Dr. Marty Makary is out as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, the fourth high-profile departure of a member of the Trump administration this year.
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“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 when asked about Makary Tuesday afternoon. The president did not say whether he fired Makary or asked him to resign.
The move comes several days after NBC News reported that President Donald Trump was considering canning Makary after months of dissatisfaction with some of his work at the FDA.
The news was first reported by Politico.
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. Bringing back fruit-flavored vapes and e-cigarettes was a key campaign promise Trump made in 2024.
Makary had also 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. Republicans have been pushing for a reversal of 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.
The FDA has so far not released its review of the abortion pills, and Bloomberg News reported that Makary asked officials to delay the release until after the midterm elections.
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.
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.â€
