INDIANAPOLIS — Chants of “Save public health” and “We believe in Medicaid” reverberated off the limestone walls of the Indiana State Library Tuesday, as demonstrators protested a press event, which featured Gov. Mike Braun, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The event launched the state’s “Make Indiana Healthy Again” initiative. Braun signed nine executive orders prior to the press event targeted at reforming SNAP benefits and directing state agencies to take steps to improve the health of Hoosiers. Dr. Oz and Kennedy applauded Braun for his actions, which they saw as a significant step in President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
One of the main points of emphasis during the conference was nutrition. Braun announced an executive order to remove candy and soda from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — a move he cited would tackle diet-related chronic illnesses, to which Kennedy echoed Braun’s nutritional concerns.
“We just got the numbers from NIH that said that 38% of teens are pre-diabetic. We have 100 million people in this country who are pre-diabetic,” Kennedy said. “This is unknown in human history … It’s a choice.”
Furthermore, Braun announced that the state would be implementing a “Governor’s Fitness Test” and “School Fitness Month” as an effort to encourage exercise for the youth.
Gov. Mike Braun, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Mehmet Oz speak together Tuesday in Indiana.
Lisa Maxwell-Frieden, a protester outside the room the event was held in, was critical of Trump’s health appointees and their policies.
“All healthcare is serious business, and for the healthcare decisions of the state and of the country to be in their hands, it literally feels like a joke,” she said.
While centering on the physical health and fitness of Hoosiers, Braun stayed true to the theme of his governorship by highlighting the entrepreneurial side of “making Indiana healthy again.”
Several of the executive orders focus on reshaping requirements for SNAP benefits. All non-exempt SNAP recipients will now have work requirements, and additional resources are being dedicated for asset testing to ensure all SNAP recipients are actually eligible.
Braun said that Indiana is focusing on improving the management of its largest program, Medicaid, after a study revealed that 28% of its spending was improper, mostly due to eligibility mistakes. Indiana enrolled residents based on self-reported income during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many of those people were automatically renewed on Medicaid without the state verifying that the enrollees met the requirements, Braun said.
“The whole idea of affordability and accessibility is something you can’t sidestep because if in fact it is going to be more costly to actually eat better, we’ve got to find out entrepreneurial ways of addressing it through the folks that produce it and not necessarily just asking for more to get it done,” he said.
Braun acknowledged that programs such as Medicaid and Medicare cost the nation less than the private side of healthcare, but he encouraged the private sector to come forward and lower those costs.
“That’s where I invite the real world that solves these problems without government being in the way to help figure out how to do it,” he said.
Kim Saylor, one of the protest’s organizers, led the chants of “We believe in Medicaid” before the protesters were asked to be quiet and move out the walkway to the room in which the event was held. She said her personal experience with public healthcare motivated her to protest.
“Well, as a Medicaid and Medicare recipient who had brain damage and a TBI (traumatic brain injury) and was told I would never be able to walk, talk, eat, drink again, the minute I got on Medicaid, it turned out that wasn’t the case. They could treat me. They could make me better. I’m walking, I’m talking, I’m forming my own opinions, and Medicaid has literally saved my life,” she said.
Protesters hold up signs Tuesday to protest a visit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz.
Saylor said she previously had a meeting with Braun on transgender issues and wanted to voice her opinion again when she heard he was holding an event with Dr. Oz and Kennedy.
“My reaction was ‘Oh, it’s time to get out the signs and go holler and tell them that it’s not okay that they are again, attacking the elderly, the disabled,’” she said.
Dr. Oz followed Braun in the event, emphasizing the importance of delegating healthcare decisions down away from the purview of the federal government.
“The most important person in the entire hierarchy is the mom,” he said. “Because she knows you win the battle for health in the home in the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom — that’s where the real battle for health will be won, and these executive orders make it easy for moms to do the right thing for their kids.”
Maxwell-Frieden said maternal health was one issue that brought her to the protest.
“I’m a mom, who almost died in childbirth. I had a very good outcome, but had I been a marginalized woman, I would not have had the outcome I had,” she said.
