Bill Cassidy says new FDA chief lacks needed drug and medical device experience
EXCLUSIVE — Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said the new acting Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Kyle Diamantas, does not have the prerequisite expertise to oversee the agency’s complex medical device and pharmaceutical oversight.
President Donald Trump’s first commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, abruptly resigned from office on Tuesday afternoon following a series of controversies at the FDA, one of the largest regulatory agencies within the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services. Diamantas, previously director of the Human Foods Program at the FDA, was selected to be the acting director when Makary’s resignation was announced.
Cassidy, who faces a tough Republican primary for reelection on Saturday, told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview that he hopes Diamantas is “only the acting director for a very short period of time.”
Diamantas was one of the leading architects of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a policy document governing federally funded food programs and the crowning jewel of the Make America Healthy Again movement. He has also overseen the agency’s “Operation Stork Speed,” meant to improve infant formula supply safety testing and food labeling reform.
Cassidy, a medical doctor who specialized in liver disease, described Diamantas as “a food guy, good guy, no complaints.”
But he said he is concerned that Diamantas, a lawyer by training, does not have the experience with the complex issues of medical devices, including the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, that makes up “the bulk of their business” at the FDA.
“I don’t mean to disrespect him, but if you look at the Food and Drug Administration, the relative importance of both parts of that, having an experience in healthcare and the approval of drugs is far more important than the food,” Cassidy said.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the face of the administration’s MAHA agenda, said on X Tuesday he has “full confidence” in Diamantas to temporarily lead the agency and that the search for a new commissioner “is already underway and we will move forward with urgency.”
Cassidy’s committee is responsible for confirming the president’s FDA commissioner nominee.
As chairman, Cassidy has had several clashes with the White House over confirmations, including for Kennedy due to his support for decreasing the number of vaccines children receive.
Critics contend that Cassidy had a strong hand in blocking the nomination of Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Dr. Casey Means, who did not have enough Republican votes in the HELP committee to advance. Means’s nomination was eventually withdrawn. She was replaced by former Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier, who also awaits a confirmation hearing before Cassidy’s committee.
Cassidy’s detractors also frequently emphasize his financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, which they say make him opposed to MAHA.
Calley Means, the brother of Trump’s former surgeon general nominee and current White House health policy adviser, took aim at Cassidy in an X post following the withdrawal of his sister’s nomination, saying that he personified “dark forces” against Americans’ health.
“Bill Cassidy is a mindless avatar for his donors and a blind defender of the status quo system that is profiting from American sickness,” Means said, adding that he will “lose his re-election and immediately work for the pharmaceutical industry.”
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