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.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with ABC News on Good Morning America, March 30, 2026. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. is engaged in serious talks with a “new” and “more reasonable” regime in Iran as the war enters its fifth week.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during an appearance on “Good Morning America,” declined to say who exactly the U.S. is negotiating with.
“Well, I’m not going to disclose to you who those people are, because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran. Look, there’s some fractures going on there internally,” Rubio said.
“And if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world,” the secretary continued. “But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability that that is not the case.”
When pushed for more clarity, Rubio said, “You have people there that are saying some of the right things privately.”
“But at the end of the day, we have to see if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they’re the ones that have the power to deliver. We’re going to test it. We are hopeful that’s the case,” he went on. “There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge in Iran have not spoken to us in the past.”
Iranian officials have denied any direct talks with the U.S., saying that messages have been passed through intermediaries. Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said Monday, “We have not had any negotiations with America.”
The U.S. presented Iran with a 15-point framework for a peace deal by way of Pakistan last week. Baqaei commented on the U.S. proposal during a press conference Monday.
“The information that has been conveyed to us [from the US], regardless of what name you want to give it, as 15 articles or whatever you call it, involved a large number of requests that are excessive, unrealistic, and illogical,” Baqaei said.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Sunday that the country would host talks between the U.S. and Iran “in the coming days.” There has not been confirmation from either Iran or the U.S. on when exactly these talks would take place or who will be involved for either side.
Trump on Sunday told reporters he could “see a deal” being made with Iran soon, though “it’s possible we won’t.”
The president suggested talks were moving in a positive direction because Iran allowed 20 oil tankers to pass through the critical Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blocked to international shipping traffic after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on the country last month.
Trump on Monday continued to tout progress but also threatened major U.S. attacks on Tehran’s energy infrastructure and more if a diplomatic off-ramp isn’t reached.
“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” he wrote in a post to his social media platform.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,'” the president posted.
Last week, Trump extended the deadline for Iran to reopen the strait twice. Trump said the U.S. would continue a pause on energy site attacks until next Monday, April 6.
Trump has not ruled out using ground troops in Iran. Experts say troops could be used to seize Iran’s nuclear material or Kharg Island, the country’s primary oil export hub.
“I just have lots of alternatives,” Trump said on Sunday.
More U.S. service members have arrived in the Middle East, including roughly 3,500 sailors and Marines with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the news outlet.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pressed Rubio on Monday about how the president would go about taking Kharg Island and whether it would require American troops on the ground.
Rubio was noncommittal, but said again that Iran’s threats about controlling the Strait of Hormuz in perpetuity needed to be addressed.
“That’s not going to be allowed to happen. And the president has a number of options available to him, if he so chooses, to prevent that from happening,” Rubio said.
“There is a way forward here. We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of weeks, not months.”
ABC News’ Nicholas Kerr, Emily Chang and Meghan Mistry contributed to this report.
Rep. Valerie Foushee speaks to a small crowd before President Joe Biden during a visit to Wolfspeed, a semiconductor manufacturer, as he kicks off his Investing in America Tour, March 28, 2023, in Durham, N.C. (Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — As the first primaries in the 2026 midterm elections kick off on Tuesday, Democrats once again are dealing with divides in their party, including over generational change and immigration enforcement, in contests where progressives are taking on incumbents.
One of these faceoffs is set for Tuesday in North Carolina. Nida Allam, 32, vice chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners, is mounting a primary challenge from the left to Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee, 69. Allam previously lost to Foushee in the 2022 primary in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District.
“We have an opportunity to push and champion not just Trump and the right-wing administration, but also our own party; that this seat could be the most powerful tool for progressives and Democrats in the South, but it’s only as powerful as the person sitting in that seat,” Allam told ABC News in an interview.
Allam has the support of progressive stalwart independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who campaigned for her in mid-February and told supporters at a rally, “At a moment when the oligarchs are tightening their grip on our society, we need leaders like Nida, leaders who answer to working families and not the billionaire class.”
Foushee, in a statement to ABC News, pushed back on Allam’s claims that she is not progressive or present enough, pointing to her endorsement by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and to securing millions for the district.
“My opponent’s claim that I have been absent from my role with zero ability to describe what more she would have done in Congress under the Republican majority demonstrates that she is trying to apply for a job that she does not understand,” Foushee wrote.
