Trump nominates radiologist Dr. Nicole Saphier as surgeon general
Nicole Saphier attends the Patriot Awards, December 5, 2024 in Greenvale, New York. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is nominating Dr. Nicole Saphier to be the next surgeon general.
Trump made the announcement on social media, calling Saphier 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.”
Saphier is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in New Jersey and a regular medical contributor on Fox News.
According to her profile on the Memorial Sloan Kettering website, she has experience “performing minimally invasive, image-guided procedures of the breast, kidney, pancreas, liver, thyroid and lymph nodes.”
Her nomination comes just two months after Trump’s previous nominee, Dr. Casey Means, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee for her confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Means indicated she supports vaccines but stopped short of recommending certain shots.
Means, who has a medical degree but does not hold an active medical license, appeared hesitant to say that some vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, prevent serious disease.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the HELP committee and is a physician, noted that two children died last year from measles and pushed Means on whether she would encourage parents to vaccinate their children with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Means initially stressed personal autonomy and responded that she supported vaccination and that every patient should have a conversation with their doctor about getting vaccinated.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Voter in voting booth. (Hill Street Studios/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — While the Democratic National Committee chose not to release its after-action report on the 2024 election, one prominent Democratic group is sharing feedback from a group of influential voters.
To some of them, Democrats can seem condescending, elitist and out-of-touch. And to win them over, candidates don’t need to take a specific policy position, but should communicate directly, authentically and with empathy.
Drawn from in-depth interviews and focus groups with more than 100 voters from battleground House districts and states, the “Baseline Report” released by MD PAC, a political action committee working to reshape Democratic Party, aims to help candidates and campaigns connect with voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 and either voted for Donald Trump or stayed home four years later.
The organization is affiliated with Majority Democrats, one of several groups working with candidates to remake and redefine the party’s image ahead of the midterms.
“It’s not exactly a state secret that something went very wrong for Democrats in 2024,” Lis Smith, a senior adviser to Majority Democrats, told ABC News. “The responsible thing isn’t to bury our heads in the sand, it’s to figure out how to win their votes so we can move forward.”
Across the entire cohort, voters shared a sense of exhaustion and emotional burnout. They view both Democrats and Republicans skeptically, and they feel “unseen, unheard, and unrepresented by the federal government,” the group notes in its report.
According to the analysis and the group’s briefing on the findings, voters across the cohort felt a sense of economic strain, and a fear that the “floor could drop at any time,” as one of them told the group.
In 2024, Trump and Republicans won over a larger share of voters without college degrees, performing 4 points better than he did in 2020 among voters who are more economically vulnerable, according to ABC News exit polls.
Republicans also won more than half of voters whose total family income in 2023 was between $30,000 and $49,999, and $50,000 to $99,999, according to ABC News exit polls for the House of Representatives in 2024.
Smith recalled a conversation with a Democratic senator after the 2024 election that underscored how the party didn’t connect with voters’ concerns about the economy.
“They told me, ‘I would hear from voters about price of eggs and I thought it was a Fox News talking point,'” she said. “That suggested to me that a lot of members of Congress and their staffs are insulated from what voters are feeling. And this is a way to break through that.”
At a time when Democrats are grappling over the party’s positions on the U.S. relationship with Israel and whether to call for the abolishing or reform of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Majority Democrats’ report doesn’t recommend a specific set of positions for Democrats to adopt.
“Voters were not demanding ideological purity. They expected leaders to be flawed, change their minds, or even contradict themselves. What mattered was why — and whether the shift seemed honest,” the report reads.
While the report doesn’t dig into what went wrong for the party in 2024 and how Biden’s unsuccessful run for a second term impacted the fall results, the voters who participated expressed a desire to see politicians focus on issues that matter to them and show a willingness to disagree with their party.
“When voters were overwhelmingly telling us Joe Biden was too old to run for reelection, the Democratic powers that be responded, ‘Don’t believe your lying eyes,'” Smith said.
She also pointed to Democrats’ defending the Biden administration’s economic record by saying inflation was lower in the U.S. than in other countries.
“Democrats came off too often as defenders of the status quo,” Smith said. “That missed the mark, and going forward what we recommend is that Democrats understand the real, deep frustrations with economic and political systems.”
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on March 04, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The two top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees are referring outgoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to the Department of Justice for perjury due to her testimony to congressional committees earlier this month, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland allege that Noem’s statements on a variety of topics including DHS following judges’ orders and a controversial multimillion-dollar ad campaign “appear to violate criminal statutes prohibiting perjury and knowingly making false statements to Congress.”
