Trump ends MAHA activist and wellness influencer Casey Means’s bid for surgeon general
April 30, 2026
4 min read
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Trump ends MAHA activist and wellness influencer Casey Means’s bid for surgeon general
On Thursday the president announced he is nominating Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and Fox News contributor, as the nation’s top doctor
By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron
Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Make America Health Again (MAHA) activist and wellness influencer Casey Means is out of the running to be President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general. On Thursday the president announced that he is nominating radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier for the job instead—she is Trump’s third pick to be the “nation’s doctor” since his second term in office began.
The decision to pull Means from the nomination comes a little less than a year after Trump first tapped her for the role in May 2025. Means’s path to the job had become mired in the Senate amid growing concern among lawmakers, including Republican senator and physician Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, over her stances on vaccines, abortion pills and alternative medicine.
A graduate of the Stanford University School of Medicine, Means dropped out of a surgical residency in 2018 and founded an alternative medicine practice. She also co-authored a book that promotes organic foods and criticizes processed foods and sugars as being sources of “bad energy.” A close ally of Department of Health and Human Services leader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Means has claimed that improper diet, poor sleep and lack of exercise are responsible for a number of ailments, including diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Means co-founded a “functional medicine” start-up called Levels, which markets glucose monitors to healthy people.
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Trump’s new nominee Saphier is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in New Jersey. She holds a medical degree from the Ross University School of Medicine and completed a residency at Maricopa Integrated Health System (now Valleywise Health) and a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic.
The replacement of Means with Saphier drew cautious praise from health care advocates. Anahita Dua, a surgeon and founder and chair of Healthcare for Action, a Democratic political action committee that supports health care workers running for Congress, said she was “grateful” that Trump pulled Means’s nomination.
“Saphier at least has real world experience with treating patients and a better understanding of the ins and outs of our healthcare system, whereas Means had zero experience in the field,” she said in a statement provided to Scientific American. “It is interesting that President Trump has elevated yet another person tied to Fox News. As a physician, I am hopeful that Saphier will stay true to science and facts if she indeed becomes the next Surgeon General of the United States.”
Others have been less optimistic. Amira Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University’s College of Public Health, argued in a statement provided to Scientific American that the switch “probably doesn’t matter all that much” because the administration’s goal is “to relax regulations meant to protect our air, water, food and medicine. Whoever is the face of that as Surgeon General is unlikely to be able to do anything to reverse those declines.”
Saphier’s past comments have put her at odds with some medical professionals, said Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor at Michigan State University and author of In Search of Wellness: How Social Media Influencers Transformed an Industry, in a statement provided to Scientific American. While dismissing Means was “a positive move because she is more wellness influencer than medical professional,” Wellman said, she added that she was unsure if Saphier was more or less likely to be confirmed.
“While she is a practicing physician, she is also an author whose two books reflect her views on public health which are staunchly rooted in MAHA ideology. In her 2020 book [Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis], Saphier described her belief that health is firmly the individual’s responsibility and blamed high healthcare costs on American citizens’ lifestyle decisions. In her 2021 book [Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight against COVID-19], she criticized pandemic-era shutdowns and school closures, the use of face masks, and the World Health Organ