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Dumping Means, Trump Nominates A Fox Covid-19 Misinformer As Surgeon General

President Donald Trump has nominated yet another Fox News pundit for a major position in his administration.

He announced Thursday that he’s chosen Nicole Saphier as his pick to be surgeon general. Saphier distinguished herself at Fox as one of the biggest medical misinformers on COVID-19 and a shameless shill for Trump.

Saphier got the nod after Trump’s previous nominee, influencer Casey Means—who lacks a medical license—saw her nomination jammed up in the Senate.

“Nicole 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 wrote on Truth Social.

If her nomination is successful, Saphier will join the ever-growing ranks of Fox characters who litter this administration—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro.

According to Media Matters for America, Saphier has made at least 640 appearances on Fox over the years. The right-wing propaganda network is obsessively watched by Trump and wields enormous influence over his actions.

Saphier primarily focuses on medical issues. Her stance, as expressed in her book Make America Healthy Again, is that people experience medical issues because of “lifestyle” choices.

“If Americans want to know why their health care is so costly and getting costlier, they need only look in the mirror,” she posits in the blurb for her book.

In this worldview, poor policy decisions, corporate greed, and other external factors play no role in ailments like cancer or heart disease. It remains to be seen how something like childhood cancer could stem from one’s “lifestyle.”

As COVID-19 ravaged the world in 2020, Saphier became one of Fox’s primary figures promoting quack takes on how Trump was handling the pandemic.

For instance, Saphier argued that Trump deserved praise for focusing on economic issues, even as he ignored advisories from medical experts. While Trump argued that COVID-19 was not a major concern and that the summer heat would kill it, Saphier said that he was doing an adequate job.

“The economic and emotional toll from misinformation is going to hit us much harder than this virus is in itself,” she said at the time.

As recently as September 2025, Saphier was still pushing COVID-19 misinformation, arguing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “lost all credibility throughout the COVID pandemic when they continued to universally recommend the COVID vaccine.”

And when she wasn’t making outlandish comments about the response to COVID-19, Saphier was a dedicated cheerleader for Trump and the GOP.

After the Trump administration pursued its widely condemned family separation immigration policy in 2018, Saphier argued that it was medically acceptable to house immigrant children “in cages or in windowless rooms.”

She also complained about the Affordable Care Act requiring insurance companies to cover serious illnesses that were previously denied, insisted that expanding Medicare would make the program worse, claimed that the ACA made people die from preventable illnesses, and lied about the GOP plan to kill the ACA, falsely claiming that it wouldn’t rescind coverage for preexisting conditions.

When she wasn’t opining and misinforming on medical issues, Saphier also engaged in typical Fox culture war bigotry. For instance, she alleged—without evidence—that a transgender fencer had gone through gender-affirming care purely to have a competitive advantage.

“These men can’t cut it with the other male athletes, so therefore they are coming into the female sports,” she said.

Trump’s senior leadership already looks like a Fox News broadcast. If Saphier joins the ranks, the network’s lies and bigotry will play an even greater role in U.S. health care.

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Casey Means does not have a medical degree, which is incorrect. She does not have a medical license.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

RFK Jr. Loses Lawsuit (Again) Over 'Cavorting With Neo-Nazis In Berlin'

Years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cavorted with neo-Nazis in Berlin. A Daily Kos community member, whose real name is David (which he himself revealed), summarized a local news article about the event, headlined his write-up “Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin ‘Anti-Corona’ Protest,” and moved on with his day.

In 2021, a furious RFK Jr. sued Daily Kos to unmask David’s identity. Four-plus years later, after bouncing between New York and California courts, amicus briefs from The New York Times and 10 other organizations, and endless appeals, our case is still working its way through the courts. Somewhere along the way and after considerable expenses, RFK Jr.’s team figured out David’s identity and sued him directly. Those original suits went nowhere: He filed in New Hampshire—while David lives in Maine—then blew an appeal deadline (his lawyers blamed bad Wi-Fi, no joke).

My most recent comprehensive update on the case is here.

(For the record, I’ve flat-out called RFK Jr. a Nazi. He’s never sued me or Daily Kos for that—just fixated on the lower-profile diarist. It’s been bizarre.)

At this point, two cases remained. The first is ours, still on appeal, aimed at securing a New York precedent to shield media outlets from frivolous suits like this. The second—the case against David—should finally be dead now, after a Maine judge granted summary judgment earlier this month. And the reasoning is hilarious.

Summary judgment means that the facts can’t be in dispute and that the judge can rule as a matter of law. The fatal problem for RFK Jr.? He refused to deny that he cavorted with neo-Nazis.

