President Donald Trump’s alliance with health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helped deliver Make America Healthy Again voters. But the movement Trump spent years cultivating is showing signs of splintering. Now the question is whether Kennedy could reconsolidate the same voters if he launches a new bid for the presidency.
He’s lost battles over pesticides, failed to codify food safety efforts into durable regulations, and faced legal hurdles in his bid to reshape federal vaccine policy.
“This administration has screwed over MAHA numerous times,” a former HHS official who worked on MAHA issues told me. “MAHA folks have started to become independent again, if you will, and they will no longer vote by party, but by whoever they think will advocate the most for them.”
The departure of top Kennedy confidant Calley Means today leaves MAHA advocates without arguably their most vocal champion within the Trump administration. Means described Washington as a “corrupt DC bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo” in a text message confirming the news first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Vocal MAHA activists cried foul when the Trump administration advanced a directive on an herbicide that they said was too industry-friendly. Others say Kennedy hasn’t done enough to codify his work on food dyes so the restrictions will live on after Trump leaves office.
An HHS spokesperson touted the administration’s “historic MAHA wins,” but for practical purposes, health policy is back up for grabs. Per lobbyist TJ Petrizzo: MAHA is intertwined with MAGA.
Meanwhile, liberals are keen to win over the same voters — even if they are unwilling to court the anti-vaccine crowd. Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, are going after voters concerned about corporate influence over food and pesticides. Vice President JD Vance (a noted fan of Kennedy’s sauerkraut diet) will make his own bid for the voting bloc after appearing at events like the MAHA Summit.
Kennedy is bouncing around Texas, New Hampshire, and Florida to tout the Trump administration’s work on chronic kidney disease, rural health efforts, and nutrition. Those are safe talking points for the midterms, but hardly the MAHA agenda Kennedy promised to deliver in Washington.