Senate Panel Advances Nicole Saphier for Surgeon General

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday advanced the nomination of Dr. Nicole Saphier to be surgeon general, sending her to the full Senate. The panel approved her on a 12 to 11 party-line vote, as part of a group of nominees considered together.

Saphier is a radiologist who specializes in breast imaging and was a medical contributor on Fox News until she was nominated. She is President Trump’s third pick for the post; an earlier nominee, Casey Means, an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was withdrawn after her nomination stalled.

Her path ran through the committee’s chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician who has pressed the administration’s health nominees on vaccines. At her confirmation hearing this month, Cassidy pressed Saphier on her views, and she gave him the answers he sought. She said she does not believe childhood vaccines cause autism, and she described the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine as the greatest tool available for fighting measles. Cassidy voted to advance her.

Those statements matter because they put her at odds with positions taken by others in the administration. The president has publicly questioned the measles vaccine and how it is scheduled, contrary to the guidance of major medical groups, and the administration has sought to revisit long-debunked claims linking vaccines and autism. A broad scientific consensus finds no such link.

Democrats on the committee voted against her, and the panel’s senior Democrat, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said beforehand that he would oppose her. Saphier, the author of a 2020 book titled “Make America Healthy Again,” is also known for sharp criticism of how public health agencies handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her supporters’ strongest case is straightforward: she is a practicing physician who, under oath and in public, endorsed the core of the childhood vaccine program at a moment when that program is under pressure from inside the government. For a job whose main tool is the bully pulpit, that kind of on-the-record commitment carries weight.

The surgeon general has little direct policymaking power but serves as the country’s most visible public health communicator. That makes the officeholder’s words about vaccines more than a formality.

No date has been set for a vote by the full Senate, where Republicans hold a majority and she is expected to be confirmed.