By Liz Essley Whyte
WASHINGTON -- Calley Means, a confidant to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is taking a permanent post in the Trump administration, where he is expected to serve as a bridge between the Make America Healthy Again movement and President Trump's broader MAGA coalition.
Means, who earlier this year served in a temporary role at the White House, has been tapped to be a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services, charged with helping to ensure the success of the MAHA movement's policy goals, according to people familiar with the matter. In a statement, HHS confirmed that Means has been hired as a "senior advisor supporting food and nutrition policy."
Means, 40 years old, has become a ubiquitous advocate for Kennedy's movement on cable-television news shows and in Washington policy circles. He helped broker Kennedy's endorsement of Trump last year and since then has helped push forward policies on food dyes and the formulation of the MAHA report earlier this year. His sister, Dr. Casey Means, is Trump's nominee for surgeon general.
One of his challenges in his new role will be to hold the at-times shaky MAHA-MAGA alliance together. Some Kennedy-supporting influencers have criticized the secretary for his embrace of weight-loss drugs and attacked White House chief of staff Susie Wiles for her past lobbying connections.
During the presidential campaign, when Kennedy ran as an independent before backing Trump, Means sold MAHA to the president and his advisers as a politically smart way to expand the MAGA coalition, people familiar with the matter said. "There would be no MAHA movement without Calley," said Vani Hari, a wellness influencer known as the Food Babe.
Means has said he would like MAHA to be a permanent part of the Republican Party and has advocated for the MAHA agenda to have an essential role in Republicans' game plan for the midterm elections.
MAHA's success "does run through the political success of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy," he said at an event at the Heritage Foundation this summer.
Means followed his sister into the wellness business after their mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2021, an experience that deepened the siblings' disenchantment with the U.S. healthcare system.
Calley Means is divesting himself from his company that he co-founded in 2022, TrueMed, according to people familiar with the situation. A TrueMed representative confirmed he no longer has a role at the company. The business offers patients letters of medical necessity for such items as saunas, bicycles and supplements so they can use pretax dollars in health savings accounts and flexible-spending accounts to pay for them.
Means and his sister co-wrote a bestselling book, "Good Energy," which pinpoints ultraprocessed food as the main culprit in a range of diseases. The book was passed around Trump campaign circles before Kennedy endorsed Trump and entered the MAGA fold, with some aides viewing it as the "MAHA Bible."
Katie Miller, a former White House aide who is married to Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, said she read the book and later met Calley Means last year at the Florida house of Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is now administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Miller said Means, even while out of government, is effective at translating MAHA ideas to White House officials.
"He is the synthesizer to the White House," she said. "He takes their big ideas and makes it into the process, procedure, that makes sense to the White House."
Means has butted heads with advocates for farmers and pesticide makers. He was instrumental in crafting the initial MAHA report, which raised alarms about the ubiquity of pesticides, and the September MAHA strategy, which many viewed as softer on the chemicals. In between the releases of the two documents, he was dispatched to farm visits and meetings with agriculture groups, alongside White House officials.
A critic of the weight-loss drugs known as GLP-1s, Means praised Trump's deal with the weight-loss drugmakers for lowering the costs of the drugs in a recent interview with the podcaster Megyn Kelly. But he said the government needed an "all-of-the-above strategy" on improving health outcomes. "Obesity is not a drug deficiency," he said. "We have a spiritual crisis in this country."
Means is expected to help guide the administration's revamp of U.S. dietary guidelines, which are expected to embrace saturated fat and protein, as well as the overhaul of the Food and Drug Administration's standards for food ingredients.
Through his company and advocacy, Means has embraced some wellness interventions that aren't proven to scientifically provide a benefit but are often harmless, such as supplements, and others that are dangerous, such as raw milk, said Bob Goldberg, vice president of the nonprofit Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
"If you want to give up fluoride toothpaste, fine, do it," Goldberg said, referring to Means's critiques of fluoride. "If I were you, I would not drink raw milk."
Write to Liz Essley Whyte at liz.whyte@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 18, 2025 19:02 ET (00:02 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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