President Donald Trump is ditching Casey Means as his surgeon general nominee, he announced on Truth Social on Thursday.
His new — third — nominee for America’s top doctor: Nicole Saphier, a radiologist who currently serves as the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — and who criticized mask and vaccine mandates during the pandemic.
“Nicole is a STAR physician,” Trump wrote in his announcement. “She is also an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”
A Fox News contributor, Saphier has made a name for herself among vaccine skeptics and followers of the Make America Healthy Again movement. She even published a book in 2020 titled “Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis,” well before Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. adopted the slogan.
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In 2022, Saphier posted on X, “The mask & vaccine mandates are doing far more harm than good. It’s time to ‘let’ anyone who wants to move on from the pandemic do so. I was criticized for saying this when Omicron began. Now, I’m doubling down as millions more have gained natural immunity and been boosted.”
Her X account has since been made private.
Trump’s previous MAHA-friendly nominee for the job did not appear to have enough support in the Senate. Means’ confirmation has been stalled since her February hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, during which Republican senators pressed her on her support for oral contraceptives and use of psychedelic drugs.
Means also drew criticism from public health experts for her lack of experience in the field: While she graduated from medical school, she did not complete a residency and was best known for her book, “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection between Metabolism and Limitless Health.”
Means herself was a replacement nominee: Trump withdrew his first nomination, for doctor and entrepreneur Janette Nesheiwat, just before her scheduled confirmation hearing in May 2025.
In a post on X, Means’ brother, Health Department adviser Calley Means, blamed Sen. Bill Cassidy for tanking his sister’s nomination by purposely scheduling her original confirmation hearing for two days after her due date. (Means went into labor hours before her hearing, which was then delayed by several months.)
“Because of his constant delay tactics, Casey is being pulled from consideration,” Calley Means wrote.
Trump also called out Cassidy on Truth Social, posting that he “stood in the way” of Casey Means’ nomination.
“Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!” Trump wrote in another post.
Cassidy told NOTUS he had “no response whatsoever” to Trump’s posts.
Saphier’s medical background could be the key to a confirmation vote, public health experts said.
“The mere fact that she is a practicing doc is going to increase the chances of her success greatly,” Art Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman school of Medicine, told NOTUS.
Saphier’s selection continues a trend in the Trump administration of replacing its most MAHA-coded nominees for public health roles with other, somewhat more mainstream picks. Earlier this month, Trump nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, to serve as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition to her work as a practicing doctor, Saphier has served in a number of public health-adjacent roles, including as a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer in Young Women and as an adviser to the New Jersey Department of Health.
But Saphier has also dabbled in alternative medicine; she created a line of herbal tinctures, DropRx, which offers “doctor-formulated herbal blends.”
A now-removed page on the DropRx website last year read: “While always passionate about early diagnosis and disease prevention, Dr. Saphier’s journey towards nutraceuticals began after her own diagnosis of an autoimmune disease and skin cancer. Her experience led her to explore ways to enhance her health by adding natural remedies to her treatment regimens.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Saphier’s X account has been made private.
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