Trump Planning to Fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary - The Wall Street Journal.

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Trump Is Planning to Fire FDA Commissioner Marty Makary

 

The doctor, a MAHA advocate, has had a tumultuous tenure

 

By Liz Essley Whyte – Wall Street Journal -May 8, 2026

 

WASHINGTON—President Trump has signed off on a plan to fire Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, according to people familiar with the matter, following a tumultuous period for the regulator that included clashes over vaping, abortion and drug policy.

 

Makary, a former Johns Hopkins surgeon who became a frequent Make America Healthy Again surrogate on television news programs, is seen by other top administration leaders as struggling to manage his agency, sparring frequently with health department officials and at times the White House. His tenure has also been dogged by the aftereffects of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency and rapid turnover in the FDA’s leadership ranks.

 

He would become the latest top lieutenant fired under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since the ouster last summer of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the February removal of HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill.

 

Trump’s plan isn’t yet final and could change. 

 

“President Trump has assembled the most experienced and talented administration in history, an administration that continues to focus on delivering more historic victories for the American people,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.

 

Makary didn’t respond to a request for comment.

 

Top administration officials have become increasingly convinced Makary has to go because, in addition to months of turmoil, complaints from some in the pharmaceutical industry have continued to mount, people familiar with the matter said. Kennedy last year had considered installing someone else to run the FDA while Makary remained a figurehead.

 

Trump recently became frustrated with Makary for not moving fast enough to approve flavored vapes and other nicotine products. Makary in February refused to authorize blueberry and mango vape flavors from Los Angeles manufacturer Glas, worried that fruit flavors would encourage youth vaping. After the pressure from Trump, he reversed course and authorized the flavors. 

 

Makary also has run into criticism from biotech companies with rare-disease drugs, as well as patients and their advocates.  

 

“I supported his nomination because he spoke truth during COVID,” rare-disease advocate and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said of Makary on social media earlier this month. “He immediately fired the best leaders at the FDA, replaced them with anti-Trump leftists who hollowed out FDA, harmed patients, stifled innovation & drove bio-tech to China then lied about it.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, the influential president of antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, recently renewed her call for Makary to be fired. The Wall Street Journal reported that Makary said he could have stalled approval of a generic form of the abortion pill, but didn’t.

 

Makary rose in conservative circles as a measured critic of pandemic-era health efforts and the failings of the traditional medical establishment. He won more acceptance from traditional public-health figures than his boss Kennedy did, but also showed himself more willing than many of them to criticize coronavirus vaccines and the FDA’s past actions.

 

In September 2024 he joined Kennedy and other health influencers, including former surgeon-general nominee Dr. Casey Means, for a Senate panel on nutrition, marking the start of Makary’s public alliance with the MAHA movement.

 

Trump tapped Makary for the FDA post in November 2024, as Kennedy and other health department leaders bonded in meetings at Dr. Mehmet Oz’s oceanfront Florida mansion. Kennedy described Makary, along with Oz and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, as “friends” who stayed in each other’s homes and vacationed together, in a Fox News interview last year.

 

But Makary has battled with others in the health department on a range of policy issues, people familiar with the matter said. And he has increasingly relied on a small inner circle of advisers as he searched for “wins” he could tout to the White House and the press, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

 

https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/trump-planning-to-fire-fda-commissioner-marty-makary-34c072e2