A Senate committee will hold a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News contributor nominated by President Trump to serve as surgeon general, a position that has remained empty since Mr. Trump took office last year.
Mr. Trump nominated Dr. Saphier in April, after his earlier nominee, Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer, failed to gain enough support in the Senate to be confirmed. He withdrew his first pick, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, another former Fox News contributor, in May 2025.
Dr. Saphier, the director of breast imaging at a New Jersey branch of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, would both bring medical bona fides and a wellness bent to the role. Long before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. uttered the slogan “Make America Healthy Again,” Dr. Saphier wrote a book with that phrase as the title. She also started a supplement company, has hosted a wellness podcast and has said she blends Western medicine with “Eastern techniques” and “natural remedies.”
At times, Dr. Saphier has been a critic of Mr. Kennedy. Last year, after Mr. Kennedy held a news conference calling autism an “epidemic” and promising to find its root causes, Dr. Saphier wrote an opinion essay questioning Mr. Kennedy’s approach and criticizing his department’s hiring of David Geier, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to be involved in the autism work. “Mr. Kennedy risks undermining the cause he claims to champion,” she wrote.
After Mr. Kennedy fired the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year, Dr. Saphier called the situation “a mess,” and “really embarrassing,” on her podcast.
“When we keep hearing radical transparency and we’re going to regain trust, I can tell you these shenanigans are taking us farther away from that mission,” she said.
Dr. Saphier is expected to be confirmed by the Senate. As surgeon general, she would issue health advisories and help steer responses to public health threats. She would also lead the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a group of more than 6,000 health professionals that respond to emergencies.
In ethics filings, Dr. Saphier said she would divest her holdings in pharmaceutical companies like Regeneron, Merck, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, as well as in food and beverage companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. She said she would partially divest holdings in some companies, including Pfizer and Kenvue, the maker of Tylenol.
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, wrote in a statement that Dr. Saphier will fully comply with “all applicable federal ethics requirements.” Dr. Saphier did not respond to a request for comment, but said in her filings that the holdings would not “substantially limit my ability to perform the essential duties of the position” and that she would recuse herself from any matters that might pose a conflict of interest.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, said in an email that “this recusal will limit what she can do as surgeon general.”
Dr. Saphier also said she would sell her stocks in three tobacco companies, Altria, British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International, which makes the popular nicotine pouch brand Zyn.
Dr. Saphier also said in the filings that she would sell Empower MD, the parent company of her herbal tincture line DropRX, and that she had stepped down from her roles as a Fox News contributor and podcast host.
Some leading figures in the MAHA movement have bristled at Dr. Saphier’s nomination, pointing to her critiques of Mr. Kennedy and her support of vaccines. Dr. Saphier has said vaccines save lives and has encouraged families to vaccinate their children against measles, though she has also cast doubt on some immunization recommendations, including hepatitis B shots for newborns and Covid shots for children.
Dr. Means, the previous nominee, was widely embraced by the MAHA movement. But she had a harder time garnering support among senators, some of whom questioned her qualifications for the role. Dr. Means attended medical school, but dropped out of her residency and did not have an active license to treat patients at the time of her nomination hearing.
Dr. Saphier attended Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados. She completed her residency at Creighton University and did a radiology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. In Arizona, Dr. Saphier was involved in crafting a law that required doctors to notify patients when mammograms detected that they had dense breast tissue.
At the time of Dr. Means’s hearings, Dr. Saphier said on her podcast that she wanted to see a surgeon general who was “a little less aligned with the MAHA movement.” Her ideal pick for the role, she said, was someone that the administration respects but that doctors also can support.
“The medical professionals, the medical organizations, they need to make sure that she is a trusted messenger,” she said.
Christina Jewett contributed reporting.
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