She went on to highlight the state’s shortfalls in the maternal health area.
“I came because the lack of investment in public health in Indiana is shocking,” Maxwell-Frieden said. “We’re not investing in maternal medicine. It’s Black Maternal Health Week, and Indiana is the 47th worst state in maternal health.”
After the Indiana Department of Health reported six cases of measles in the state last week, Kennedy was asked about the nation’s response to the formerly eradicated disease.
“People get measles because they don’t vaccinate. They get measles because the vaccine wanes,” he said. “It’s a leaky vaccine, and that problem is always gonna be around.”
Kennedy said that although it was concerning that the United States has seen a rise in measles — about 700 cases reported in 2025 — he felt the country was fighting it well compared to the over 127,000 cases that have been reported in Europe.
“We need to also make sure that doctors know how to treat measles and how to treat the associated disease, the pulmonary disease that often comes with them … We can’t rely simply on the vaccine. We also have to know how to treat measles,” Kennedy said.
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith speaks to reporters in Indianapolis.
One of the protest’s primary leaders was Scott Johnson. He is state organizer for Indiana 50501, a grassroots political organization and is “the resistance” to the Trump administration. Johnson said 50501 stands for 50 states, 50 cities, one protest, and he questioned the qualifications of Dr. Oz and Kennedy.
“Indiana is a very red state, right? We haven’t seen RFK outside of Washington very much, and yet he’s here for this crazy ‘Make Indiana Healthy Again’ initiative,” he said. “I don’t know what a lawyer and a TV doctor have to do with making us healthy. Like that doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got actual medical professionals here today. They will make us healthy. But the idiots in that room will not.”
Matt Larimer, an Iraq war veteran and high school teacher in Terre Haute, had volunteered hundreds of hours toward Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“I supported him because he was very critical of the military-industrial complex (and) the overreach of intelligence agencies, and none of those have been priorities (with) Trump,” Larimer said. “I get that’s not (Kennedy’s) role now, but it’s kind of disappointing.”
“I was hoping that he could maybe be a part of healing the divide … I think he’s still trying,” he said.
Kennedy spoke about his role in the broader “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
“A lot of the negative behavior, self-destructive behavior in the medical system … is driven by perverse incentives,” he said. “And what Dr. Oz and I are trying to do is to identify those perverse incentives, and we’re getting a lot of help from Elon.”
Kennedy has often been the face of controversy for pushing debunked claims linking autism rates to vaccines.
“We’re in a crisis today. We’re about to announce new autism numbers; they’ve again gone up dramatically just in two years … And this is just one disease. This whole generation of kids is damaged by chronic disease,” he said.
Protesters also stressed broader issues they see with the Braun and Trump administrations. Amy Guzman, a women’s health nurse with a background in public health and education, spoke about her reaction to the current administrations’ policies.
“This feels powerless that we feel that we can’t do anything when they just keep chipping away like everything that we know and hold dear whether it’s our Constitution or public health,” she said. “But just to be able to show them that we in a red state are not complicit, and that’s the point of being here.”
Johnson and Deonyae-Dior Valentina, a transgender protester, echoed Guzman’s concerns over the Constitution and the feeling of being under attack.
“I came out of retirement to help with the problem because this is a problem,” Johnson said. “You don’t get to do this kind of stuff in America, right? I know that sounds ridiculously naive, but I believe this is the greatest country in the world. I just think it is a country of law.”
“As a trans person, they’re really trying to erase us from society currently … our right to live is being attacked from every which way on a national level, and I think it’s so important that trans people show up in these spaces to protect what we believe is right,” Valentina said.
Many of the protesters had differing ideas of health reform, but their visions generally involved more funding to public health programs and the expansion of public healthcare.
“If we would just be, oh, I don’t know, the last country ever to figure out universal health care and have Medicare for all and Medicaid for all, we’d be a lot better off,” Saylor said. “People would be a lot healthier. We’d be a lot more productive as a society. But no, instead, we want to deny vaccines and hire people that barely still hold a medical degree.”
