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make america healthy again
Senators Urged to Oppose 'Wholly Unqualified' Trump Surgeon General Nominee
The coalition noted that Dr. Casey Means does not have an active medical license and "has expressed misinformed and conspiratorial thinking on matters of public health."
Jul 25, 2025
In a Friday letter to senators, 32 consumer, health, and other advocacy groups argued that Dr. Casey Means, President Donald Trump's proposed surgeon general, "is not a serious nominee and is wholly unqualified to serve as a lead U.S. public health official."
Trump initially chose Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a Fox News contributor and medical director of an urgent care network, for the post. However, amid scrutiny of how Nesheiwat portrayed her credentials, the president announced Means as his new pick in a May social media post, touting her commitment to the administration's "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) agenda.
"Casey has impeccable 'MAHA' credentials, and will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans," Trump said. "Her academic achievements, together with her life's work, are absolutely outstanding. Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History. Congratulations to Casey! Secretary Kennedy looks forward to working with Dr. Janette Nesheiwat in another capacity at HHS."
While Means has a medical degree from the Stanford School of Medicine, "her Oregon medical license has been inactive since 2019," according to Newsweek reporting cited in the Friday letter. The coalition highlighted that Means "dropped out of her surgical residency before completing it," and "states that it was after leaving traditional medical practice that she began to 'understand the real reasons why people get sick' and properly treat them."
"The range of unscientific ideas, wellness products, and conspiratorial claims that Means is associated with makes her a less-than-ideal candidate."
"Colleagues from her residency have criticized her for wrongly perpetuating the idea that modern medicine is a conspiracy to keep people sick," the groups wrote. "Indeed, in her blog posts and interviews as a wellness influencer, Means has expressed misinformed and conspiratorial thinking on matters of public health. She has called birth control pills a 'disrespect of life.'"
Means has "declined to distance herself from anti-vaccine positions espoused" by Kennedy, the letter notes. She has also "refused to say if she thinks vaccines are effective, and has even expressed skepticism about the hepatitis B vaccination for babies."
The letter also warns of "potential conflicts of interest," explaining that "she founded and is the chief medical officer of Levels, a membership-based continuous glucose monitoring technology company. If she does not step down from this role and divest from the company, she will likely be engaging directly on matters as surgeon general from which she stands to personally profit."
One of the surgeon general's primary responsibilities is leading the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which is made up of thousands of civil servants—including many "subject matter experts who have already been wrongfully terminated by the Trump administration and by directives from Secretary Kennedy," the letter says. Means "may be out of her depth" in this role, as "she has little to no managerial experience in the context of government agencies or scientific research."
The other fundamental responsibility of the job is educating the public about the best available science and issuing public health advisories. According to the letter, "The range of unscientific ideas, wellness products, and conspiratorial claims that Means is associated with makes her a less-than-ideal candidate to serve in a role that requires being a credible health communicator for the country and upholding sound science."
"These are seriously disqualifying characteristics for the surgeon general of the U.S. and the Trump administration should immediately rescind Means' nomination for this position," the coalition concluded. "If they do not, and her confirmation proceeds to the Senate floor, senators must vote no."
The coalition is co-led by Public Citizen and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Other members include AFL-CIO, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Doctors for America, Healthy Schools Campaign, Labor Campaign for Single Payer, MomsRising, National Nurses United, and Progressive Democrats of America.
The U.S. Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans, hasn't yet formally rejected any Trump nominees, though Vice President JD Vance broke a tie to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and over 20 nominations have been withdrawn, according to a tracker maintained by the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post.
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Trump EPA 'Hitting New Heights of Absurdity' With Plan to Reapprove Pesticide Dicamba
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," said one campaigner.
Jul 23, 2025
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's supposed goal to "Make America Healthy Again," his administration is moving to reregister dicamba, a pesticide twice banned by federal courts, for use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans.
In response to legal challenges from the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, National Family Farm Coalition, and the Pesticide Action Network, courts ruled against the herbicide's registration in 2020 and again last year.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced its latest push to allow the use of dicamba on Wednesday, detailing proposed mitigation efforts—including temperature restrictions and the use of drift reduction agents—that EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou told The Washington Post would "minimize impact to certain species and the environment."
The EPA's proposed registration is now open for public comment until August 22, but supporters and critics are already weighing in. While the pesticide companies welcomed the agency's attempt to allow dicamba products from BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, the advocacy groups behind the court battles sharply called out the Trump administration.
"EPA has had seven long years of massive drift damage to learn that dicamba cannot be used safely with GE dicamba-resistant crops," said Bill Freese, science director at the Center for Food Safety, in a statement.
"If we allow these proposed decisions to go through, farmers and residents throughout rural America will again see their crops, trees, and home gardens decimated by dicamba drift, and natural areas like wildlife refuges will also suffer," he warned. "EPA must reverse course and withdraw its plans to reapprove this hazardous herbicide."
Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, declared that "Trump's EPA is hitting new heights of absurdity by planning to greenlight a pesticide that's caused the most extensive drift damage in U.S. agricultural history and twice been thrown out by federal courts."
