President Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Nicole Saphier to serve as U.S. surgeon general after the prior pick stalled, setting up a new round of Senate confirmation scrutiny. The East Coast radiologist and Memorial Sloan Kettering leader—once an Arizona teen m
President Donald Trump moved quickly to fill a job that has sat vacant since Jan. 20, 2025: he nominated Dr. Nicole Saphier as the next U.S. surgeon general after his previous pick’s confirmation stalled.
Saphier. an East Coast radiologist living in New Jersey. would step into a role that. by law and practice. oversees about 6. 000 uniformed officers in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps and presides as the nation’s top health educator. The position also carries the responsibility of advising Americans on how to improve health and reduce the risk of illness and injuries.
Her nomination sets up participation confirmation hearings before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. No hearings had been scheduled as of May 20.
Saphier’s path to the nomination is unconventional. Born in Scottsdale and raised in the Valley. she graduated from Arizona State University and completed her medical residency and a radiology fellowship in the Phoenix area. She is now an attending radiologist. a physician. and an associate professor of radiology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. In New Jersey. she serves as director of Breast Imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Monmouth facility. and she has also worked as a Fox News medical commentator. She is the author of multiple books and a podcaster.
Her nomination would make Saphier the third person Trump has nominated to be the nation’s top doctor since he began serving his second presidential term.
Breast cancer prevention and public policy work have been central to her public profile. During a Feb. 24. 2022 episode of the American College of Radiology’s Taking the Lead podcast. Saphier described pushing for an Arizona law requiring providers who administer mammogram screening to notify patients with dense breasts. She said she cornered then-Sen. Nancy Barto. the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee chair. at a charity event and persuaded her to work on the bill. Saphier testified during committee hearings and provided evidence about the benefits of breast density notification. and Barto later said in an interview that Saphier “educated us all like crazy” and helped lead to policy passage.
Saphier said the bill was signed into law by then-Gov. Jan Brewer, and she linked that experience to continued advocacy for breast cancer prevention policy in New York and New Jersey.
Within the medical community, the nomination has brought praise—but also sharper questions about leadership.
Dr. Daniel Gridley. chair of the radiology department for Valleywise Health and division chair of radiology for District Medical Group. said in an email that he was confident Saphier would excel as surgeon general. Gridley said that during her diagnostic radiology residency at Maricopa Medical Center. now known as Valleywise Health Medical Center. she stood out for professionalism. communication skills. and strong academic abilities. Gridley added that when he was faculty with District Medical Group—during the time he could observe Saphier’s development firsthand—he saw “highly capable” research skills. He wrote that he is confident she would bring “strong communication skills, and a deeply patient-centered perspective” to the job.
But former surgeon generals and other critics have pressed a different concern: not whether Saphier is qualified to treat patients, but whether she is prepared to run a large public health institution.
Dr. Richard Carmona, a former surgeon general under President George W. Bush who lives in Arizona, said active physician licensing is a positive for Saphier. Carmona’s view comes after earlier controversy around Trump’s 2025 nominees: Trump’s first surgeon general nominee in 2025, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat. faced scrutiny after providing misleading information about her medical credentials. first reported by CBS News. and Trump’s second nominee. Dr. Casey Means, saw her nomination stall after criticism that she lacked experience for the role. Trump announced he was withdrawing Means’ nomination on April 30—the same day he announced Saphier as his next pick.
On Truth Social, Trump on April 30 called Saphier a “star physician” and an “incredible communicator who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”
Carmona said Saphier’s resume indicates she is a respected radiologist and an “excellent physician. ” but he questioned whether her background would meet the surgeon general’s leadership responsibilities. Those responsibilities include promoting. protecting and advancing the health. safety and security of the United States and leading the uniformed public health corps. Carmona said the job is “not one patient. like an individual breast cancer patient. but a large organization.” He warned that “it is very difficult to do that transition and automatically have credibility with the people you command.”.
Dr. Jerome Adams. appointed surgeon general by Trump during his first term. echoed the licensing-positive view while still warning about the scale of the role. In a May 1 post on X. Adams called Saphier a “solid pick. ” writing that “she has no apparent experience running a large organization.” He added: “There will be a steep learning curve. but she’s clearly smart enough to handle it. especially if she leans on her experienced senior officers for support.”.
Saphier has not avoided controversy around health policy, either—critics and supporters point to the same record, but they draw different conclusions.
She said she has both praised and criticized the Trump administration’s actions on health. In 2025. she criticized Trump’s advice to women to “tough it out” instead of taking Tylenol while pregnant. calling it patronizing. On her own “Wellness Unmasked” podcast, she said the U.S. risk of losing its measles eradication status was “sad” and “embarrassing.” She argued that measles vaccination protects communities. especially infants. pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.
