(Reuters) -The White House has asked for the resignation of top aide to U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, Politico reported on Friday, citing administration officials.
Makary had sought to promote Sanjula Jain-Nagpal, a policy and research staffer at the FDA, which the White House had not yet approved, the report said.
Instead, the White House emailed leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday asking for her resignation, Politico reported.
Makary pushed back on the request to force Jain-Nagpal out of the agency, officials told Politico.
She is an employee at the FDA, and that has not changed, an HHS spokesperson told Reuters.
The White House did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Jain-Nagpal was appointed in April to serve as the associate director of policy and research strategy in the FDA’s office of the commissioner. She was a professor at Johns Hopkins University and is frequently seen on Makary’s “FDA Direct” podcast.
The development comes amid rising tensions between Makary and leadership at HHS and the White House in recent weeks. There have been other controversies involving staff Makary brought into the agency, according to media reports.
Trump administration officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have also discussed scaling back the role of Makary, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
The FDA recently appointed the agency’s veteran oncology chief Richard Pazdur to oversee the department that reviews new medicines, replacing George Tidmarsh, who resigned earlier this month amid serious concerns about his personal conduct.
(Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru)
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