The White House pulled the nom­i­na­tion of its pro­posed CDC Di­rec­tor Dave Wel­don just hours be­fore a Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing was sched­uled to be­gin, a sur­prise fail­ure in what has been a rel­a­tive­ly easy path for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s health­care ap­point­ments.

Wel­don, a for­mer Flori­da con­gress­man, has been not­ed for his views as a vac­cine skep­tic, and was seen as an al­ly of HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s push to re­open long-set­tled ques­tions about vac­cine safe­ty. While vac­cine scruti­ny has been a ma­jor point of sup­port for Kennedy’s “Make Amer­i­ca Health Again” move­ment, the is­sue has been con­tin­u­ous­ly con­tro­ver­sial in Sen­ate hear­ings and has raised doubts for some Re­pub­li­cans — though un­til now not enough to re­sult in a los­ing vote.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s picks to lead the FDA and NIH are one step clos­er to con­fir­ma­tion af­ter ad­vanc­ing out of a Sen­ate com­mit­tee on Thurs­day.

The Sen­ate HELP Com­mit­tee vot­ed 14-9 for FDA nom­i­nee Mar­ty Makary, and 12-11 for NIH nom­i­nee Jay Bhat­tacharya. The full Sen­ate votes haven’t yet been sched­uled, but con­fir­ma­tion ap­pears like­ly.

“We need pub­lic health lead­ers com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and find­ing un­bi­ased so­lu­tions to Amer­i­cans’ most chal­leng­ing health prob­lems,” Sen. Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA) said ahead of the vote. “Dr. Bhat­tacharya and Dr. Makary have demon­strat­ed that they are ready to take on this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

Makary and Bhat­tacharya breezed through their re­spec­tive Sen­ate hear­ings last week, fac­ing few dif­fi­cult ques­tions and giv­ing most­ly safe an­swers. The nom­i­nees both ex­pressed sup­port for vac­cines, said they weren’t in­volved in Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion de­ci­sions to cut staff, and promised to look in­to those cuts.

GoodRx has been in a rut. In its al­most five years as a pub­lic com­pa­ny, its rev­enue flat­lined, and its stock price plunged about 90%. Its founders stepped down as co-CEOs in 2023, and tem­po­rary lead­er­ship re­vamped the busi­ness mod­el in hopes of spurring growth.

Now, GoodRx’s new CEO, Wendy Barnes, says her job is not so much to fix any­thing, but to speed up the com­pa­ny’s cur­rent plans — and to re­vive the stock price. Specif­i­cal­ly, she’s fo­cused on find­ing more ways to help pa­tients ac­cess brand-name drugs.

“The rails ex­ist, but we've just got to throw more trains on it,” she said in an in­ter­view with End­points News. “We've got to re­al­ly ex­pand the same strat­e­gy.”

The ru­mors are true: En­do will com­bine with Mallinck­rodt in a deal worth $6.7 bil­lion. And the new com­pa­ny, which is yet to be named, will be look­ing to buy new as­sets once the in­te­gra­tion is com­plete.

En­do will be­come a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of Mallinck­rodt, the com­pa­nies said Thurs­day. Mallinck­rodt will pay $80 mil­lion cash to En­do share­hold­ers, who will own 49.9% of the com­bined com­pa­ny on a pro for­ma ba­sis af­ter the deal clos­es.

Mallinck­rodt’s ex­ist­ing loans and debt will be re­fi­nanced, while En­do’s debt is ex­pect­ed to re­main. The deal, in­clud­ing this planned re­jig­ging of debt, will be fund­ed with cash on hand and $900 mil­lion pro­vid­ed to En­do by Gold­man Sachs.

The com­pa­nies con­tend that their mar­ket­ed drugs and ex­per­tise in rare and or­phan dis­eases will “de­liv­er strong growth with an at­trac­tive cash flow pro­file.”