In response to the letter, a DHS spokesperson said “Any claim that Secretary Noem committed perjury is categorically FALSE.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The DOJ has received the latest political stunt from the Democrats who should instead vote to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.”
President Donald Trump fired Noem the day after her testimony concluded and announced that he was appointing her to a new role as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of Latin American countries the White House says is committed to cooperating with the U.S. in taking on drug cartels and securing the U.S. border. He said he had nominated Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin to head DHS when Noem’s tenure ended on March 31.
The Democrats allege that Noem misled Congress when she said that DHS had followed court orders while federal judges have ruled a number of times that it had not.
They also cited her testimony over contracts for a $220 million DHS ad campaign and her assertion that Trump had signed off on it. A day later, Trump told Reuters, “I never knew anything about it.”
“New public reporting, however, indicates that those statements may have been false. It has been reported that not only did the Secretary “handpick” four companies for the ad campaign, but procurement records show the “ad work was awarded using ‘other than full and open competition,'” and the four companies were politically connected to Noem and her allies,” according to the letter.
Durbin and Raskin also allege Noem misled Congress when she testified that top adviser Corey Lewandowski had “no authority” to make decisions for the department.
“Secretary Noem’s denial of Corey Lewandowski’s role in DHS contract approval may also have been false. It has been widely reported that Mr. Lewandowski asserts approval authority over contracts and grants that exceed $100,000.27 A similar approval process reportedly exists for policy decisions, and as a recently published document shows, Mr. Lewandowski’s signature is visible above Secretary Noem’s on a February 2025 document reversing temporary protected status for Haitians.”
Lewandowski is reportedly leaving his position as a special government employee. He did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on his future at DHS.
The Democrats also allege Noem made false statements about conditions in ICE detention centers adhering to federal detention standards while ICE internal audits documented “significant failures to meet medical care standards.”
And they say her assertion that ICE did not detain U.S. citizens is false and cited 170 cases of citizens being detained in some cases for days without an opportunity to prove their citizenship.
“Making false statements to Congress, and making false statements under oath, are federal crimes,” the letter says. “While we have low expectations that you will pursue this matter given your partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice, we note that the statute of limitations for perjury and for knowingly and willfully making false statements to Congress is five years.”
(DETROIT) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday is turning his focus to the economy amid his administration’s intense foreign policy push with a speech at the Detroit Economic Club.
Trump’s remarks come as many Americans remain concerned about high prices.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found 64% of registered voters said the cost of living is a “very serious problem” in the United States. On the economy overall, nearly half of voters said they think it’s getting worse, and 57% of voters said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the issue.
As Trump left the White House on Tuesday, he touted new inflation data and continued his pressure campaign on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates.
“We have very low inflation. So, that would give ‘too-late Powell’ the chance to give us a nice, beautiful, big rate cut, which would be great for the country,” Trump told reporters. “But rates are falling also, and growth is going up. We have tremendous growth numbers. So, growth is going up. So, I’ll be talking about that today in Detroit, the big speech, and I can only say that the country is doing well.”
Powell is now facing criminal investigation by the Justice Department over his testimony last year about the renovation of the central bank’s headquarters in Washington. Powell said he believes the probe is politically motivated.
When asked by ABC News on Tuesday if he approved of the investigation, Trump said, “He’s billions of dollars over budget. So either he’s incompetent or he’s crooked. I don’t know what he is. But certainly he doesn’t do a very good job.”
Inflation held steady at 2.7% in December, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed, its lowest level since July but still higher than the Fed’s target rate.
Tuesday’s trip to Michigan is the latest stop in the administration’s push to sell the president’s economic agenda to voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
November’s off-year elections in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia showed pocketbook issues were top of mind for voters. Democrats who focused on affordability won big in those races, according to exit polls. Trump has derided affordability as a “Democratic hoax.”
Trump’s faced criticism from some in his own party, including former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for not doing more to address the high cost of living and focusing too much on foreign affairs.
In recent days, Trump’s announced several economic proposals — including a ban on large institutional investors from “buying more single-family homes” and a 1-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Trump’s housing plan has been met with some skepticism from analysts, and banks have pushed back on his pitch to cap credit card interest rates.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, previewing Trump’s Detroit speech on Monday, told reporters he would discuss recent news on inflation and mortgage rates.
“These economic policies are really coming into fruition now that we’re in 2026 and we’ll be seeing more tax cuts into the pockets of the American people later this spring as well. So, it’s all good news on the economic front, and I know the president looks forward to talking about that tomorrow in Michigan,” Leavitt said.
