Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) sparred with surgeon general nominee Dr. Casey Means in a confirmation hearing held Wednesday morning, questioning her history of commercial sponsorships and stance against various vaccines.
Means, a wellness influencer and former campaign advisor to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, faced intense questioning from Democratic and Republican senators about her professional medical experience and her views on various products such as pesticides and raw milk.
Alsobrooks highlighted Means’ past sponsorships with companies such as ENERGYbits and Pique; both companies have faced legal troubles for selling products containing more than the legal amount of lead in certain states.
“You are railing out against pharmaceutical companies that you say are advertising these products that mislead the public, and yet you’ve received compensation from companies and you’ve promoted them in your newsletter,” Alsobrooks said. “You’re doing the same thing the pharmaceutical companies are doing by advertising and influencing people for these products that have been deemed to be unsafe for the public.”
The senator also brought up Dr. Means’s social media posts on Hepatitis B vaccines, something the nominee has been a vocal critic of for multiple years. In 2024, she wrote in an X post that giving children with healthy parents the Hepatitis B vaccine “is absolute insanity.”
“Through brief search of the products that you’ve made money off of in your newsletters, many of them have been found to contain the same neurotoxins that you claim are in these vaccinations,” Alsobrooks said.
Alsobrooks’ opposition to Means comes on the heels of her continued criticism of HHS and Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, something Means had a large hand in promoting. In February, the senator released a 70-page report in collaboration with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Wa.) entitled “Costs, Chaos and Corruption: 365 Days of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Disastrous Leadership.”
Kennedy has spoken multiple times in support of Means and her nomination.
“She has an extraordinary capacity to communicate to the American public, that is the function of the surgeon general,” Kennedy said of the nominee at a press event Monday. “We’ve been waiting a long time for her presence, we are very excited about it, and…hopefully she’ll be on very, very soon.”
The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee now faces a vote to advance Means’ nomination to the Senate floor.