The Senate confirmation hearing for Dr. Casey Means, President Trump’s pick for surgeon general, was postponed Thursday after she went into labor with her first child, a health committee spokesperson confirmed to CBS News.
Means had been scheduled to appear Thursday morning before the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee. She was nominated to the position in May, after Dr. Janette Nesheiwat‘s nomination was withdrawn by the White House just before her confirmation hearing.
A Health and Human Services spokesperson said in a statement that “everyone is happy for Dr. Means and her family. This is one of the few times in life when it’s easy to ask to move a Senate hearing.”
The Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee said in a statement the hearing will be rescheduled “at a future date.”
The surgeon general oversees 6,000 members of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, and helps set the national agenda on public health.
Means co-founded Levels, a health app that can connect to glucose monitors, and has built a large following online for writing about health and wellness. She has also written about how, after attending Stanford Medical School and training to become a surgeon, she opted to leave “traditional medicine” to devote her life to “tackling the root cause of why Americans are sick.”
She’s a close ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and along with her brother, Calley Means, played a key role in coordinating Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Trump, according to some of Kennedy allies who were involved in the transition.
Both Means siblings became prominent in recent years after viral interviews decrying the influence of the food and drug industry. Their views align with Kennedy’s claims that unhealthy food and lifestyle choices underpin a vast swath of Americans’ health conditions.
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