President Donald Trump is nominating Dr. Casey Means, a physician who subsequently became a wellness influencer with strong affiliations to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for the position of surgeon general, following the withdrawal of his previous nominee for this pivotal health office.

In a digital missive disseminated on Wednesday, Trump avowed Means possessed "impeccable 'MAHA' credentials"—an allusion to the "Make America Healthy Again" moniker—and that her mandate would be the extirpation of chronic pathologies and the augmentation of the populace's salubrity and general welfare.

“Her scholarly attainments, in conjunction with her life's oeuvre, are utterly preeminent,” Trump averred. “Dr. Casey Means possesses the capacity to become one of the most distinguished Surgeons General in the annals of United States History.”

In this manoeuvre, Trump rescinded the nomination of Janette Nesheiwat, formerly a medical analyst for Fox News, for the position, signifying at least the second instance of a health-focused nominee of Trump being withdrawn from senatorial deliberation. Nesheiwat had been slated to present herself before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday for her confirmatory interrogation.

Means and her brother, Calley Means, a former lobbyist now serving as a White House adviser frequently engaged in television appearances to advocate for restrictions on SNAP benefits, the removal of fluoride from potable water sources, and other agenda items aligned with the MAGA movement, played pivotal roles as key consultants in Kennedy's improbable 2024 presidential campaign. They were instrumental in facilitating his endorsement of Trump during the preceding summer. The siblings also cultivated visibility alongside some of Trump's most prominent adherents, garnering accolades from figures such as the conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and the podcaster Joe Rogan.

Devoid of governmental experience and having prematurely discontinued her surgical residency citing a disillusionment with conventional medical paradigms, Casey Means established Levels, a health technology enterprise facilitating the monitoring of users' glycaemic indices and sundry physiological metrics, while simultaneously deriving pecuniary benefit from the endorsement of nutraceuticals, topical preparations, infusions, and various other commodities across her social media platforms.

In interviews and articles, Means and her brother delineate a perplexing nexus of aetiological factors contributing to the nation's health crises, encompassing malfeasant food conglomerates that have insidiously habituated Americans to deleterious dietary regimens, thereby rendering them perpetually dependent on pharmaceutical interventions to palliate morbid obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other debilitating chronic maladies.

Scarcely any public health savants would controvert the assertion that the standard American regimen—replete with hyper-processed comestibles—is a salient factor underpinning the prevalence of corpulence and associated comorbidities; however, Means extends this paradigm further, postulating a nexus between dietary and lifestyle shifts and a constellation of maladies encompassing sterility, Alzheimer's disease, major depressive disorder, and erectile dysfunction.

"Virtually all chronic health symptoms amenable to Western medical intervention stem from the cellular duress engendered by contemporary lifestyles," Means posited in a 2024 collaborative work penned with her brother.

Although Means has largely dissociated herself from Kennedy's contentious and discredited perspectives on vaccines, her website advocates for more rigorous scrutiny of their safety and proposes facilitating legal action against pharmaceutical manufacturers in cases of vaccine-related injuries. Since the late 1980s, federal legislation has afforded these corporations immunity from legal accountability to foster vaccine development unimpeded by the specter of costly personal injury litigation.

She underwent surgical training at Stanford University yet has cultivated a substantial online following through her critique of conventional medical paradigms and advocacy for naturalistic dietary and lifestyle modifications as therapeutic modalities for ameliorating conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and sundry chronic ailments.

If validated as the nation's foremost physician, Means would shoulder the responsibility of bolstering Kennedy's expansive MAHA platform, advocating for the wholesale excision of myriad additives and chemicals from the American food supply, eradicating systemic conflicts of interest within federal agencies, and incentivizing the widespread adoption of salutary dietary options in scholastic and other nutritional initiatives.

Nesheiwat, Trump's initial nominee, occupies the position of Medical Director within a New York-based urgent care organisation, having frequently provided medical commentary and perspectives on Fox News, whilst concurrently demonstrating overt support for Trump and publicly disseminating photographic evidence of their association across various social media platforms. Furthermore, her familial ties extend to her being the sister-in-law of former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, himself nominated for the role of Trump's Ambassador to the United Nations.

However, she had lately been the target of censure from Laura Loomer, a far-right confederate of Trump who played a pivotal role in the removal of several members of the president's National Security Council. Loomer articulated on X previously this week that "the notion of a surgeon general who is a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee, presently ensnared in litigation regarding medical malpractice, and who did not matriculate from a US medical institution is untenable."

Last month, independent freelance journalist Anthony Clark reported that Nesheiwat had purportedly obtained her medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten, notwithstanding her claim of possessing a degree from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine; consequently, according to an individual privy to the circumstances who spoke anonymously to elucidate the administration’s rationale, the White House rescinded Nesheiwat’s nomination due to apprehensions regarding the viability of her confirmation.

"I anticipate the sustained privilege of endorsing President Trump and collaborating intimately with Secretary Kennedy in a prominent policy capacity to 'Make America Healthy Again!'" Nesheiwat communicated via social media on Wednesday. "My central tenet remains the amelioration of the populace's health and welfare, a mission that retains its immutable imperative."

The Surgeon General, often regarded as the United States' preeminent medical authority, exercises oversight over a cadre of 6,000 officers within the U.S. Public Health Service Corps and is vested with the prerogative to disseminate public health advisories concerning emergent threats.

The White House withdrew its nomination of former Florida Republican Representative Dave Weldon to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March, a decision precipitated by key Republican senators' apprehensions regarding his vaccine skepticism and his subsequent withdrawal upon being informed by the White House of insufficient support for confirmation.