Similar primary rumbles are set to play out over the coming months, including in Colorado’s June 30 primaries. Melat Kiros, 28, a Ph.D student and barista, is running against longtime incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, 68, who has represented the state’s 1st Congressional District since 1997.
Kiros previously worked for a law firm and wrote an open letter in 2023 criticizing how law firms were responding in 2023 to pro-Palestinian protests. “I was asked to take the letter down. I said no, and then I was fired,” Kiros said. (The firm, Sidley Austin, did not reply to a request for comment from ABC News.)
Kiros says she draws a direct contrast with DeGette on the U.S.-Israel relationship and that DeGette’s opposition to further offensive aid to Israel does not go far enough.
The debate surrounding U.S. support for Israel, or whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, has sometimes been cast as a divide between younger and older Democrats. (Israel strongly disputes the allegations of committing genocide in Gaza and has said it took care to avoid civilian casualties during its military campaign against Hamas.)
Kiros believes the divide is more complicated than a generational one, but said young people “are seeing on our phones a genocide happening in real time … and want to see representatives who are committed to actually holding Israel accountable and ending this genocide.”
DeGette’s campaign did not provide comment or respond to a request for an interview when contacted by ABC News. She told NBC News in December more broadly, “We must defend our democracy against Donald Trump and work to solve our problems with dignity, justice, and a future grounded in compassion, not cruelty.”
Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, says the divide among Democrats over support for Israel — or even how to refer to its actions — reflects a “broader debate within the party about both Israel, but also America’s role in the world and what it should stand for … it’s a moment of flux in that way for the Democratic Party.”
“The moderates are in a tough spot,” he added, as moderates may oppose policies by Israel’s leadership but disagree with the claim that Israel was committing a genocide and feel Israel had the right to defend itself. “It’s a bit harder to message or navigate the complexities of the issue.”
Another flashpoint in some of these primaries is the future of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), especially in the wake of the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis last month.
Jonathan Paz, a 32-year-old former city council member from the Boston suburb of Waltham, is mounting a primary challenge to Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, 62, who currently serves as the House Minority Whip — the second-most powerful Democrat in the House.
Paz told ABC News, “She seems determined to write strongly worded letters. I’m calling to disband ICE and cut all their funding … [people] don’t want that empty rhetoric. They want to dismantle this agency because they want to see the violence stop.”
He added that he feels Clark did not do her job as whip — the whip works to get party members aligned on how to vote — given that 21 House Democrats voted for continuing Department of Homeland Security funding as part of ending a partial government shutdown.
Clark has called for guardrails and restrictions on ICE, and urged voting against the appropriations bill with DHS funding; she also said in early February that she was denied access to an ICE facility in her district while trying to conduct oversight.
“Katherine is doing the work to hold ICE and the Administration accountable and end its reign of terror in our neighborhoods,” Clark’s reelection campaign said in a statement to ABC News.
The progressive challengers more broadly lay bare another ongoing debate within the Democratic Party: whether the party should stand behind incumbents or usher in a new generation of younger and potentially more progressive lawmakers.
“What the voters in this country are fed up with is the corruption of this political system that continues to reward and profit billionaires at the expense of everyone else,” Usamah Andrabi, communications director at the progressive group Justice Democrats, told ABC News.
The group recently unveiled a slate of 12 primary endorsements, including Allam and Kiros.
But others within the Democratic ecosystem have cautioned against reading too much into the progressive versus moderate primary challenges.
David de la Fuente, deputy director for politics and research at the centrist group Third Way, told ABC News he would point to how those challenges are happening often in safely blue districts, not competitive toss-up seats.
He also argued against conflating generational change with an ideological shift to the left.
“Young candidates, whether they’re moderate or progressive, are representing change and a generational shift. That is a tale as old as time,” he said.
A sign displays the prices of unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel at a Shell gas station in Upland, Calif., on May 4, 2026. (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The monthslong war in Iran is inflicting economic pain across the country as many Americans report struggling with higher costs, particularly the record rise in gas prices.
An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released last week found that half of Americans expect gas prices to increase more in the next year, and that 4 in 10 Americans say they are not as well off as they were when President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.
Nearly a quarter said they are falling behind financially.
