Online Influencer Faces Confirmation Hearing For Surgeon General In U.s. Senate

‘Wellness influencer’ Casey Means heads to confirmation hearing

The U.S. Senate is holding a confirmation proceeding coming for wellness influencer Casey Means, nan Trump administration’s prime for surgeon general

By Dan Vergano edited by Tanya Lewis

Snow falls connected nan U.S. Capitol connected February 23, 2026 successful Washington, D.C.

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

Wellness influencer Casey Means, who near a aesculapian residency to prosecute replacement medicine, will look coming astatine a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing connected her information for U.S. surgeon general. Her original hearing, scheduled for October 30, 2025, was delayed by nan transportation of her first child.

Last May President Donald Trump nominated Means for nan occupation of nan “Nation’s Doctor,” a domiciled champion known for high-profile wellness advisories. The surgeon wide is besides caput of a uniformed nationalist wellness corps whose members service successful agencies specified arsenic nan U.S. Food and Drug Administration and nan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Means, property 38, was nominated aft nan Trump management withdrew its first information of Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat for nan occupation pursuing reports that she had made misleading claims astir her aesculapian training and subject service.

“[Means’s] world achievements, together pinch her life’s work, are perfectly outstanding,” Trump said successful a societal media station announcing her nomination.

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Means is simply a celebrated wellness influencer allied pinch Department of Health and Human Services main Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. She has based on that galore diseases, specified as diabetes, crab and Alzheimer’s, originate from mediocre diet, sleeplessness and a deficiency of exercise—all of which, she has said, yet impact cellular usability nether a “mitochondrial dysfunction” mentation of disease.

She is expected to look questions astir financial conflicts of interest complete ties to companies that waste nutritional supplements and her domiciled successful nan “functional medicine” institution she co-founded, Levels, which markets glucose monitors to patient people. (The American Academy of Family Physicians temporarily stopped awarding continuing aesculapian acquisition credits successful functional medicine successful 2014 aft uncovering immoderate of its treatments to beryllium “harmful and dangerous.” Courses that thatch clinicians really to execute circumstantial techniques are still barred.) Means said successful a authorities filing past September that she will resign from her advisory position astatine Levels if she is confirmed arsenic surgeon general.

The Senate is besides expected to mobility Means astir her views connected vaccines. Republican legislator and expert Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has progressively voiced concerns astir moves by nan HHS to undercut childhood vaccine recommendations. Means has meantime echoed Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism successful recent statements.

Educated arsenic a expert astatine nan Stanford University School of Medicine, Means resigned from her aesculapian residency training arsenic an ear, chemoreceptor and pharynx surgeon successful 2018 to co-found Levels. Means’s relative Calley Means, pinch whom she co-authored nan best-selling nutrition proposal book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection betwixt Metabolism and Limitless Health, precocious stepped down arsenic a White House advisor to Kennedy. His tenure was marked by conflict-of-interest concerns. Casey Means has criticized nan food and pharmaceutical industries for underplaying nan domiciled of patient eating successful preventing disease, a modular statement of nan Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

Bloomberg reported past October that successful Casey Means’s grounds astatine nan hearing, she plans to say, “My master history has prepared maine to beryllium an innovative, unifying and applicable leader focused connected reversing chronic disease.”

Former Trump management surgeon wide Jerome Adams and American Public Health Association executive head Georges Benjamin person criticized Means because she doesn’t person an progressive aesculapian license aliases committee certification, and they person based on that she oversells wellness arsenic a cure for disease. Her endorsement of unpasteurized earthy milk contempt its proven wellness harms and her attraction connected mitochondrial illnesses echo similar rhetoric from Kennedy.

“Casey Means is much influencer than aesculapian practitioner,” says Michigan State University’s Mariah Wellman, who studies influencer credibility successful nan wellness industry. Means is simply a “prime example” of an online entrepreneur utilizing a aesculapian grade to found credibility while speaking extracurricular nan boundaries of their training, she adds.

“I americium concerned that Means will not activity to make Americans patient and alternatively further her ain goals of becoming much celebrated online and making much money—the nonstop point she often states she is fighting against,” Wellman says.

The confirmation proceeding will statesman astatine 10 A.M. EST.