What happened
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is stepping down as a professor at Harvard over his close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, he and the university said yesterday. Summers (pictured above) has been on leave from Harvard, where he once served as president, since the depth of his friendship with Epstein was revealed in emails released by Congress in November. 

Who said what
The resignation “marks an extraordinary unraveling for Summers, long one of the most influential figures in American economics,” The Harvard Crimson said. His “standing began to collapse” after the cache of released emails showed he “regularly exchanged messages with Epstein about women, politics” and other topics after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor in 2008, and up to “the day before Epstein’s final arrest” in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges. 

Summers’ “stunning fall from grace” was the “latest fallout among high-profile academics over Epstein associations,” The Wall Street Journal said. Harvard yesterday said mathematics professor Martin Nowak was on paid administrative leave “pending further investigation” of his Epstein ties, and Nobel laureate Richard Axel resigned Tuesday as co-director of Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who later served as university president at the New School, told The New York Times yesterday he had quit the board of clean-energy startup Monolith over concerns that emails showing he had met with Epstein in 2013 would “make it difficult for them to succeed.”

What next?
Summers’ resignation from all faculty and academic positions takes effect at the end of the academic year, but he stepped down yesterday as co-director of a Harvard Kennedy School business-government center. Once “free of formal responsibility,” Summers said, “I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis and commentary on a range of global economic issues.”

What happened
Dr. Casey Means, the wellness influencer and author tapped by President Donald Trump to be U.S. surgeon general, told the Senate Health Committee yesterday that her main focus as the nation’s top doctor would be fighting “preventable chronic disease.” When pressed, she declined to recommend that parents vaccinate their kids against measles or the flu, agreed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s decision to stop advising hepatitis B shots at birth and suggested it was not “settled” science that vaccines don’t cause autism. 

Who said what
Means stayed “largely unruffled” as she “found common ground with many senators” on steering Americans away from ultra-processed foods and “dodged most questions” about vaccines, birth control, pesticides and her finances, The Washington Post said. Financial disclosure forms show that Means “made hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting wellness products” but “at times failed to disclose that she could profit or benefit from the sales,” The Associated Press said. She told senators “she takes conflicts of interest seriously.” 

If confirmed, White House officials “expect Means to play a prominent role cheerleading Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Past surgeon generals’ warnings have shifted public opinion on smoking, drunken driving and more.” But it’s a “precarious time for the MAHA movement,” The New York Times said. The White House wants Kennedy to “pivot away from discussing vaccines” toward his more popular “healthy eating agenda,” and Trump’s executive order “promoting production of the weedkiller glyphosate” has “infuriated the so-called MAHA moms.”

What next?
The Republican-controlled committee “seems poised” to approve her nomination, sending it to the full Senate, the Times said, but “it was unclear whether Dr. Means would win any Democratic support.”