President Trump says he’s nominating Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier, MD, for surgeon general after the path forward for Casey Means, MD, stalled in the Senate over questions about her experience and her stance on vaccines.
In a social media post Thursday, the president said Saphier is “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment.”
Saphier is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth, according to her profile on the New York-based institution’s website. She got her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados and had fellowships at the Mayo Clinic, the profile said.
Means is the second U.S. surgeon general pick whose nomination has been withdrawn in Trump’s second term. Trump withdrew his first nominee, Fox News medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat, MD, after questions were raised about her academic credentials.
The withdrawal of Means came after tense exchanges with lawmakers of both parties, which threw into question whether she could secure enough votes to advance out of the Senate health committee.
Her nomination had languished since her confirmation hearing in late February, even as activists from the Make America Great Again (MAHA) movement orchestrated a push to support her bid by surging phone calls to Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who had both indicated reservations with the pick.
In nominating Means last May, Trump sought to hire a close ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the nation’s doctor. Means, a 38-year-old Stanford-education physician whose disillusionment with the healthcare system led to her career as an author and entrepreneur, promotes ideas popular with the MAHA movement, including that Americans are overmedicalized and that diet and lifestyle changes should be at the center of efforts to end widespread chronic disease.
But Means, who did not finish her surgical residency program and doesn’t currently have an active medical license, also had faced scrutiny for her lack of experience and potential conflicts. On top of those concerns, senators grilled her late last month about Kennedy’s wide-ranging pullback of vaccine recommendations — leading to some contentious moments as Means toed the line between support for vaccines and calling them a decision best made by patients and their doctors.
In her confirmation hearing, Means was repeatedly asked about the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, which the CDC stopped recommending for all children late last year in a move criticized by scientific and medical groups nationwide. Means has raised doubts about the birth dose, posting on social media in 2024 that giving the vaccine to a newborn whose parents don’t have hepatitis B was “absolute insanity.”
In another post earlier Thursday, Trump called Means “a strong MAHA Warrior” and also criticized the “intransigence and political games” from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is up for reelection this year and who interrogated Means about vaccines during the hearing.
Means was not immediately available for comment. HHS referred inquiries to the White House.
Source link : https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/121042
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Publish date : 2026-04-30 17:24:00
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