Dr. Marty Makary is out as FDA commissioner

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.

President Trump Signs Executive Order Reclassifying Marijuana As Low Risk Drug — FDA Commissioner Marty Makary in the Oval Office of the White House in December.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images file

Politico first reported the news.

Last Tuesday, the FDA announced that it had authorized fruit-flavored vapes for adults in the U.S. following months of pressure from Trump and the industry. 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 to reverse a Biden-era rule that allows mifepristone to be mailed and dispensed via telehealth, not just in person.

The Supreme Court 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 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 is the fourth high-profile firing by Trump this year. Since January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been let go. In April, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez DeRemer resigned 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.”

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