Dr. Marty Makary resigned as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday in the fourth high-profile departure of a member of the Trump administration this year.
“He’s a great doctor and he was having some difficulty, but he’s going to go on, and he’s going to do well,” Trump said of Makary on Tuesday afternoon.
Trump said on Truth Social that Kyle Diamantas, the FDA’s top food regulator, would take over as acting commissioner. Diamantas is a lawyer and does not have a medical degree.
NBC News reported last week that Trump was considering canning Makary after months of dissatisfaction with some of his work at the FDA. His tenure at the agency was marked by upheaval, including unexpected drug rejections, staff departures and mounting pressure on the agency to act on abortion pills. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump was also frustrated that Makary had not moved quickly enough to approve flavored vapes. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to “save” vaping.
Last Tuesday, the FDA announced that it had authorized fruit-flavored vapes for adults in the U.S., after months of pressure from the industry and the president.
That move ultimately triggered Makary’s decision to resign, according to a source close to Health and Human Services leadership. The source said Makary opposed the decision, and chose to resign ahead of congressional testimony Wednesday rather than publicly defend a position he didn’t support.
The abortion pill mifepristone was another point of friction. According to the source, some officials within HHS were pushing Makary to issue tighter restrictions on the pill.
Makary had faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill after he promised during his confirmation process to conduct an FDA review of the safety of the abortion medication mifepristone. The agency has not yet released a report. Republicans have been pushing to reverse a Biden-era rule that allows mifepristone to be mailed and dispensed via telehealth, not just in person.
The Supreme Court earlier this month temporarily allowed mifepristone to continue to be accessible nationwide after a lower court restricted access to in-person patients only.
Makary was a longtime surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital and is a professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
His departure from the Trump administration marks the fourth high-profile firing by the president this year. Since January, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi have been let go. In April, former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez DeRemer resigned her post amid a misconduct probe.
Politico first reported the news of Makary’s resignation.
Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, said he hopes Makary’s replacement is prepared to take on a number of challenges.
“The challenges to human health are greater than ever,” Levy said. “The hantavirus is just one example of how interconnected we are and how one part of the world affects another part of the world.”