She has also criticized the Affordable Care Act. which President Barack Obama signed into law and which is credited with reducing the number of uninsured Americans by 20 million and slowing the growth of U.S. out-of-pocket per-person consumer health care spending. In a 2020 appearance on Fox News. Saphier said the ACA took away incentives for “good behavior choices. ” describing it as “by saying that. however you act. whatever you do. everything’s going to be covered. And so preventable illness is running rampant across the United States.”.
Saphier’s views often align with a broader message about responsibility. Her “Make America Healthy Again” book opens with a quotation from Reagan-era economist Thomas Sowell: “You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.” Adams. writing on X. said he hopes that if she is confirmed. Saphier will soften her stance on personal responsibility and its role in healthy outcomes. “You can’t always make the healthy choice when the environment only offers bad ones,” Adams wrote.
Her nomination has also revived attention to her personal story—stories that do more than fill a biography. In “Love. Mom: Inspiring Stories Celebrating Motherhood” (Fox News Books. 2024). Saphier writes about becoming pregnant at 17 while growing up in Arizona and deciding to have the baby despite pressure to have an abortion. Anti-abortion advocates have cited her decision in praise following her nomination.
Saphier’s book also details how her family shaped her early life. Her father is a lawyer and her mother is a clinical therapist, and her parents divorced when she was 2 years old.
She found community at a Catholic church near her home and attended a teen Mass on her own. Her time outside school, she writes, was mostly consumed by competitive cheerleading and gymnastics until an injury left her unable to train and “sent me into a downward spiral mentally.”
When she learned she was pregnant in between her junior and senior years of high school. she said it was a pivotal moment. In the book. she wrote: “I don’t know what I expected. but my boyfriend and I broke up. bringing the reality of being a single. pregnant teenager into focus. It was overwhelming,” adding, “I was scared. I was sad. And I felt lost.”.
Saphier decided to have the baby. She wrote that it came at the cost of some friends and that she was “gently asked not to attend the teen Mass and other youth programs at my church,” which she said “broke my heart to be cut off from the community that was so important to me.”
She gave birth to her son in April 2000. five weeks before she graduated from high school. though in the book she does not name the Arizona high school she attended. With help with child care from her family. she earned a degree in microbiology from Arizona State University in four years. For medical school. she attended the private. for-profit Ross University School of Medicine in the Caribbean after being wait-listed for MD programs.
Saphier wrote: “I had a good GPA, but when it came to the high bar for medical school, I fell short.” She added that she could have studied more and done more research activities, but “then I wouldn’t have been able to work and provide for my child.”
While her family and other supporters were initially taking care of her son in Arizona while she was in medical school. she later brought him to Dominica. enrolling him in a school and reworking her schedule with help from professors. She did clinical rotations in Arizona, followed by her radiology residency.
During research at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona’s Scottsdale campus, she met her husband, neurosurgeon Dr. Paul Saphier. The couple married in 2012. After her residency was complete, she stayed on in Arizona for a women’s imaging fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. When that finished. she and her husband moved to the East Coast. and she wrote that they went on to have two sons together.
Saphier also runs a public-facing wellness platform. She launched a podcast called “Wellness Unmasked” in 2025. covering topics such as rising colon cancer rates in young adults and the Pentagon’s decision to stop mandating flu shots for U.S. military service members. On her April 23 podcast. she said: “The flu vaccine does shorten illness duration and it does prevent doctor’s visits.” She added: “Maybe if they had the vaccine. they were out one to two days. If they don’t have the vaccine, they are out three to five days, maybe more. I don’t know if I’m for or against this move. I approach it with caution.”.
Her books and public work position her squarely at the intersection of medicine and culture. Contributors to “Love. Mom” include former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany; conservative television personality Rachel Campos-Duffy. the wife of U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; and Jennifer Hegseth, the wife of U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Saphier’s resume also includes promoting the wellness supplement brand DropRx. Her other books include “Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis” (Broadside Books. 2020) and “Panic Attack: Playing Politics With Science In The Fight Against COVID-19” (HarperCollins. 2021).
The next step for Saphier is the Senate confirmation process. As of May 20. no hearings had been scheduled—leaving the timeline uncertain while the political debate over her nomination continues to sharpen on two fronts: whether her clinical standing can translate to large-scale institutional leadership. and whether her outspoken views on health policy will align with the responsibilities of advising the nation.
Saphier did not respond to interview requests.
Nicole Saphier surgeon general nominee Trump USPHS Commissioned Corps Senate confirmation Memorial Sloan Kettering breast density notification measles eradication Affordable Care Act Jerome Adams Richard Carmona Casey Means Janette Nesheiwat Truth Social Wellness Unmasked