Raphael Stevens

The White House has pulled President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, former Rep. Dave Weldon.
The move Thursday came just hours before the Republican former Florida lawmaker was set to appear before the U.S. Senate for a confirmation hearing.
Weldon has long questioned the safety of certain vaccines.

Former Congressman Dave Weldon addresses a small crowd in The Villages, Fla.
Brendan Farrington | AP

The White House has pulled President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, former Rep. Dave Weldon, the Senate’s health committee confirmed Thursday.
The move came just hours before the Republican former Florida lawmaker, a vaccine critic, was set to appear before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for a confirmation hearing. The panel said the hearing, which had been scheduled for 10 a.m. ET, is canceled.

Axios first reported the decision on Thursday. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, said Weldon wasn’t ready for the role, Axios reported. HHS oversees the CDC and all other federal health agencies.
Weldon said he had been excited to work with Kennedy and serve the country again, The New York Times reported Thursday.
“It is a shock, but, you know, in some ways, it’s relief,” Weldon told the paper. “Government jobs demand a lot of you, and if God doesn’t want me in it, I’m fine with that.”
He said he plans to “get on an airplane at 11 o’clock and I’m going to go home and I’m going to see patients on Monday,” according to the newspaper.
“I’ll make much more money staying in my medical practice,” Weldon added.

But Weldon’s views align closely with Kennedy, a notorious vaccine skeptic. Weldon, 71, has long questioned the safety of certain vaccines, promoting the false claim linking vaccines to autism. In 2006, Weldon appeared with parents who claimed that the CDC had covered up evidence tying vaccines to children developing autism.
The CDC will reportedly reexamine that link under Kennedy despite decades of research debunking it.
While in Congress, Weldon sponsored a bill that would transfer responsibility for vaccine safety away from the CDC. He claimed the agency had a conflict of interest because it purchases and promotes vaccines. The bill never made it past committees. 
Weldon is an internal medicine doctor who served in Congress for 14 years, from 1995 to 2009. 
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and HELP committee member, has said she was “deeply disturbed” by Weldon’s false claims about vaccines.
In a statement on Thursday, Murray said, “While I have little to no confidence in the Trump administration to do so, they should immediately nominate someone for this position who at bare minimum believes in basic science and will help lead CDC’s important work to monitor and prevent deadly outbreaks.”
She added that Kennedy is already doing “incalculable damage by spreading lies and disinformation as the top health official in America.”
HHS did not immediately respond to a request to comment on why the administration pulled Weldon’s nomination and when Trump may choose another person for the post.

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Monarch Collective, an investment firm focused on women’s sports, has received further funding from its backers to increase the size of its investment fund from $150 million to $250 million.
The firm launched in 2023 and counts minority investments in the NWSL’s Angel City FC, BOS Nation and the San Diego Wave.
Monarch investors Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures and Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden recently upped their funding.

Claire Emslie #10 of Angel City FC passes against the Bay FC in the first half at PayPal Park on June 22, 2024 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Eakin Howard/Getty Images)
Eakin Howard | Getty Images

Billionaire-backed investment firm Monarch Collective has expanded the size of its fund in light of the continued surge in popularity of women’s sports.
The fund, which launched in 2023 is expanding from $150 million to $250 million, with most of the additional capital coming from existing investors, which include Melina French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden, and former Netflix executive Cindy Holland and partner Annie Imhoff.

New investors have come on board, too, the firm said in an announcement Thursday, including Beth Brooke, Ernst & Young’s former global vice chairman of public policy, and Elizabeth Yee, executive vice president of programs at The Rockefeller Foundation.
“We’ll be the largest fund in women’s sports,” said Kara Nortman, Monarch co-founder and managing partner. “You hear a lot of noise about people starting it now, but we’ve been at it for awhile.”
Monarch Collective formed to invest exclusively in women’s sports, particularly in leagues, teams and media rights.
Prior to Monarch, Nortman worked at a venture capital firm and was previously co-head of the mergers and acquisitions group at IAC. She also co-founded the National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City FC in 2020. She started the firm alongside Jasmine Robinson, who was most recently at Causeway, a growth stage investment fund focused on sports, media, gaming and fitness. She also held investment roles at various firms, as well as the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.
Monarch typically takes minority stakes with its investments, but works closely with the owners of teams, Nortman said.

