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“It is an enormous disappointment and blow to MAHA that the Republican Senators did not support Casey’s nomination,” said Kelly Ryerson in a text message. Ryerson, known as Glyphosate Girl on social media, is an anti-pesticide activist and supporter of Kennedy.
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“MAHA will remember at midterms,” Ryerson said.
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The decision comes after months of Senate inaction. Means did not have the votes to clear the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee to reach a vote on the full floor. Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine had previously indicated some hesitancy toward her nomination.
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Means said she had wanted to highlight her vision for what needed to evolve in the healthcare system and chronic disease in her conversations with senators, but was often steered toward her opinions on immunizations.
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“I felt disheartened,” she said. There was growing pushback against the wellness influencer’s campaign for the job, something she likened to a “yearlong smear campaign” to discredit the MAHA movement.
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Covid Questions
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Saphier already has ties to members of Trump’s health team. She coauthored a 2021 opinion piece with Marty Makary, now commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, exploring the value of Covid vaccines for young children. She subsequently described experiencing painful symptoms after receiving a Covid shot, and suggested it exacerbated an autoimmune condition in a 2023 Wall Street Journal opinion article.
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If she clears the Senate to become the nation’s top doctor, she would be joining a health agency that has upended existing vaccine policy and is grappling with a nationwide measles outbreak. Under Kennedy, HHS pared down the number of diseases recommended by the childhood vaccine schedule. Saphier indicated in a Fox News appearance she supported parents waiting to get their children vaccinated.
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“If parents don’t want to give these vaccines when their babies are still little, I think it’s OK to have that conversation and let them wait until their child is a little older, until they head off to kindergarten,” she said.
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Saphier, who hosts a podcast called Wellness Unmasked, also wrote a book called Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19.
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She’s a proponent of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, saying in a Fox News segment last year that there’s “no causal link” to autism — a theory that Kennedy has promoted. She’s also raised questions that dovetail with the concerns of other Trump and Kennedy supporters.
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“I think we need to be looking really hard at our environment, what we’re ingesting — the pollutants, the toxins, everything in Big Agriculture, Big Pharma, in our food industry and everything else,” Saphier said last year. “I think we’re going to find more of a link to autism when we dive into the harmful chemicals we’re consuming here in the United States.”
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The Trump administration has had difficulty clearing the Senate confirmation process for other top health officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen three director nominees in the past year. The White House recently nominated a more conventional choice, perhaps making it easier to clear the Senate.
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—With assistance from Steven T. Dennis.
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(Adds comments from Casey Means throughout.)
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English (US)