WASHINGTON — Calley Means, a leader of the Make America Healthy Again movement, resigned from the Trump administration Thursday, signaling a further erosion of a coalition that helped propel President Donald Trump to power a second time.

Means, a top adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, was a key official behind policies around food quality, including an effort to increase disclosure of the chemicals in food, remove artificial food dyes and ban soda from the federal food assistance program known as SNAP.

He also worked on an executive order to support the development of psychedelic medications.

“I leave with tremendous respect for President Trump and R.F.K. Jr. — two historic figures who are committed to confronting a corrupt D.C. bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo,” Means said in a statement, referring to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Frustrated by Lack of Progress

In recent months, though, he began to feel stymied in his attempts to deliver on promises to improve the food supply, such as by defining ultraprocessed foods, an initial step to regulating them, according to a person close to him.

Vani Hari, a MAHA leader and healthy eating influencer, said that a turning point for Means came when the White House roiled the MAHA movement with an executive order supporting the increased production of glyphosate, a pesticide that the movement is particularly focused on eliminating.

The second Trump administration secured agreements from food companies that pledged to remove artificial dyes and seed oils from their products. Means also played a key role in MAHA reports outlining goals to reduce chronic disease in children.

Means could be outspoken and direct and was a pugnacious profile on social media. In recent days, his frustration became apparent in his posts on one of his signature issues — the health effects of ultraprocessed food consumption, which he said was “highly tied to our chronic disease crisis that is killing Americans and bankrupting our country.”

Still, he wrote in his resignation statement that “the past two years have seen historic policy and cultural change to confront the chronic disease crisis and health care incentives that profit from us being sick. This movement is in the first inning and just getting started.”

Trump last year nominated Means’ sister, Casey Means, to be surgeon general but withdrew her when it became clear that she did not have enough Senate votes for confirmation.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Christina Jewett/Al Drago
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