Sanjula Jain-Nagpal, associate director of Policy & Research Strategy at the FDA, will be allowed to remain at the agency but will not be promoted to Commissioner Marty Makary’s deputy chief of staff.
Citing two Trump administration officials granted anonymity, Politico on Friday reported that the White House wanted Jain-Nagpal to resign after she announced herself to FDA stakeholders as Makary’s deputy chief of staff when her promotion had not yet been approved. The White House took this as a sign of insubordination, Endpoints News reported on Friday, which led to calls for her to leave the agency.
Makary pushed back on this request, insisting that the issue was a misunderstanding. After discussions cleared up “some communication issues,” it was decided that Jain-Nagpal “had not directly disobeyed” directives and the government officials eventually relented, according to the White House sources.
“She is an employee at the FDA, and that has not changed,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told Politico on Friday. Jain-Nagpal will remain a policy and research staffer at the agency.
The incident comes as high-level staffing problems continue at the FDA. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Makary himself seems to be in a perilous position after White House officials raised concerns about his management style. Some, for instance, complained that the commissioner was difficult to get a hold of and would sometimes avoid emails and meetings. Another issue raised was the infighting among Makary’s appointees.
Questions about Makary’s leadership were triggered by the resignation of George Tidmarsh as director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research amid a probe into his personal conduct. In an interview with The New York Times after his exit, Tidmarsh said that working at the FDA had been toxic, which he ascribed mainly to the behavior of Vinay Prasad, his counterpart at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Prasad himself was the subject of some high-level shuffling earlier this year: he was fired in late July and rehired just over a week later.
To replace Tidmarsh, Makary tapped Richard Pazdur, former chief of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence—though not without difficulty. Pazdur initially turned down the position, but Makary was insistent. Citing an anonymous source, Endpoints reported earlier this month that Makary spent hours at Pazdur’s house and reassured him that he would work independently of Prasad. Pazdur eventually agreed and how heads CDER.
