President Trump will nominate Dr. Casey Means, an ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and prominent advocate for his agenda, to serve as the U.S. surgeon general, the president announced Wednesday.
Means replaces Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, whose nomination was withdrawn by the White House a day before she was scheduled to appear at a Senate confirmation hearing.
Mr. Trump said in a Truth Social post that Means “has impeccable “MAHA” credentials” — referring to the acronym for “Make America Healthy Again,” a slogan used by Kennedy.
“Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.”
The surgeon general oversees 6,000 members of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and helps set the national agenda on public health. The nominee must be confirmed by the Senate.
Means was close to Kennedy during the campaign, along with her brother, Calley Means, who played a key role in orchestrating Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Trump, according to some of Kennedy allies who played a role in the transition.
Casey Means has written about how, after attending Stanford Medical School and training to become a surgeon, she opted to leave “traditional medicine” to devote her life to “tackling the root cause of why Americans are sick.”
She co-founded Levels, a health app that can connect to glucose monitors, and has built a large following online for writing about health and wellness.
Both Means siblings soared to prominence in recent years after viral interviews decrying the influence of the food and drug industry. Their views align with Kennedy’s claims that unhealthy food and lifestyle choices underpin a vast swath of Americans’ health conditions.
“Not only is our life expectancy declining, but our health during those years of life is poorer than ever due to preventable chronic diseases. Maybe we need to re-think our approach,” she wrote in her newsletter. “…This is the devil’s bargain that drives our economy: we have a set of food, chemical, and agriculture industries that profit trillions per year from people consuming and using as much cheap, additive, chemical-filled food and products as possible, and we have a $4.5 trillion healthcare system that profits off of the resultant diseases that emerge.”
The two siblings authored the bestseller “Good Energy” after their mother died of pancreatic cancer, saying that she had been “simply prescribed pills and not set on a path of curiosity about how these conditions are connected and how the root cause can be reversed.”
An interview the two did with Tucker Carlson — ranked by Apple as the most-shared podcast episode of 2024 — was titled “The Truth About Ozempic, the Pill, and How Big Pharma Keeps You Sick.”
“She’s qualified. She’s energetic. She’s been a good communicator, which is the role of surgeon general. She seems to have good ethical moorings. And she reflects this new thinking about where HHS should be. I think it’s a bold pick,” Dr. Robert Malone, another close ally of Kennedy, told CBS News.
Casey and Calley Means have also earned skepticism from some of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine base, who have grown frustrated with what they fear has been Kennedy’s drifting attention away from what they hoped would be a ban of several vaccines and towards a crackdown on unhealthy foods and additives like synthetic food dyes.
“The nutritional agenda is a core part of MAHA. It may not be their core part of MAHA. But there’s no doubt that it’s a central part of the overall mission,” he said.
Malone acknowledged the perception among some of Kennedy’s base that Means had not been “sufficiently vocal, early enough, in rejecting the mRNA vaccine products,” as he had been.
Malone himself rose to prominence criticizing the shots while painting himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccines, a claim that other scientists rejected as misinformation. He was with Kennedy and Mr. Trump in Florida on election night.
Means has said she backs Kennedy “relentlessly pushing for vaccine safety” and said she thought it was “criminal” to require vaccinations. She has also claimed “the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule” could be “causing health declines in vulnerable children. This needs to be investigated,” she wrote on her website last year.
Calley Means now serves as a special government employee, advising Kennedy and backing state bills promoting his agenda.
Casey Means was initially favored as one contender for the surgeon general pick, some of Kennedy’s allies said, but was passed over for Dr. Nesheiwat. Some of Kennedy’s allies said they believed Nesheiwat’s appearances on Fox News and ties to former national security adviser Mike Waltz, who is married to Nesheiwat’s sister Julia, played a role in the president’s decision.
Nesheiwat’s nomination was withdrawn Wednesday amid concerns about how she portrayed her credentials. For example, as CBS News previously reported, she has publicly listed an M.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine, but she actually got her medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean.