Trump's first pick for surgeon general to still work for HHS
President Trump recently switched his nomination for Surgeon General but his first pick, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, will continue to work at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr said during a Thursday interview with Fox News' Bret Baier that the administration will put Nesheiwat in 'a very good place,' in the agency.
The White House pulled Nesheiwat's nomination after her credentials were scrutinized last month. CBS News reported that the physician and former Fox News contributor graduated from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, not the University of Arkansas School of Medicine, as she said after her nomination was announced.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration replaced Nesheiwat with wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means.
Means has been a major influence in Kennedy's Make American Health Again movement since last year, along with her brother Calley Means, who serves as a White House senior adviser focusing on food and MAHA health issues.
Means is a graduate of Stanford Medical School and began a residency program at the Oregon Health and Science University before eventually dropping out.
'Casey Means, we felt, was the best person to bring the vision of MAHA to the American public,' Kennedy said.
Kennedy pointed to Means' academic record, noting that she graduated top of her medical school class, and her willingness to consider new approaches to medicine as reasons she is qualified to be Surgeon General.
'She walked away from traditional medicine because she was not curing patients. She couldn't get anybody within her profession to look at the nutrition contributions to illness,' Kennedy added.
An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions from The Hill about what position Nesheiwat will hold. Dr. Nesheiwat could not be reached for comment.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
31 minutes ago
- The Hill
For members of Congress, MAHA isn't just great policy — it's also smart politics
Believe it: The coalition behind 'Making America Healthy Again' will play an outsized role in deciding the 2026 Congressional midterm elections in more than 500 days from now in November 2026. That's because the issues that go into MAHA close the gender gap and maintain the voter margins with young voters. But MAHA has been years in the making, going back long before President Trump won his second term and even prior to the political accession of current Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. My organization is now prioritizing the voters in the top 50 battleground U.S. House seats and 10 U.S. Senate seats, including the open seats in New Hampshire, Michigan, and Minnesota. The voters in all of the prioritized battleground Congressional races fully support the common-sense, nonpartisan health policies about making our nation healthy again. We will be bringing them and their constituent voices to meet in person with their U.S. senators and Representatives in Washington starting next month. U.S. senators who oppose their constituents' heartfelt, passionate support for these policies will lose in 2026. This includes making epinephrine an over-the-counter drug (something FDA Commissioner Martin Makary voiced support for in his March confirmation hearing) the elimination of taxpayer-funded sodas from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, expansion of regenerative farming, and elimination of glyphosate herbicides and other poisons in the food supply. Conversely, senators and representatives, regardless of party, who support their constituents and the policies we work for will earn the support of their constituents on election day. Our coalition is truly bipartisan, based on an Executive Order issued by a Republican president and implemented by a scion of the Democratic Party. This has helped my organization scale to become the fastest-growing nationwide public health advocacy coalition, which is ready to be activated in a micro-targeted deployment to battleground U.S. House and Senate races in the midterm elections. Perhaps most importantly, leaders in Congress from both parties support our goals. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are all acutely aware of the power our coalition has now, and all four are working with us in support of their respective conferences. Why? Because the 50 battleground House seats and 10 U.S. Senate seats will be decided by mere thousands of votes. Our coalition will be a deciding factor in many if not all of these toss-up Congressional election races. What differentiates our organization from any other entity is our unprecedented structure and confluence with the electorate's mindset and policy priorities. We are free of the corporate groups that traditionally mete out retribution upon those who boldly do what is right. And we have secured the immediate branding of a disruptive force that enjoys trust from voters trust on the policies they care most about. Don't take our word for it. Every congressional incumbent in a battleground district or state has met with us, and many are relying upon us and our voters to be re-elected. In more than 30 years of working with Congress and White Houses of both Republican and Democratic political parties, I have never seen so much certainty among congressional leaders that these issues will determine their political fate and build the next congressional majority. With 522 days to go until election day, each senator and representative working with us understands that his or her race is being won, right now, by MAHA issues and MAHA voters. Robert K. Houton is founder of the Make America Healthy Again Coalition, is a former U.S. Senate candidate from Maryland and candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Vets Are Working Out of Closets Because of Trump's Nonsensical War on the VA
Donald Trump's chaotic and cannibalistic plan to punish millions of federal employees by forcing them to return to the office has created quite a large problem for Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. Veterans make up 30 percent of the federal workforce, and they're feeling the squeeze as various agencies — as well as veterans hospitals and military bases — are being forced to take in an influx of employees who were hired under remote work authorities. The Washington Post reported this week that the Veterans Health Administration is short nearly 60,000 workstations, and that at one hospital a suicide prevention specialist had to take calls outside because too many people were trying to use the internet inside. The Post also notes that cramped employees have complained about working in closets, makeshift offices, and other undesirable locations. The strain is taking a toll on morale, as is the specter of mass layoffs. The VA's plans to fire 15 percent of its workforce — around 83,000 employees — is yet another cruel act by Trump, Collins, and now-former government employee Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that will further hurt federal employees, members of the military, and the veterans they serve. Details of the administration's plan to fire 83,000 VA employees are vague, constantly shifting, and cloaked behind nondisclosure agreements. The VA already suffers from a shortage of professionals like doctors and nurses, and many have taken voluntary retirement offers. Early retirement packages are being pushed on thousands of employees, many of whom are reportedly leaving because they're afraid they'll be laid off anyway or don't want to continue to work in cramped and hostile work environments. Internal documents obtained by the Post show plans to merge suicide prevention, homelessness programs, LGBTQ+ outreach, and mental health offices — all in the name of 'consolidation.' But in practice, that means stripping specialized services from veterans who need them. Trump's deranged war on institutions like Columbia and Harvard isn't helping, either. Columbia's Resilience Center for Veterans & Families — which provides trauma-informed care, train clinicians, conduct cutting-edge mental health research, and offer free therapy to veterans and their families — is at risk. The administration has already cut VA research contracts at Harvard, abruptly terminating critical efforts focused on suicide prevention, toxic exposure, and cancer screening. Gutting these life-saving programs isn't about budget-tightening; it's part of a political war against universities — and veterans are paying the price. Trump and Republicans in Congress are still trying to gaslight the American people with their 'big, beautiful' reconciliation bill that cuts taxes for the richest Americans, raises them on the poorest, and adds trillions to the federal deficit. This is how we know Trump's cuts are not to save money. They are intended to cause pain and death in the veterans community he clearly does not care about. Veterans groups are starting to sound the alarm, organizing rallies like the Unite for Veterans one set for June 6 — D-Day — to protest the cuts. The truth is that this isn't just bureaucratic restructuring. It's a purge, one that is debilitating for those who continue to risk life and limb for ungrateful politicians like Trump and Collins. More from Rolling Stone Trump Admin Moves to Create 'Remigration' Office to Supercharge Deportations The White House Is Big Mad That a Court Blocked Trump's Tariffs Trump Admin Misleads the Supreme Court About Its South Sudan Deportations Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
I'm a physician and I'm worried that our health agencies are facing increasing chaos
The American health system is bleeding out, and it desperately needs a real doctor. Leading Health and Human Services (HHS) today is like navigating a chaotic hospital — patients in every hallway, monitors screaming, seconds ticking away. Yet, instead of a seasoned physician who triages and trusts proven protocols, that hospital is overseen by an activist named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A patient's oxygen level plummets; nurses turn to HHS Secretary Kennedy. Instead of orders, they get a lecture on conspiracies. Chaos follows. That chaos is now national. Our health agencies are trying to perform open-heart surgery while debating the effectiveness of a scalpel. Scientists who should be developing next-generation cancer vaccines are, instead, defending 60-year-old elementary science. Conspiracy ideology is beginning to take over, and we're all going to pay the price. I'm a board-certified physician and one of the most-followed online, and since Kennedy took office, I've been forced to swap from fact-checking Instagram influencers to fact-checking the nation's top public-health official. Our nation's health system is in shambles, and the leadership of HHS plays a pivotal role in fixing this disaster. That's why it's deeply alarming that Kennedy, who continues to spread misinformation and denies the fundamentals of medicine, remains at the helm of the agency. Although he claims he's "not anti-vaccine," his words and actions tell a different story. He recklessly attacks vaccine efficacy, spreads disproven theories linking vaccines to autism, and denies fundamental virology — from diseases like HIV, measles, and more. I'm all for healthy skepticism, but scientific skepticism means investigating data, not cherry-picking it … or making it up. These aren't privately held beliefs either — a post on his active X account states that the HPV vaccine "increases cervical-cancer risk" all despite mountains of real-world data showing up to 88% drops in cancer among vaccinated teens. Sweden, England, and even the CDC surveillance report plunging pre-cancer rates. Recently, he claimed, "50% of the population is diabetic" and that "one out of every three kids" already has the disease. In reality, true estimates put China's diabetes prevalence around 12%, and the U.S. pediatric figure closer to one in 300. If one of my interns inflated numbers by a factor of 10, they'd be sent back to remedial math. Kennedy does it regularly on primetime television. Worse, he's now canceled $12 billion in disease outbreak prevention programs, proposed a 26% cut to the NIH budget, and pink-slipped roughly 20,000 public-health scientists and staff. Those decisions have consequences: dozens of federally funded vaccine clinics in Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Texas and Washington were canceled just as measles cases blew past 1,000 — the worst surge in a generation. He's dismantling the firehouse while buildings are burning. Public health cannot survive an HHS head who guts the programs that keep us safe and then fans the very myths that make outbreaks explode. Kennedy's long record of undermining proven public health measures and spreading scientific falsehoods makes him a threat to millions of Americans. Certainly, he should never have been confirmed to lead the office in the first place, but choosing to leave him in charge is like handing the keys to a driver who continues to insist that stop signs and red lights are optional. Today, I say that Kennedy is the wrong person to lead HHS. The integrity of our nation's health agencies demands leadership grounded in facts, research, and transparency — not misinformation. Doctors like me take an oath to 'do no harm.' We must call out leaders like Secretary Kennedy when they cause great harm to public health. We must stop the bleeding.
