Calley Means has resigned as a top adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., exiting without saying why as MAHA allies still press for faster action on food and chronic disease.
Associated Press reporting carried on ABC News says Means left his post with the Trump administration on Thursday. He did not give a reason in the statement described in that account.
Means was a chief advocate for the Make America Healthy Again movement and one of Kennedy’s top advisers. He had been hired as a White House adviser early in the second Trump administration and worked from a perch at the Health and Human Services Department.
His exit lands as leading MAHA voices voice discontent with what they call slow progress on food security and regulating glyphosate. It also follows months of friction inside the broader health fight over priorities and pace.
In his departure message, Means stressed respect for the president and the health secretary and cast the tenure as a beginning, not an end.
Means said he “leaves with tremendous respect” for President Donald Trump and Kennedy.
"The past two years have seen historic policy and cultural change to confront the chronic disease crisis and healthcare incentives that profit from us being sick,"
He added another line that kept the mission open-ended.
"This movement is in the first inning and just getting started."
White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster struck a warm official note. She said the administration is “grateful” for Means’ time and that “he has done a fantastic job for the MAHA movement.” An HHS representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Means used his HHS role to challenge the nation’s leading physician groups, federal agencies, and government scientists. He argued they mainly protect their own interests. Together with his sister, he pushed the case that ultraprocessed foods, additives, and pesticides help drive many chronic health conditions.
That pitch did not sail smoothly through every West Wing meeting. Means frequently clashed with senior White House officials who worried about alienating the food industry. Administration progress on food reforms has been slow going.
Health activist Kelly Ryerson, a leader of American Regeneration who is also known as Glyphosate Girl on social media, praised the grind of that fight.
"impressed that he completed over two years at HHS fighting the food battle, despite all of the obstacles presented by corporate interests."
Ryerson tied the project to a larger national stake.
"At the heart of MAHA is a shared belief that the nation’s health must not be sacrificed to corporate profit, and that a preventable slide into chronic disease is a threat to America itself,"
Kennedy had promised the first-ever government definition of ultraprocessed food in April. It did not arrive as described. That same month, FDA acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas told a conference that defining the category “is really hard.”
In August, Kennedy staffers suggested an ultraprocessed-food announcement was imminent. The rollout instead centered on a proposal for greater scrutiny of food additives, with only a passing mention of ultraprocessed foods. For MAHA advocates who wanted a clear regulatory line on industrial food, that sequence read like delay dressed up as progress.
Means’ food focus was not the only pressure point. Other MAHA figures wanted Kennedy to put more weight on “medical freedom,” including rollbacks of federal vaccine recommendations and approvals. That left the movement pulling in two directions while corporate and bureaucratic resistance already slowed the food track.
Family politics hovered nearby. Means is the brother of Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer, author, and entrepreneur. She failed to win confirmation as surgeon general earlier this year after doubts were raised over her vaccine stance.
None of that supplies Means’ personal reason for leaving. His statement, as reported, simply did not say. What it did say was that the chronic-disease fight is unfinished and that the people who profit when Americans stay sick still have a target on their model.
Corporate capture of the food supply and a federal health machine slow to define the problem are not abstract debates. They show up in the grocery aisle and the chronic-disease bill taxpayers keep paying. Means is gone. The incentives he named are not.