From the decision, RFK Jr. alleged that David claimed he:

Helped cause the Samoa Measles Outbreak;
Opposed all vaccines;
Expressed “dangerous vaccine conspiracies” that caused the death of 234,000 Americans;
Wanted to cause the death of all black people;
Said Covid19 was designed to save Jewish people; and
Knowingly joined, supported, and associated with a neo-Nazi party in Berlin.

The judge dismantled those claims one by one. Here’s an example, given the outrageousness of the claim:

iv. Plaintiff “wanted to cause the death of black people”Defendant has never written or said this statement [...] On January 4, 2022, Defendant posted on X, without comment, a link to an article, authored by thegrio.com, titled "Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is harming black people—and his family legacy—with his vaccine misinformation campaign.” [...] Plaintiff does not offer sworn evidence to the contrary.

To make it crystal clear, a reposted tweet from a respected publication on how RFK Jr. is reportedly harming Black people turned into a legal claim that RFK Jr. “wanted to cause the death of all black people.” He really is a piece of shit.

Let’s do another one:

v. Plaintiff “said Covid19 was designed to save Jews”Defendant has never written or said this statement. [...] On July 16, 2023, Defendant posted on X, without comment, a link to an article, authored by the Washington Post, titled “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggests covid was designed to spare Jews, Chinese People.” [...] Complaint supports Defendant’s assertion that he repeated the third-party content without embellishment. Plaintiff denies Defendant posted the link without embellishment, but cites no admissible record evidence to support the denial.

Again, RFK Jr.’s lawyers took a simple link to a Washington Post article and created an alternate reality in which David claimed COVID was “designed to save Jews.” RFK Jr.’s lawyers should be disbarred for wasting the court’s time with these egregious lies.

But the kicker is the Nazi-rally bit, the whole reason this fiasco started.

Defendant establishes as true, and Plaintiff admits, that Plaintiff joined the protest rally in Berlin as a speaker. [...] Plaintiff argues that Defendant’s statement [that it was organized by neo-Nazis] supports a defamatory inference that Plaintiff joined a neo-Nazi party or movement as a member. Although a defamatory inference may be actionable, the statement that Plaintiff joined the protest, which is true, does not reasonably give rise to an inference that Plaintiff joined the organizations sponsoring the protest.

In other words, RFK Jr. and his lawyers didn’t argue that the rally wasn’t organized by Nazis, just that he didn’t join the Nazi party as a member. Cool beans, bro. Except David never said RFK Jr. was a Nazi, just that he joined Nazis at their rally—and that turned out to be factually true. RFK Jr. didn’t even bother to dispute that part.

So chalk one up for the First Amendment.

And thank you—to our community and to Public Citizen—for funding this defense, and to David for standing strong throughout it all. He went up against RFK Jr. and emerged victorious. That couldn’t have been easy.

RFK Jr. is a dangerous loon who cavorts with neo-Nazis, and he can go fuck himself.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

With New Vaccine 'Guidelines,' Kennedy Makes America Sick Again

Pregnant women and children may be losing access to more vaccines, in addition to COVID-19, due to new recommendations. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s newly beefed-up Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met Thursday to discuss whether or not they will continue to recommend vaccinations in young children for hepatitis B as well as the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella, known as the MMRV vaccine.

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention veteran Dr. Fiona Havers, who resigned in response to Kennedy’s dismantling of the CDC, saw the meeting as another anti-vaccine spectacle.

“This meeting, with a committee that is stacked with RFK Jr.'s handpicked appointees, many with a well-documented history of anti-vaccine views, was another opportunity for the HHS secretary to falsely stoke fears about vaccine safety,” Havers told Daily Kos.

Havers oversaw critical data-gathering on hospitalizations related to COVID-19 and crafted guidance on handling the Zika virus and other outbreaks during her time at the CDC. But now, she told Daily Kos as she watched the hearing, votes like this are just putting more people at risk.

“Anything that decreases vaccine confidence or access to vaccines will lead to unnecessary infections, more hospitalizations, and more preventable deaths,” she said.

When discussions kicked off Thursday afternoon, it didn’t take long for some to point out the pitfalls of removing or tampering with current vaccine guidelines.

At one point, ACIP member Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, pointed out that the proposed changes to the MMRV vaccine would put families at risk of not being able to afford immunizations for their children even if they did, in fact, want it. Under the proposed changes, the vaccine wouldn’t be covered by the financial assistance program Vaccines for Children. Additionally, insurance companies may drop coverage of the shot as well.

"So that implies that the parents' choice, unless they want to pay for it themselves, the parents' choice is taken away," Hibbeln said, adding that the option would be "basically taken away from them.”

While one ACIP member made a case against altering the MMRV vaccine recommendation, Kennedy made sure to fill the council with people who shared his ideology.

The HHS secretary sacked 17 members of the ACIP in June, and replaced them with his handpicked staff. Many of the people Kennedy selected have already been linked to anti-vaccine rhetoric.