“We’re doing day-to-day, hands-on work alongside the control owner in terms of hiring teams, designing practice facilities, being a sounding board when something goes right or something goes wrong, really thinking through what is the unique fan experience in this [team’s] market and how does it tie to the [team’s] mission,” said Nortman. “And the amount of capital we could put to work against that has gone up.”
So far, Monarch has invested in three NWSL teams — Angel City FC, BOS Nation and the San Diego Wave. Last year, Angel City sold a controlling stake to journalist Willow Bay and Disney CEO Bob Iger for an undisclosed sum that valued the team at $250 million. The firm said it was the highest valuation on record for a professional women’s sports team.
Monarch was founded on the cusp of what has become one of the biggest spikes in popularity for women’s sports in years, if ever. In particular, rookie stars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese helped to lift the Women’s National Basketball Association to record ratings last season, and in general, the audience around women’s sports has gained ground and attracted more advertisers.
As a result, investors are keen to take part in the growth.
“There’s no denying that women’s sports is surging, and that we’re also pioneers and experts in this. So people kept coming to us, wanting to work with us to build out business plans or really look at things before they even become investable,” Nortman said.
Monarch plans to invest in both U.S. and international teams in the near term, according to Thursday’s release.
“We tend to focus on the most mature women’s sports — so the ones where we see a path for media revenue to go up and to the right very predictably,” Nortman said. “The core thesis is that we can build to break even, or close to it, with team level revenues.”
Media rights for the WNBA, for example, could see a price reevaluation after the 2028 season to account for its recent growth in popularity, CNBC reported last year. The WNBA media rights were negotiated as part of the larger $77 billion NBA agreement, which begins next season. The WNBA-specific contract is valued at $2.2 billion over 11 seasons.

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Dollar General narrowly exceeded expectations on revenue for the fourth quarter.
The company initiated a store portfolio review that significantly impacted operating profit and earnings.
Dollar General expects same-store sales to grow between 1.2% and 2.2% in 2025.

A Dollar General store in Germantown, New York, on Nov. 30, 2023.
Angus Mordant/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Dollar General on Thursday reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue that narrowly beat Wall Street estimates, while a store portfolio review cut into the chain’s profit.
As part of the reevaluation, the dollar-store chain said it will close 96 Dollar General stores and 45 Popshelf stores and will convert six other Popshelf stores into flagship banner locations in the first quarter. Popshelf stores cater to higher-income shoppers seeking inexpensive products.

Shares of the company rose 5% in premarket trading Thursday.
Here’s how the discounter did compared with what Wall Street was expecting for the quarter ended Jan. 31, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 87 cents. That may not compare with an estimate of $1.50.
Revenue: $10.3 billion vs. $10.26 billion expected

Fourth-quarter revenue rose 4.5% from $9.86 billion during the same quarter in 2023. Revenue for the full year came in at $40.61 billion, up almost 5% from $38.69 billion in 2023.
For fiscal 2025, the chain forecasts revenue to grow between 3.4% and 4.4%, while Wall Street was expecting annual growth of 4.1%, according to LSEG. Dollar General expects earnings per share for the year to come in between $5.10 and $5.80, slightly under the $5.85 anticipated by analysts, according to LSEG.
Dollar General reported fourth-quarter net income of $191 million, or 87 cents per share, compared with net income of $402 million, or $1.83 per share, during the same quarter a year prior.

The discounter said its portfolio review impacted earnings per share by 81 cents.
Operating profit for the quarter fell over 49% year over year to $294 million. The company attributed $232 million in charges to the store closures from the portfolio review as well as Popshelf impairment charges.
“As we look to build on the substantial progress we made on our Back to Basics work in fiscal 2024, we believe this review was appropriate to further strengthen the foundation of our business,” said Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos in a news release. “While the number of closings represents less than one percent of our overall store base, we believe this decision better positions us to serve our customers and communities.”
Same-store sales, which Dollar General defines as revenue from stores open for at least 13 months, grew 1.2% year over year for the quarter. They’re expected to grow 1.2% to 2.2% for the coming fiscal year, the company said.
Dollar General announced in December that it was testing same-day delivery for customers. As inflation takes a toll on lower-income consumers, dollar stores like Dollar General and Dollar Tree have faced increased competition from retailers like Walmart with greater e-commerce presences.
In January, Dollar General said it would begin selling about 100 new private-brand products, most of which will fall under its Clover Valley label and includes items such as honey mustard and cinnamon rolls, in the first quarter.

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