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PBS News Hour - Segments

Why FDA Commissioner Makary is on the ropes after months of turmoil

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

4.11K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2026

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Multiple outlets are reporting that Trump is set to fire Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary. The news comes after a tumultuous tenure since his installment as FDA head last year. Stephanie Sy speaks with Liz Whyte, health policy reporter at the Wall Street Journal, for more. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0

Multiple outlets are reporting that President Trump is set to fire the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Marty McCarrie.

0:08.0

While that hasn't happened at this hour, all of this comes after a tumultuous tenure since his installment as FDA had last year.

0:16.0

Stephanie Sy has our look.

0:18.0

Omna, Dr. McCarrie, a Make America Healthy Again advocate, has faced broad criticism from the White

0:26.0

House as well as pharmaceutical industry groups over his handling of the agency that oversees

0:31.4

drug and vaccine approvals. He's also been accused of confusion at the agency and was recently the target of criticism from anti-abortion groups for not restricting access to Mifopristone, a medication used for abortions.

0:46.0

This has all raised a lot of questions about the turmoil and the political pressure within this agency.

0:53.6

Liz White, who covers health policy at the

0:55.4

Wall Street Journal, joins me now with more. Liz, a lot of media outlets are reporting this

1:00.7

firing plan, but you broke the story. You've written about the criticism, the pressure

1:05.5

McCurry has been facing from different angles. And you're reporting, are you seeing a sort of

1:10.4

straw that broke the

1:12.0

camel's back here with the caveat, of course, that the president could still change his mind?

1:18.7

Yeah, we know a lot of the frustration with McCarrie's leadership has been building over time.

1:25.8

But we also know that this past weekend, the president himself grew

1:29.7

quite frustrated that he felt Marty McCarrie was slow walking his agenda on flavored vapes.

1:36.8

And he made that frustration known. And we saw Tuesday that for the first time in years, the FDA

1:44.0

approved blueberry and mango flavored

1:46.6

vapes.

1:47.5

And they've taken a number of other tobacco-related actions since then.

1:51.9

And we also know that in addition, the complaints from pharmaceutical companies were also

1:57.8

something that White House officials had in mind as they considered whether

...

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