HHS deputy nominee Klomp defended MMR vaccine at Tuesday Finance hearing
The Senate health committee convenes Wednesday to consider three of President Trump’s nominees for top Department of Health and Human Services positions, including a third attempt to fill the surgeon general role, which has been vacant since President Biden left office in January 2025.
The panel is set to weigh the nominations of Dr. Nicole Saphier for surgeon general, Chris Klomp for deputy secretary, and Dr. Timothy Westlake for assistant secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use. The hearing comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s relationship with Congress has frayed, and senators are expected to question the nominees on vaccine policy, measles response, and the department’s broader restructuring.
The United States has not had a surgeon general since Biden’s term ended. Trump’s first nominee, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, was withdrawn after questions were raised about her academic credentials. The second, Dr. Casey Means, saw her nomination collapse after a contentious February hearing, following the last-minute cancellation of her initial hearing because she had gone into labor. The committee never voted on Means’s nomination.
Saphier, the third pick, is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in New Jersey. Like Nesheiwat, she is a former Fox News Channel contributor and holds a medical degree from a Caribbean university. Her nomination has not drawn the same wall of opposition Means faced, and Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general in Trump’s first term, told NPR in May that he expects her to be confirmed. Kennedy praised Saphier on social media in April, calling her “a long-time warrior for the MAHA movement.” She authored a book titled “Make America Healthy Again” in 2020, years before Kennedy began promoting the slogan during the 2024 presidential campaign.
A central issue at Wednesday’s hearing will be Saphier’s vaccine views. She has criticized COVID-19 vaccine booster requirements and questioned whether every child should receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Those statements are likely to draw scrutiny from Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a liver doctor who chairs the committee and has spoken emotionally in past hearings about treating patients who died of hepatitis B.
Saphier has, however, defended vaccines in the context of the debunked link between vaccines and autism. In an op-ed last spring, she criticized Kennedy’s decision to hire anti-vaccine activist David Geier to search for the root cause of rising autism diagnoses. “If we want lasting change in how we diagnose, treat and perhaps prevent autism, it must be built on a foundation of rigorous science, not controversy and conspiracy theories,” she wrote. She also told The Associated Press last fall that Trump’s suggestion that pregnant women should avoid Tylenol because of the risk of autism was oversimplistic and “patronizing.”
The deputy secretary nomination, for Klomp, is a less public-facing but arguably more powerful post. He would become second-in-command to Kennedy if confirmed. A former health technology executive, Klomp is not a media personality or politician but has risen through the Trump administration with a reputation as a pragmatic and effective leader. He joined as director of the Center for Medicare in April 2025 and was elevated to “chief counselor” to Kennedy in February, running day-to-day operations at HHS since.
At a Tuesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Republican senators pressed Klomp on drug pricing and Medicaid fraud, while Democrats questioned him on the department’s response to ongoing measles outbreaks. Despite the doubts about vaccine efficacy and safety that Kennedy and Trump have publicly expressed, Klomp forcefully spoke in support of children receiving the MMR vaccine to help stop the spread of measles.
The third nominee, Westlake, is a Wisconsin-based emergency medicine physician who currently serves as chief of staff at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. SAMHSA has undergone massive staff cuts since Kennedy became secretary, and his restructuring plan — which would have eliminated the agency — is currently on hold amid legal challenges.
Underlying all three nominations is the committee’s strained relationship with Kennedy. He made numerous promises during his own confirmation hearing that he has subsequently broken, and his appearances before the committee have been infrequent and, when they occur, chaotic and combative.