Overview
- Trump withdrew Casey Means and named Dr. Nicole Saphier on Thursday after questions over Means’ experience and vaccine views left her short of GOP votes.
- Saphier is a radiologist who leads breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Monmouth site and previously served as a Fox News medical contributor.
- Leaders in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement criticized the switch and some urged scrapping the surgeon general’s office, even as Kennedy voiced support for Saphier.
- Anti-abortion groups praised Saphier for continuing a teen pregnancy and urged her to confront mail-order abortion, following a 5th Circuit pause on the FDA’s mail dispensing policy.
- Saphier has backed scaling back some childhood vaccine guidance while defending the MMR shot and has questioned parts of Trump’s health messaging, pointing to a more conventional approach to federal public health communication.