And given the disastrous spread of measles across Texas earlier this year, vaccine availability may be a high concern for some.

However, it wasn’t just the MMRV on the table. The ACIP members also were voting on removing recommendations for hepatitis B immunizations in newborns. Typically, this shot has been administered to children soon after birth to protect them from contracting the virus in case their mother is a carrier.

Kennedy’s team of vaccine skeptics pushed the idea of waiting one to four months before giving the child the shot, should the mother test negative for hepatitis B.

“If there is some benefit or removal of harm from waiting a month, I haven’t seen any data,” one member of the panel shot back said. “But there are a number of potential harms.”

Havers also pointed out the dangers of delaying the shot.

“If the recommendation for a universal hepatitis B birth dose is changed, more infants will be infected with a lifelong, incurable infection that can cause cancer, cirrhosis or death,” she told Daily Kos.

“Administering the birth dose to all infants prevents vulnerable infants from being missed at birth and also protects them throughout childhood from hepatitis B infection. The current vaccine has been used for decades and is extremely safe and effective. If it is changed, we will see children die unnecessarily.”

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine grip on HHS has grown since he’s taken over the position. From firing CDC directors who don’t agree with his agenda to altering vaccine recommendations, many changes are taking place within the groups that manage America’s health and wellness.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

In Los Angeles, We Don't Need The Marines To Bust A Few Hooligans

I'm fine. Thanks for asking. Other than the endless and awful worries that come with caring for my daughter with long Covid, and the very real fear that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his boss will cut all the research programs that are the best and only hope for the millions (and there will be millions more) suffering from this now incurable disease, I'm OK. To tell the truth, I haven't seen a single protester, or any Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for that matter. The protests have not taken over the city. I've lived through riots. These aren't riots.

I know. You've seen the pictures of the burning Waymo taxicabs. All three of them. I've seen them too — on TV, literally hundreds of times. What does that prove? That there are hooligans who will take advantage of any situation that will possibly give them cover for wrongdoing? The hooligans should be arrested and punished. The LAPD is fully qualified to do that. We don't need the Marines or the National Guard to round up a handful of hooligans.

The Chief of the LAPD told the City Council on Tuesday that LAPD officers arrested 114 people at protests Monday night — 53 for allegedly failing to disperse and 15 on suspicion of looting. The potential looters were stopped. One person was arrested for alleged assault with a deadly weapon on an officer, and another was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. They will be punished. The LAPD arrested 27 people at protests on Saturday and 40 on Sunday.

The problem is not the protesters. They have every right to be protesting the wholesale roundup of people with brown skin who have committed no crimes. ICE doesn't like to release the numbers, for obvious reasons, but what's come out so far suggest that half the people ICE has detained were not subject to warrants for their arrests and have committed no crimes.

On Tuesday, the mayor of Los Angeles imposed a curfew on exactly one square mile of downtown LA in an effort to stop the hooligans who were looting. Downtown LA was quiet on Tuesday night. Los Angeles is a city of nearly 500 square miles. One-five hundredth of the city was under a curfew, hardly reason to send in an invading military force, which Trump has done.

And there is certainly no reason to attack the organizers of the peaceful protests, which is what Republican grandstanders are doing. On Wednesday, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley threatened an investigation of one of our city's most respected immigrant organizations, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which he accused of "bankrolling the unrest." Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee of Crime and Counterterrorism, wrote to the leader of the group that they should "cease and desist any further involvement in the organization, funding, or promotion of these unlawful activities."

What he called, but didn't identify, as "credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions. Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct."

No, it's not. Organizing and supporting peaceful protests against mass, untargeted roundups and the misuse of the military is fully protected by the First Amendment.

Trump wants race riots. He wants people to be terrorized. He wants to exercise absolute authority. The protests will continue, and they will spread. Trump railed against the rapists and murderers he claimed were invading our country. He promised to remove them. Fine. Now that he's president, he can't find enough of them to fulfill his quotas. So instead, he is going after law-abiding neighbors with force and without due process. He has triggered this unrest, and it is his fault. The organizers of the protests in Los Angeles are doing everything they can to ensure that the protests are peaceful and lawful. The same cannot be said of Trump and his minions.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Dumping Means, Trump Nominates A Fox Covid-19 Misinformer As Surgeon General

RFK Jr. Loses Lawsuit (Again) Over 'Cavorting With Neo-Nazis In Berlin'

From the decision, RFK Jr. alleged that David claimed he:

The judge dismantled those claims one by one. Here’s an example, given the outrageousness of the claim:

With New Vaccine 'Guidelines,' Kennedy Makes America Sick Again

In Los Angeles, We Don't Need The Marines To Bust A Few Hooligans

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