about health threats. The office’s impact is evident on cigarette package warnings on the dangers of smoking.

The surgeon general oversees the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a team of more than 6,000 uniformed officers who deploy during disasters and disease outbreaks. During the first Trump administration, the White House proposed reducing the size of the Corps by nearly 40 percent. Unlike agencies such as the FDA or CDC, the surgeon general has limited power and does not regulate organizations.

Nesheiwat is a medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.

What’s next

If confirmed, Makary, Weldon and Nesheiwat will be serving as three of the nation’s highest-profile health officials at a time when public health officials are concerned Kennedy’s oversight could erode public trust in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Kennedy, who founded a prominent anti-vaccine group, has linked the childhood vaccine schedule to autism — a claim that has been debunked by scientists.

Makary has said he supports vaccines but has previously broken with federal officials on their coronavirus vaccine recommendations for younger Americans. In 2021, he called for a scaled-back approach when vaccinating young men against the virus given the potential risk of heart inflammation. As a congressman, Weldon championed the notion that thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, is linked to autism. That idea has been debunked.

Makary, Weldon and Nesheiwat also would probably be tasked with implementing aspects of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again initiative, which calls for a new focus on combating the root causes of chronic disease and childhood illness. Unlike his rhetoric around vaccines, some of Kennedy’s ideas for changes to the food system and other health policy proposals have garnered support from the left and the right.

Their nominations will run through the Senate’s health panel, which is set to be chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), a physician. This will be the first time the CDC director needs sign-off from the Senate, giving lawmakers on Capitol Hill the final say on who leads the public health agency that Republicans have spent years hammering for its response to the pandemic.