MAHA idealism meets political reality as RFK Jr. attempts to wrangle a growing movement
NEW YORK– NEW YORK (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently spent a Wednesday receiving praise from the vice president and health technology CEOs at a glitzy “Make America Healthy Again” event in Washington designed to celebrate the health secretary’s successes and the movement he has built.
Yet online, a different narrative of his tenure was unfolding as a small but vocal group of Kennedy supporters and former staffers attacked top Trump administration advisers, claiming they were sabotaging him and distracting MAHA from its original goals.
“MAHA is no longer MAHA,” Gray Delany, a former Department of Health and Human Services official ousted in August, said in a podcast interview that day. “I’m not here, but what I’ve heard about what’s happening today is not the MAHA we signed up for.”
The criticism, which became so strong that the health secretary took to social media to defend his colleagues two days later, exposed the fissures that are beginning to form within his coalition as it gains power and broadens its reach.
Many of the environmental advocates and vaccine skeptics who helped propel Kennedy into politics have grown impatient with what they see as inadequate action on their priorities. They’re also wary that the Health Department seems willing to collaborate with pharmaceutical companies, technology companies and other big businesses whose motives they don’t trust.
These fissures pose a threat to the cohesion of a movement that has given President Donald Trump an important ally and Republicans access to a new group of voters. They come as fissures have developed within Trump’s Make America Great Again movement over issues such as the Epstein files and the White House’s emphasis on global diplomacy.
Among the general public, MAHA enjoys growing popularity. About two-thirds of Americans said they support the federal government’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, according to a June Ipsos poll.
“MAHA’s growth is a sign of its success,” said HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon. “Secretary Kennedy is leading a broad coalition to improve the health of Americans, guided by transparency, accountability and measurable results. The meaning of the movement has not changed and it is stronger than ever.”
Public health researchers say the genius that fuels Kennedy’s movement — the universal appeal of improving Americans’ health — can also cause conflict by inviting competing interests.
“It’s a story as old as politics,” said Matt Motta, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. “The bigger your tent, the harder it can be to keep everyone happy. »
Kennedy, a longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist who helped lead the crusade against COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, has taken numerous steps to reduce vaccinations this year. He withdrew $500 million for their development, ousted and replaced all members of a federal vaccine advisory committee, and pledged to overhaul a federal compensation program for Americans injured by gunshot wounds. He also repeatedly spread false and misleading information about vaccines during his time in office.
Just this week, in a move that enthused Kennedy’s anti-vaccine base, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its website to contradict the long-standing scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism.
But many Kennedy supporters in what they call the “health freedom” movement say that’s not enough. Some want penalties for companies that have profited from vaccine and mask requirements during the pandemic. Others want mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines pulled from shelves, despite the scientific consensus that they have saved millions of lives.
In their attacks on the administration last week, a few MAHA influencers and two fired HHS employees suggested that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and close Kennedy adviser Stefanie Spear were conspiring to limit Kennedy’s ability to restrict vaccines and crack down on pharmaceutical companies.
Some Kennedy supporters latched onto these claims and pointed to Wiles’ career history at a lobbying firm that worked with Pfizer as evidence that she was trying to undermine him. They also shared social media posts from Spear from several years ago criticizing Trump.
Kennedy defended his colleagues in two articles on X, saying the MAHA movement has “no better friend in Washington” than Wiles and that Spear has become a Trump loyalist.
“Let us focus on our extraordinary accomplishments to date and the monumental work that remains to be done,” Kennedy wrote. “Let’s build our coalition instead of dividing it.”
Since the slogan “Make America Healthy Again” debuted on the campaign trail last year, Kennedy and Trump have significantly expanded the MAHA tent by inviting everyone who cares about Americans’ health, nutrition and chronic illness to join.
This has attracted a diverse audience, including financial interests including health data startups, artificial intelligence companies, drugmakers and even fast food companies. Steak ‘n Shake recently promoted its fries cooked in beef tallow, saying it was “proud to be part of the MAHA movement.”
At the recent MAHA event in Washington, hosted by the pro-Kennedy group MAHA Action, Kennedy and other federal health officials appeared on a stage occupied all day by biotech companies like CRISPR Therapeutics and Regeneron, brain-computer interface company Neuralink, and various AI companies and health startups. The invitation list raised flags for some longtime Kennedy supporters.
“I wasn’t excited about some of the people there,” said Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, a nonprofit that promotes bodily autonomy. “I don’t think we can make America healthy again with pills, creams, injections, pharmaceuticals, chips, monitors, devices.”
Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, told the Associated Press that the strength of the MAHA movement “comes from its openness to ideas, its commitment to include all voices, all perspectives, more dialogue, fiercer debate.”
“We don’t want to exclude anyone,” he said. “We don’t want to censor anyone.”
Ethan Augreen, who led the Colorado volunteer effort for Kennedy’s presidential campaign last year, said he was concerned about both the speakers at the event and a recent social media post by Kennedy about meeting with tech executives to talk about personal health data.
He said he hoped Kennedy would fight corruption in the U.S. health care system and remove mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from the market.
“There are definitely alarm bells going off,” Augreen said. “The grassroots people at MAHA don’t trust these companies at all, and it’s not really clear whether the administration is just getting into bed with them or really holding their feet to the fire.”
At a recent Oval Office meeting, Kennedy stood alongside Trump and other administration leaders as they touted a deal with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to expand coverage and reduce prices of weight-loss drugs.
Kennedy had previously expressed skepticism about GLP-1 weight loss drugs and said he wanted to focus on the root causes of the disease rather than treating the public. But he welcomed the agreement, although he was careful to add that it was not a “miracle solution”.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said at the MAHA event that the scrutiny of Kennedy’s base was “understandable.” He defended the administration by saying it was using Trump’s negotiating playbook instead of confronting adversaries “head-to-head.”
Several of Kennedy’s top supporters said they view the government as a deep-rooted bureaucracy that won’t be easy to reform, although they hope it will be able to remove toxins from food and the environment and further restrict vaccines. Kennedy, during an appearance with Western governors on Thursday, said he had no intention of denying people access to vaccines.
Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the nonprofit Brownstone Institute that rallied support for Kennedy, said MAHA activists are idealistic but sometimes naive about the difficulty of government reform.
“It’s very important to hold on to your ideals,” he said. “But if you just throw stones, you can become a problem.”
Motta, the professor, said that whatever direction MAHA takes, it will already be more important than any singular policy position.
“Identities don’t disappear easily,” he said. “They’re deeply ingrained; they’re deeply embedded in our sense of self. And I would be shocked if this movement faded.”
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Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report from Washington.
