Nearly a year after nominating Casey Means to be surgeon general, President Donald Trump has withdrawn her nomination in favor of radiologist Nicole Saphier, director of the breast imaging center at Memorial Sloan Kettering in Monmouth, New Jersey.
The withdrawal of Means’ nomination, which had stalled in committee, is likely to cause consternation in the Make America Healthy Again movement. Means’ brother, Calley, is a senior adviser at the White House who was heavily involved in the Make America Healthy Again Commission report and the revamp of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy recommended Casey Means for surgeon general and defended her qualifications at recent Hill hearings.
Calley Means took to X after Trump announced the new nominee to attack Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which never voted on Means’ nomination.
“Bill Cassidy is a mindless avatar for his donors and a blind defender of the status quo system that is profiting from American sickness,” Calley said. “At every turn during Casey’s confirmation, Bill Cassidy worked to delay her and smear her.”
“Because of his constant delay tactics, Casey is being pulled from consideration,” Calley wrote. “I am so proud of her and the historic change the Trump admin is pushing for against broken and corrupt defenders of the status quo like Bill Cassidy.”
Trump also went after Cassidy, calling him “disloyal.”
Cassidy told the news organization NOTUS that he had “no response whatsoever” to Trump.
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Other Republican HELP members, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, also had raised questions at Means’ confirmation hearing about her position on vaccines.
A physician who is not currently practicing, Means did not mention vaccines in her prepared testimony but told senators patients should have “informed consent” before taking any medication.
She also was questioned about Trump’s executive order aimed at increasing domestic production of glyphosate.
“I certainly have significant concerns about many of the environmental chemicals used in our agriculture system [including] glyphosate,” Means said. “I think they need to be significantly more robustly studied so that we can understand the cumulative impact on health, and that’s a passion of mine.”
“Our food system is dependent currently on these chemicals,” she said. However, in the Trump administration, “There is a good-faith movement toward moving our food system towards regenerative agriculture and precision application of pesticides.”
Saphier is “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments,” Trump said in a social media post.
Saphier is likely to face some of the same questions on vaccines as Means did. In 2022, she wrote on X that “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.”
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