MAHA

Calley Means is out of the White House; Casey Means misses Senate hearing

health, MAHA, means, Robert F. Kennedy / Mike M. / October 31, 2025

In a statement Thursday, government watchdog Public Citizen cheered the news of his departure.

“The Trump Administration has wildly abused the Special Government Employee designation to shoehorn powerful people into official jobs in a way that allowed them to evade financial transparency and anti-corruption restraints,” Public Citizen Democracy Advocate Jon Golinger said. “The clock ran out on Mr. Means, and we’re glad he finally resigned.”

“Charlatan”

Casey has a background in actual medicine, with a degree from Stanford Medical School, but she dropped out of her residency, holds no active medical license or board certification, and has gone all in on “functional” medicine, which is an ill-defined form of alternative medicine. She co-founded a company called Levels, which promotes intensive health tracking, including continuous blood glucose monitoring for people who don’t have prediabetes or diabetes. (Another Levels co-founder is Sam Corcos, now the chief information officer for the Department of the Treasury, who, as The New Yorker reported, led the effort to dismantle the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.)

Casey and Calley Means made a name for themselves among the MAHA crowd with their 2024 book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. The book encourages health-conscious readers to avoid processed foods, seed oils, fragrances, a variety of home care products, fluoride, unfiltered water, bananas (when eaten alone), receipt paper, and birth control pills. It includes a chapter titled “Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor.”

Health experts have sharply criticized her nomination to the role of surgeon general. The health network Defend Public Health released a statement Thursday urging lawmakers to reject her “quackery.”

“The US Surgeon General is the leading US government voice on public health issues,” said DPH member and physician Oni Blackstock, an HIV expert and former assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “That person must be someone Americans can trust to give credible advice based on solid science and real data, not a charlatan who specializes in selling expensive, unproven tests and treatments.”

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RFK Jr.’s Wi-Fi and 5G conspiracies appear to make it into MAHA report draft

The Trump administration’s plans to improve Americans’ health will include a push to review the safety of electromagnetic radiation, echoing long-held conspiracy theories and falsehoods about Wi-Fi and 5G touted by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On Friday, Politico obtained a draft version of the “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy,” a highly anticipated report from the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission intended to steer the administration’s health policy. The report, which has not been adopted by the White House, is being viewed as friendly to industry, and it contains little to no policy recommendations or proposed regulations. For instance, it includes no proposed restrictions on pesticides or ultra-processed foods, which are top priorities of the MAHA movement.

Otherwise, the document mainly rehashes the talking points and priorities of Kennedy’s health crusades. That includes attacking water fluoridation, casting doubt on the safety of childhood vaccines, pushing for more physical activity in children to reduce chronic diseases, getting rid of synthetic food dyes, and claiming that children are being overprescribed medications.

Notably, the report does not mention the leading causes of death for American children, which are firearms and motor vehicle accidents. Cancer, another top killer, is only mentioned in the context of pushing new AI technologies at the National Institutes of Health. Poisonings, another top killer, are also not mentioned explicitly.

While the importance of water quality is raised in the report, it’s only in the context of fluoride and not of any other key contaminants, such as lead or PFAS. And although the draft strategy will prioritize “whole, minimally processed foods,” it offers no strategy for reducing the proportion of ultra-processed food (UPF) in Americans’ diets. The strategy merely aims to come up with a “government-wide definition” for UPF to guide future research and policies.