Earlier than she was chosen as Donald Trump’s newest nominee for Surgeon Common, Dr. Casey Means got here from the world of healthcare startups – and cofounded one with a tech entrepreneur who’s now a key Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) operative in control of dismantling the IRS.
In 2019, Means, a holistic medication physician who rose to prominence within the Trump-adjacent Make America Wholesome Once more motion (additionally referred to as MAHA), launched Ranges, a biowearables and health-tracking firm, with Sam Corcos, who’s now main efforts at DOGE to assemble a “mega API” that compiles American taxpayers’ information. The corporate, whose first product was a blood glucose tracker linked to a $400-per-month subscription app, obtained tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} funding over the previous a number of years – notably from Andreessen-Horowitz’s enterprise capital arm a16z, which led its $12 million seed spherical and its Collection A spherical.
“Each the well being of our individuals and the fiscal solvency of our nation are at stake,” Marc Andreessen, now a Trump advisor and a vital participant within the rise of the tech proper, stated in a press launch asserting its Collection A extension again in August 2024. “Ranges is a case examine of the applying of know-how to each.”
Their affiliation is certainly not hidden: Corcos and Means each describe themselves as cofounders and at the moment energetic workers of Ranges on their LinkedIn pages, with Corcos listed as CEO. In addition they have a joint authors web page on the Ranges weblog, steadily co-hosted an organization podcast, are talked about in press releases concerning the firm, and sometimes highlighted every others’ works on their social media feeds. “Tremendous proud to share that Ranges Co-founder, Casey Means, MD, alongside along with her brother, Calley Means, sat down with Joe Rogan to speak concerning the significance of metabolic well being,” Corcos posted on LinkedIn final October. “It’s wonderful to see the affect they’re having and the way they’ve introduced this urgent concern into the nationwide discourse.”
Means, now an in depth affiliate of Well being & Human Companies secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was introduced as Trump’s nominee for Surgeon Common after the president abruptly pulled his authentic decide, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, the day earlier than she was as a consequence of testify in entrance of the Senate. Dr. Nesheiwat, a former Fox Information contributor, additionally occurs to be the sister-in-law of former Nationwide Safety Advisor Mike Waltz, who had fallen out of favor with the White Home for his position in Sign-gate. (Final week, Trump introduced that he was reassigning Waltz to be his Ambassador to the United Nations, a task extensively seen as punishment for including a journalist to a labeled group chat.)
Corcos, who can also be a particular advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has turn out to be a public-facing determine in tales about DOGE, the quasi-governmental company led by Elon Musk to drastically cut back the federal authorities’s workforce. (Disclaimer: This reporter attended school with Corcos at Claremont McKenna School.) In response to reviews from Wired, behind the scenes, Corcos is in control of efforts to consolidate all taxpayer information into one single database, a transfer that has alarmed safety analysts and IRS engineers – each for the velocity at which DOGE is doing it, and since a “mega API” venture would enable any singular entity, together with non-public corporations and overseas governments, to entry and export stated information.
