Trump's MAHA influencer pick for surgeon general goes before Senate

Ars Technica · Feb 25, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, will appear before the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday and is likely to face scrutiny over her qualifications for becoming the country’s top doctor. Though Means holds a medical degree from Stanford Medical School, she dropped out of her medical residency and holds no active medical license. Instead, she has pursued a career as a wellness influencer, embracing “functional” medicine, an ill-defined form of alternative medicine. She co-founded a company called Levels, which promotes intensive health tracking, including the use of continuous glucose monitoring for people without diabetes or prediabetes, which is not backed by evidence. Last year, an analysis by The Washington Post found that Means earned over half a million dollars between 2024 and 2025 from making deals with companies described as selling “diagnostic testing,” “herbal remedies and wellness products,” and “teas, supplements, and elixirs.” But Means is best known as an ally to anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a popular influencer among Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) followers. In 2024, Means and her brother Calley Means—also a close Kennedy ally and Trump administration official—wrote a book some consider MAHA’s bible: Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. The book provides dietary and lifestyle advice, including a recommendation 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.”