MAHA Goes to War Against the Senator Who Let RFK Run the Health Agencies

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has never really fit in with the ever-growing contingent of MAGA lawmakers on Capitol Hill who demonstrate blind loyalty to the president. He is one of the few Republican senators who has publicly and repeatedly criticized President Donald Trump for his actions, although he has not always backed up his criticism with votes.

But in a career-defining case, he did it. He was one of seven Republicans — ultimately not enough — who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

At the time of this vote, Cassidy had just been re-elected. It would take six years for Trump loyalists to express their anger at the ballot box. These six years have passed.

Yet as Louisiana’s May primary approaches, Cassidy, who is also a doctor, faces another problem. He clashed with Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who commands his own stalwart Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement, which overlaps with but is distinct from MAGA.

MAHA’s dislike of Cassidy is despite the fact that the senator, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), was the crucial vote that guaranteed Kennedy’s confirmation as head of HHS in early 2025. Although initially skeptical – due to Kennedy’s long-standing anti-vaccine stance – Cassidy ultimately voted to confirm Kennedy as head of the nation’s health agencies after getting promises and assurances from him that he would not use his position to enact policies consistent with his own beliefs in conspiracy theories, largely around vaccines and their safety.

But despite these promises, Kennedy’s first year in office was filled with controversial changes in government policy on well-known and accepted scientific concepts, leading Cassidy to publicly call him out and denounce him and his position on several occasions.

This mobilized Kennedy fans.

“Over the past decade, Republicans who failed to capitalize on the gift of the MAGA movement saw their political careers come to an untimely end because they failed to connect with the new Republican coalition built by President Trump,” wrote Tony Lyons, a leading MAHA activist, in a memo shared with the press this month, urging Republican leaders to use MAHA talking points to win elections. “Republicans currently in office should not make the same mistake and not accept the new gift of the MAHA movement.”

The memo did not mention Cassidy, but Lyon’s PAC, Action MAHA, recently endorsed Cassidy’s primary challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA), and pledged $1 million to defeat Cassidy.

“He’s facing sort of a double whammy,” Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, a group that advocates for lawmakers to expand access to health care, told TPM. “He’s got the MAGA hating him because he voted to impeach Trump. And he’s got the MAHA going after him because he had the temerity to call out some of the crazy things RFK Jr. did.”

The MAGA movement’s dislike of the two-term senator — who was sworn in for his first term in January 2015 — extends beyond the impeachment vote. Cassidy also publicly stated in 2023 that he believed Trump should withdraw from the 2024 presidential election in the face of indictments; Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s case against the president for mishandling classified documents was “almost a decisive victory,” he said. After Trump secured the Republican Party’s nomination for president, the Louisiana senator publicly refused to support him.

In January, Trump endorsed Letlow for the Senate seat Cassidy currently holds — a seat Letlow had not yet announced his candidacy for. A few days later, Letlow entered the race, attracting support from MAHA and MAGA.

“MAHA is all about LETLOW! “” she posted on social media this month, celebrating the support of the Lyon PAC. “I am thrilled to have MAHA PAC’s support in my bid for U.S. Senate as we confront the chronic disease epidemic and stand with President Trump to make America – and Louisiana – healthy again.” »

In addition to Trump, “if MAHA also attacks Bill Cassidy or takes a stand against him, I think Bill Cassidy probably has a lot of problems,” Woodhouse said.

Cassidy’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“The Republican Party is renting MAHA voters. They have not yet decided to buy them,” Lyons wrote in his memo to leaders of the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We need to convince all Republicans to join the MAHA movement, just like Trump did. »

Before his confirmation, Kennedy assured Cassidy that he would maintain the recommendations of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without any changes. But in June, Kennedy fired all 17 ACIP members and replaced them with people of his choosing, including vaccine skeptics.

Kennedy also promised Cassidy that he would not remove statements on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website that unequivocally stated that vaccines do not cause autism. But the site was updated in November to suggest, without evidence, that possible links between vaccines and autism were being “ignored.” Cassidy was quick to denounce the changes.

Cassidy also spoke about the significant revisions Kennedy and his team made to the childhood immunization schedule, significantly reducing the number of routine injections, and the push to link the use of Tylenol by pregnant women to autism in children.

Today, his initial hesitation to confirm RFK Jr., combined with several public conflicts over decisions by Kennedy-led agencies, are becoming a focal point of Cassidy’s re-election campaign against Letlow and several others who have filed to run.

This year, Louisiana will hold closed primaries — a change from previous open primaries, where candidates of all affiliations competed against each other in an early election. This means that the candidate receiving a majority of votes from each party will advance to the midterm elections. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, for example in the GOP primary, a runoff will take place the following month between the top two Republicans.

“Statistically speaking, a closed primary favors Trump because you immediately remove a million people who could vote but won’t or can’t vote. That’s the million registered Democrats in Louisiana who might want to get in this race,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Center for Political Research, told TPM.

“The electoral process has changed to Trump’s advantage,” he continued.

If there were Democrats at the time who preferred Cassidy over Letlow, they might strategically vote for Cassidy rather than, say, the Democrat they otherwise would have chosen. This is no longer the case, Palaiologue explained. Independents can still vote, but they have less incentive to vote in primaries.

“All the signs are there that he needs to take a more Trump-like approach,” Paleologos said, referring to Cassidy. “Because the universe of people who can vote is largely MAGA.”

Apparently aware of MAHA’s discontent and the need to appeal to the Trump base in his state, Cassidy last Tuesday unveiled a proposal to modernize the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The 18-page proposal outlines ways Congress can legislate and change how the agency regulates and approves products, including making it easier to bring low-cost generic drugs to market and “strengthening the FDA’s human food program” to achieve “President Trump’s goal of ending America’s chronic disease epidemic.”

Of course, Trump also recently unveiled a very detailed, two-page plan to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Cassidy apparently agreed to part of that plan and said at the time that he would take “action” on some of the president’s proposals.

Cassidy’s proposal also examined the FDA’s lack of oversight when it comes to reviewing the safety of food ingredients. Kennedy recently addressed the same issue in an interview with “60 Minutes,” saying the FDA’s current system includes a “loophole” that causes the agency to not know “how many ingredients are in American food.”