"This is what happens when pesticide oversight is controlled by industry lobbyists," he charged. "Corporate fat cats get their payday and everyone else suffers the consequences."
The centers pointed out that "the decision to seek reapproval comes less than a month after Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, was installed as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The ASA has been a vocal cheerleader for dicamba since its initial approval for use on soybeans in 2016, despite the fact that soybeans have been the most widely damaged crop."
The Post asked the EPA whether Kunkler's recent appointment influenced the dicamba decision. In response, Vaseliou said that the "EPA follows the federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act when registering pesticides" and any insinuation otherwise was "further 'journalism' malpractice by The Washington Post."
After Kunkler's new job was made public last month, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) also flagged his "years of advocating against restrictions on farm chemicals such as glyphosate and atrazine," and stressed that "these are the very pesticides singled out in Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' report for their potential links to chronic illness in children."
"The appointment of Kyle Kunkler sends a loud, clear message: Industry influence is back in charge at the EPA," said EWG president Ken Cook at the time. "It's a stunning reversal of the campaign promises Trump and RFK Jr. made to their MAHA followers—that they'd stand up to chemical giants and protect children from dangerous pesticides."
"To those who genuinely believed the MAHA movement would lead to meaningful change on toxic exposures: We understand the hope," he said. "But hope doesn't regulate pesticides. People with power do. And this pick all but guarantees the status quo will remain untouched."
Cook—whose group has also sounded the alarm about dicamba—concluded that Kunkler's EPA post "is but the latest example of the Trump administration's sweeping betrayal of environmental protection and public health."
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House Oversight Democrat Wants RFK Jr. to Answer for 'Shoddy MAHA Report'
Noting potential use of "AI to sidestep scientific and academic rigor," Rep. Stephen Lynch demanded "information about the process by which the report was drafted, reviewed, published, and later amended."
Jun 02, 2025
The top Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday in response to the Trump administration's recent "Make America Healthy Again" report and exposés about fake citations, mischaracterizations of studies, and apparent use of artificial intelligence.
Since The MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again was published last month by U.S. President Donald Trump's Make America Healthy Again Commission, academics, campaigners, journalists, and lawmakers have raised concerns about it.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), who took over as acting ranking member of the House committee following the May death of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), highlighted recent reporting by NOTUS and The Washington Post in his Monday letter to RFK Jr.
"Despite the report's insistence on 'pursuing truth' and 'embracing science,' public reporting has revealed that the report cites scientific studies that do not exist, misrepresents the findings of certain studies, and may have used artificial intelligence (AI) to draw conclusions that are not based on actual scientific research," Lynch's letter states.
"Given your history of promoting medical misinformation and conspiracy theories, I am concerned that the report—which you oversaw as chair of President Trump's Make America Healthy Again Commission—manipulates and falsifies science to advance President Trump's political objectives," he wrote to Kennedy.
The MAHA repot has also cited an article of which I am first author wrongly www.notus.org/health-scien...
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— Pim Cuijpers ( @pimcuijpers.bsky.social) May 31, 2025 at 5:04 AM
NOTUS first revealed that the report cites studies that don't exist last Thursday. The outlet then noted Friday that "at least 18 of the original report's citations have been edited or completely swapped out for new references since NOTUS first revealed the errors Thursday morning. While some of the original report's inconsistencies have been changed, a few of the new updated citations continue to misinterpret scientific studies."
Meanwhile, the Post reported Thursday that "some references include 'oaicite' attached to URLs—a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of 'oaicite' is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company."
According to the newspaper:
A common hallmark of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, is unusually repetitive content that does not sound human or is inaccurate—as well as the tendency to "hallucinate" studies or answers that appear to make sense but are not real.
AI technology can be used legitimately to quickly survey the research in a field. But Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington who studies AI, said he was shocked by the sloppiness in the MAHA report.
"Frankly, that's shoddy work," he said. "We deserve better."
Lynch also used that term in his letter to Kennedy, which says that "to understand the ways that the Department of Healthand Human Services (HHS) may have used AI to sidestep scientific and academic rigor in drafting the teport, I demand information about the process by which the report was drafted, reviewed, published, and later amended."
"It appears that the administration is already trying to cover up its shoddy work," he wrote. "The same day that these false citations were first reported, the version of the report available online was quickly updated to remove all 'oaicite' demarcations and to fix certain citations. For example, a citation that previously linked to a nonexistent study was replaced with a citation to a similar study by the same lead author—a study which notably has a different title and different co-authors."
"These substantive changes came after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised that 'some formatting issues' would be addressed and HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said that 'minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected,'" Lynch pointed out, demanding answers to a list of questions and documents by June 16.
First Trump and RFK Jr. gutted research, silenced scientists, and blocked lifesaving public health guidance. Now it seems they may have used AI to cite fake studies in their so-called “MAHA Report.” These people are unserious — but they pose a serious risk to Americans' health.
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— Senator Chris Van Hollen ( @vanhollen.senate.gov) May 30, 2025 at 2:58 PM
In the letter's final paragraph, the congressman reminded Kennedy that "the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate 'any matter' at 'any time' under House Rule X."
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