Trump signs off on plan to remove FDA Commissioner Marty Makary

Trump has signed off on a plan to remove FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, a move that would thrust the nation’s top drug regulator into another round of upheaval and raise new questions about political control over medicine, food safety and vaccine policy.

The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, did not immediately respond to requests for comment, leaving the decision in limbo rather than a formally announced firing. Even so, the move marked a serious escalation inside the federal health bureaucracy, where concerns had already intensified over Makary’s handling of drug approvals, vaccines and the FDA’s approach to mifepristone, the abortion pill.

A source close to the White House said they had been told Makary was “done,” a sign that the effort had advanced inside the administration even without final paperwork. The next question is who would run an agency that sits at the center of prescription drug reviews, food-safety oversight and some of the most politically charged public health decisions in Washington.

Makary, a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, was confirmed as FDA commissioner last March and arrived with a reputation as a sharp critic of parts of the medical establishment. He has written best-selling books on health care costs and what he sees as failures in modern medicine, and he became a prominent public advocate for the Make America Healthy Again movement associated with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A forced exit would also fit a broader churn across federal health agencies. Leaders have already departed from the CDC, the NIH and other institutions, leaving the administration to lean more heavily on acting officials and temporary decision-making. At the FDA, that kind of turnover can slow reviews, unsettle manufacturers and deepen fights over controversial treatments, vaccines and reproductive health policy.

For drug makers, public health officials and patients awaiting decisions, the stakes are immediate. The FDA sits at the center of the nation’s health system, and a commissioner under pressure from the White House can affect not only approvals and enforcement, but also the agency’s ability to act independently. Removing Makary would signal that Trump wants tighter political control over scientific regulators, bringing the FDA deeper into the same turmoil that has already shaken other major health institutions.