In a series of high-profile announcements Friday evening, President-elect Trump made his picks for three top health positions in the new administration. Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary is his choice for Food and Drug Administration Commissioner. He wants former Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican from Florida, to serve as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a Fox News contributor, is in line to be the next surgeon general. Trump made all three announcements on Truth Social and in press releases. Together the picks would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health. But the choices also come with controversy.

A surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University, Makary’s selection for the top job at the FDA is not unexpected given his work with the first Trump administration on issues like surprise medical billing. He’s also recently made statements indicating support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, and Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform. Earlier this year, Makary appeared alongside Kennedy in a Congressional roundtable on health and nutrition, where he criticized federal health agencies for not prioritizing chronic diseases and said “the greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government with the food pyramid.” “We have the most overmedicated, sickest population in the world and no one is talking about root causes,” he said We have poisoned our food supply.”

In the announcement, Trump pledged that Makary will work with Kennedy to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.” Makary, a frequent guest on Fox News, has authored several books on health care, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and holds a master’s in public health from Harvard.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became a vocal critic of various aspects of the public health response, including vaccine mandates and what he called the “complete dismissal of natural immunity.” He advocated for lockdowns early in the pandemic and recommended universal masking. However, in future years, he grew increasingly vocal against various COVID-related choices made by federal health agencies. He described the CDC during the Biden administration as “the most political CDC in history.”

Weldon, Trump’s pick for the CDC, is a physician, Army veteran, and Republican who formerly served in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2009. In announcing Weldon, Trump stated that “Americans have lost trust in the CDC and our Federal Health Authorities, which have engaged in censorship, data manipulation, and misinformation.” Given our country’s present chronic health crisis, the CDC must step up and remedy previous failures in order to focus on disease prevention. Weldon is the first nominee for CDC director who will need to be confirmed by the Senate under a statute passed in 2022 that requires such approval.

In 2022, the role must have such confirmation. “He’s a well trained internist. “He has practiced medicine,” adds Dr. Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association. “He doesn’t [seem to] have traditional public health training, but we’ll learn more when he goes through Senate confirmation.” As a Florida congressman, Weldon “worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos,” according to Trump’s Truth Social post. Weldon also proposed safeguards for health-care personnel and organizations that do not perform or support abortions. Since 2005, Congress has included a phrase known as the Weldon Amendment in the yearly HHS funding bill.

The Weldon Amendment and its associated policies apply to public monies. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research group, claims that it “emboldens health insurance plans, health care institutions and medical providers to deny abortion services and coverage … often under the rubric of protecting ‘conscience’ or’religious freedom.'” He stated that Weldon would “proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic” that I “prioritize Transparency, Competence, and High Standards.”