In callback interviews with several of the poll’s participants, people emphasized they are struggling to pay for basic necessities and that they are unsatisfied with the country’s leadership.
In an interview with ABC News, Jacob Olson, 28, from Beebe, Arkansas, said rising gas and food prices have made life challenging. After he was laid off from his position as a warehouse manager for a solar company that went bankrupt, Olson became a self-employed maker of custom wood projects like storage racks. He said he spends a lot on gas while driving around to his customers.
“One day at a time,” Olson said. “One foot in front of the other. … That’s about the way to sum it up.”
The ABC/Post/Ipsos poll found that in addition to the 50% of Americans who said they expect gas prices to get worse over the next year, another 15% expect gas prices to stay about the same.
Olson agreed that prices for gas and other goods will continue to go up.
“I don’t really do anything, you know, for leisure or luxury anymore,” Olson said. “It’s all kind of just getting the bills paid … I have a 1-year-old, and I just had another baby about a month ago, so I’ve got two little ones, and every day it’s getting harder.”
Brenda Howard, 66, from Lubbock, Texas, said she can’t afford luxuries like trips or meals out either, and since she does not own a car she has to rely on rideshare services like Uber and Lyft for errands and transport to her job as a cleaner.
She said using Uber or Lyft to take a trip to the grocery store costs her around $30.
“This is not the way I thought my retirement was gonna turn out,” Howard said. “I never dreamed that it would be a day-to-day struggle, sometimes hour to hour.”
The poll found some Americans said they were changing their behaviors because of higher gas prices. Over 4 in 10 have cut back on driving (44%) or cut household expenses (42%). Another 34% said they have changed travel or vacation plans.
Those in lower-income households have been hit even harder by the gas price spike. More than half of people with household incomes of under $50,000 a year said they have cut down on driving and household expenses.
Martha Davis, a 66-year-old Texan who works as a caretaker for her disabled son, said she’s struggling to pay for essentials, including gasoline and rent. She has to travel, sometimes as much as 60 miles from where she lives in Tool, Texas, to get to medical appointments.
“I used to get back and forth on like $20, $25, but now it’s almost 70 bucks,” Davis said.
Four in 10 Americans reported that they are less well off than they were at the beginning of Trump’s second presidential term according to the ABC News/Post/Ipsos poll. Some of those who said they are doing worse still support the president.
Andy Breedlove, 51, from West Virginia said he believes both that Trump is doing well in his second term and that gasoline prices are too high.
“But with the price of everything else, it kind of evens out a little,” said Breedlove, who is not working due to a disability. Breedlove suspects gas prices will continue to climb because of the war with Iran.
The Iranian government’s retaliatory blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane for the oil market, has led to severe trade disruptions. Around 20% of oil traded on global markets normally passes through the strait.
A 61% majority of Americans said in the ABC/Post/Ipsos poll that the Trump administration’s decision to go to war against Iran was a mistake.
“He hasn’t made a clear statement on why … we’re actually participating at all,” said Olson, the woodworker with a young family. “From what I know, there’s been a lot of just lying and, you know, not being transparent, and … a big lack of professionalism, which I don’t appreciate coming from the president.”
Christopher Mosley, 43, a former Walmart employee from Fort Smith, Arkansas, described Trump as “reckless” on foreign policy.
Trump’s messaging on gas prices has been mixed. When asked in early April whether he thought prices would decrease before the upcoming midterm elections, Trump said they might stay steady or get higher. On May 1, Trump said gas prices would come “tumbling down” once the conflict was resolved. Iran is reviewing the latest proposal from the U.S. government aimed at winding down the war, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said.
The financial strain felt by voters has the potential to significantly impact the midterm elections, a cycle in which Democrats are already positioned to make gains. Trump has framed the prospect of a change in the power dynamics of Congress as an existential threat to his presidency.
Jim Piper, a 36-year-old from Portage, Indiana, said he wishes Trump had more latitude to pursue his policy goals. Since the start of the second Trump administration, Piper said he has been doing worse financially, but he thinks political deadlock between Democrats and Republicans is to blame for rising prices. Since Piper has a disability and relies on a fixed income, inflation is hard on his wallet.
“I got to pay more, even though I’m not making more,” Piper said.
