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President Donald Trump said Thursday he’s nominating radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier for surgeon general after Dr. Casey Means’ path forward stalled in the Senate over questions about her experience and her stance on vaccines. In a social media post, Trump said he would nominate Saphier, whom he called “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment.” (Swenson and Kinnard, 4/30)

President Trump on Thursday accused Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) of playing “political games” that ended his second surgeon general nominee’s confirmation in the Senate, comments that came as Trump was announcing his decision to withdraw her nomination. In a post on Truth Social, Trump announced he was replacing his nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, with former Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier. Both he and White House senior adviser Calley Means, who is Casey Means’s brother, blamed Cassidy for the failed confirmation. (Choi, 4/30)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski delivered the coup de grâce in ending the nomination of Casey Means, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s choice for surgeon general, Means told POLITICO Thursday. The Alaska Republican told the Trump administration this week she was a “no” on the nominee, Means said, effectively dooming her chances of winning the Senate Health Committee’s approval, a prerequisite for confirmation. (Friedman, 4/30)

Now that Casey Means is no longer the Trump administration’s choice for surgeon general, attention is turning to the new nominee for the position. Nicole Saphier, whose candidacy was announced Thursday, is a licensed physician — unlike Means, whose license lapsed. A radiologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Saphier (pronounced SAA-fire) is director of breast imaging at MSK Monmouth in New Jersey. (Cooney, Branswell and Palmer, 4/30)

The Trump administration inadvertently exposed the Social Security numbers of health care providers in a database powering a new Medicare portal, The Washington Post found. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year created a directory to help seniors look up which doctors and medical providers accept which insurance plans, framing it as an overdue improvement and part of the Trump administration’s initiative to modernize health care technology. (Diamond and Ence Morse, 4/30)

The Department of Justice has formed a new fraud strike force to target schemes across Arizona, Nevada and Northern California, the agency announced Thursday. The West Coast Health Care Fraud Strike Force launched under DOJ's National Fraud Enforcement Division and will unite that division's fraud section with U.S. Attorney's Offices in those regions. DOJ said in the announcement that this model has proven to be a powerful tool for fraud enforcement when deployed elsewhere. (Minemyer, 4/30)

The Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement notched a win Thursday when the House voted to strip a pesticides provision from the farm bill. (Kutz, 4/30)

The Trump administration is proposing wastewater testing on a national level to try to ferret out data on illegal drug use in real time, according to a draft of a new drug control strategy obtained by CBS News. The administration also aims to apply artificial intelligence technologies to screen cargo for illicit drugs at ports of entry, examine electronic health records to "identify patients at high risk of overdose" and create search algorithms to detect emerging threats, the plan says. (Jacobs and Breen, 4/30)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is reversing job cuts that Kristi Noem, the former homeland security secretary, had overseen before she was fired last month. FEMA has reinstated 14 people who had signed a public letter that became known as the Katrina Declaration, which warned that the agency risked repeating mistakes learned during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Abby McIlraith, one of the reinstated workers and an emergency management specialist. Another 21 people who signed their names are no longer at the agency, Ms. McIlraith said. (Dance, 4/30)

The big takeaway from a new government survey of infant formula is that the U.S. supply is largely safe. But experts and health officials say there are still steps that can be taken to make a product consumed by two-thirds of infants in the U.S. even safer. (Todd, 5/1)