Calley Means Resigns From the White House in a Blow to the MAHA Agenda

Calley Means, a senior adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and one of the best known faces of the Make America Healthy Again movement, resigned from the Trump administration on Thursday.

Means told the Wall Street Journal that he had quit, according to Reuters. People familiar with the matter told the Journal that he had grown frustrated by White House delays to some of Kennedy's most popular policy ideas, and that he blamed others in the administration for giving food companies and special interests too much sway.

A public goodbye

In a resignation post on X, Means said he was leaving with tremendous respect for President Donald Trump and Kennedy. They had laid out a vision, he wrote, of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick.

He said it had been an honor to advocate for MAHA moms in the administration and to steer policies that included Dietary Guidelines reform, psychedelic reform, removing soda from SNAP, removing food dyes, GRAS reform and an overhaul of government food procurement. More policy and cultural change had happened around those goals in the past two years than at any time in history, he wrote, and he said the movement was just getting started.

Trump, asked about the departure in a gaggle with reporters on Thursday afternoon, distanced himself from his departing adviser. "I don't know him very well," Trump said, before adding that "MAHA is great," according to the Daily Caller.

A central figure in the Kennedy alliance

Means, an author and wellness entrepreneur who advocates reform of nutrition policy, helped build the alliance he is now leaving. During the 2024 election he arranged a phone call that helped clinch Kennedy's endorsement of Trump. Trump later appointed Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the most powerful health post in the federal government.

Means served as a White House adviser from March to October as a special government employee, then stepped into a permanent role in November last year as a senior adviser supporting food and nutrition policy. Bloomberg reported that he played a leading role in holding together Kennedy's coalition of supporters ahead of the midterm elections, and that he drove a proposal to increase transparency in food ingredients. His departure is likely to come as a relief to big food companies, Bloomberg reported, after they fought his effort to create a federal definition of ultra processed food.

Twelve days before the election

The resignation lands 12 days before Election Day. Administration officials have stressed for months that food policy would be central to motivating the Kennedy supporters who backed Trump two years ago to vote for Republicans in the midterms, the Daily Caller reported. Means has now publicly indicated that he believes the administration is obstructing those changes.

His sister, Casey Means, also a close Kennedy ally, had her nomination for US surgeon general withdrawn by Trump earlier this year, Reuters reported.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.