The Senate HELP Committee advanced Nicole Saphier’s surgeon general nomination to the full Senate in a party-line vote, putting President Trump’s third pick closer to confirmation.
Senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee moved the radiologist’s nomination forward Wednesday as part of a larger slate of nominees, sending it to the full chamber for a later floor vote.
CBS News reported the panel’s action in Washington after Saphier’s hearing earlier this month, where she faced direct questions on childhood vaccines and gave answers that satisfied the committee’s Republican chairman.
President Trump nominated Saphier in April. She is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Monmouth and a former Fox News medical contributor. In 2020 she wrote Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis.
Reuters reported she is Trump’s third choice for the post after earlier withdrawals, and that the committee voted to favorably report her to serve as medical director in the regular corps of the Public Health Service and as surgeon general.
Trump previously pulled the nomination of Casey Means, an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after that bid stalled for months. He blamed GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, calling him “a very disloyal person.”
That friction fits a broader pattern of hard-fought personnel fights, including cases where the White House pulled an ICE director nominee after confirmation stalled in committee.
Cassidy chairs the HELP Committee. He earlier raised concerns about Kennedy’s nomination, then ultimately supported it and allowed that confirmation to move forward. At Saphier’s hearing he pressed for clear assurances on vaccines.
Saphier testified that the MMR vaccine is not lethal, called it “our greatest tool for combating measles infections,” encouraged vaccination, and said she does not believe childhood vaccines cause autism.
"When somebody is willing to be honest to the American people and say that vaccines are safe, you should be taking it, and the consequence of not can even include death, well, what else can you ask for when it comes to vaccines?"
Cassidy said that on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” after the hearing, and said Saphier had earned his vote.
Breitbart reported the committee advanced Saphier on a 12-11 vote and said she is expected to win approval in the full Senate. The same en bloc action also advanced Timothy Westlake for assistant secretary for mental health and substance use.
Trump has praised Saphier in strong terms. On Truth Social he called her a “STAR physician” and “an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”
That emphasis on plain talk and accountability tracks other recent personnel moves, from the Senate’s decision to confirm Erica Schwartz as CDC director after months of agency turmoil to fresh nominations for key posts.
Just The News reported the same 12-11 HELP vote and noted Saphier’s vaccine testimony, including her support for childhood shots and her rejection of any link to autism, as she moved closer to full confirmation after Means failed to gain enough Senate support.
HHS describes the surgeon general as the “Nation’s Doctor,” charged with giving Americans the best scientific information available on how to improve health and reduce illness and injury. The committee’s favorable report does not finish the job. A final Senate vote still lies ahead.
Trump’s push to staff health and related agencies has run alongside other high-stakes personnel decisions, including when he tapped White House counsel Samuel Adkisson for a federal bench seat amid staff changes.
Saphier’s path also sits against a record of sharp Senate fights over nominees and related votes. Lawmakers have shown they can lock arms when they choose, as when the chamber voted unanimously to oppose any pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell.
For now, the HELP Committee has done its part. A qualified physician who answered vaccine questions in open session has a path to the full Senate. Voters who want clear public-health leadership, not endless stall tactics, will watch whether the chamber finishes the confirmation.
When a nominee states the science, earns the chairman’s vote, and clears committee on the merits, the Senate’s job is to confirm, not to keep the nation’s top doctor’s office empty for politics.