WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he’s nominating Fox News Channel contributor and radiologist Dr. Nicole Saphier for surgeon general after Casey Means’ path forward stalled in the Senate over questions about her experience and her stance on vaccines.
In a social media post, Trump said he would nominate Saphier, whom he called “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 has a Doctor of Medicine degree from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados along with fellowships at the Mayo Clinic, the profile said.
The withdrawal came after tense exchanges between Means and lawmakers of both parties 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 movement orchestrated a push to support her bid by surging phone calls to Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They had both indicated reservations with the pick.
In nominating Means last May, Trump sought to hire a close ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, as the nation’s doctor. The 38-year-old Means, a Stanford-education physician whose disillusionment with the health care 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 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 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 GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is up for reelection this year and who interrogated Means about vaccines during the hearing.
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, after questions were raised about her academic credentials.
Means was not immediately available for comment. The Department of Health and Human Services referred inquiries to the White House.
___ Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C.
