President Trump is withdrawing his nomination of healthy-food advocate Dr. Casey Means to serve as U.S. Surgeon General, after it became clear that the champion of his administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda was unable to secure support in the Senate for confirmation.
The president said Thursday that he instead would nominate Dr. Nicole B. Saphier, the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Monmouth and a former Fox News contributor, for the role.
Means faced skepticism during her confirmation hearing in February, raising doubts that she would get enough support to advance out of the committee. All Democrats were expected to oppose her, meaning she would need every Republican vote to advance.
“My message has been about empowerment and fixing the broken healthcare incentives that are keeping us sick,” Means told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. “Some in the establishment did not want to hear it.”
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump slammed Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), a Republican holdout (and physician) who chairs the Senate health committee. Trump, who has endorsed Cassidy’s opponent in the Republican primary, wrote that Cassidy “has stood in the way of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Nominee, Casey Means, for the important position of U.S. Surgeon General.”
“Nevertheless, despite Senator Cassidy’s intransigence and political games, Casey will continue to fight for MAHA on the many important Health issues facing our Country, such as the rising childhood disease epidemic, increased autism rates, poor nutrition, over-medicalization, and researching the root causes of infertility, and many other difficult medical problems,” Trump added.
Cassidy said that Trump’s post “is what it is,” adding that “the White House has known for a while she didn’t have the votes to pass” through the committee.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were among Republicans thought to be concerned, according to people familiar with the process, and if Means had advanced out of committee she might have faced more opposition in the final Senate vote.
Some Republicans in Washington have grown increasingly wary of some aspects of Kennedy’s MAHA movement amid polling showing the health secretary’s moves on vaccines, in particular, could hurt the party in this year’s midterm elections.
Means faced pushback during her confirmation hearing over her position on vaccines. In her testimony, Means told senators that she thinks vaccines save lives but declined to promise she would recommend measles and flu shots for children. Means also declined to say that vaccines don’t cause autism. Under Kennedy, the agency changed a government website to say that autism might be caused by vaccines.
Trump’s new nominee, Saphier, has supported Kennedy’s efforts to probe the cause of rising autism rates in the U.S., but has expressed some criticism of his approach. “Mr. Kennedy’s commitment to addressing the autism epidemic is a welcome change. But as a physician, mother and medical journalist, I am deeply concerned—not with Mr. Kennedy’s intent, but with his methods,” Saphier wrote last year in a Wall Street Journal opinion column.
She is also a supporter of the MMR vaccine and has publicly cited studies showing no link between the vaccine and autism. Saphier has praised Trump for delivering Covid-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed, but criticized mandates under the Biden administration that she says undermined confidence in the vaccine.
Kennedy in a post on X called Saphier “a long-time warrior for the MAHA movement” and said he looked forward to working with her. In a separate post, he praised Means as “one of the MAHA movement’s most powerful evangelists” and said she “will remain an important leader and a close partner as we uncover the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
Kennedy also accused Cassidy of “sabotaging” Means’ nomination. The Senate health committee that Cassidy chairs thanked Means for appearing before the panel and said in a post that it was clear she didn’t have enough support within the committee or the full Senate. “No committee would hold a vote they knew would fail,” it said.
The Means nomination stalled for months. Trump nominated Means last year, but the confirmation process was delayed when she went into labor with her first child on the day of her scheduled Senate hearing in October. Even after her February hearing, Kennedy and other members of the MAHA movement strongly advocated for her.
Her older brother, Calley Means, is one of Kennedy’s closest advisers and currently works in the White House. The siblings co-wrote “Good Energy,” a book about healthful eating that was passed around the Trump campaign even before Kennedy endorsed Trump for president in 2024.
Means graduated from Stanford medical school, but dropped out of an ear-nose-and-throat surgical residency after becoming disenchanted with the modern medical system. She turned to integrative medicine and opened a practice seeking to help patients with holistic methods. She later became an online influencer and a co-founder of Levels, a company that offers devices tracking blood sugar.
Write to Liz Essley Whyte at liz.whyte@wsj.com, Sabrina Siddiqui at sabrina.siddiqui@wsj.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com
