Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes the “Make America Healthy Again” movement will play a pivotal role in the upcoming November midterm elections.
Kennedy has toured the country touting President Donald Trump’s MAHA accomplishments, visiting Danville, Virginia; Goldsboro, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; and Atlanta, Georgia, this week alone.
“Everywhere we go, we’re seeing incredible enthusiasm from the MAHA movement for this administration,” Kennedy told the Daily Signal in an exclusive interview, “so I think it’s going to be an important factor.”
The MAHA movement has already played a significant role in the midterm primaries. For instance, MAHA PAC-endorsed candidate Rep. Julia Letlow defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in the Louisiana Republican Senate primary.
Zach Lahn, endorsed by MAHA PAC for Iowa governor, beat Trump-endorsed candidate Rep. Randy Feenstra in the recent primary. He ran on opposing liability shields for pesticide companies and reducing the nitrate load in the water supply.
MAHA PAC in March launched a $100 million fundraising campaign to bolster Trump-endorsed “Make America Healthy Again” candidates, the Daily Signal first reported.
Some members of the MAHA base want to see more from Kennedy, including an overhaul of the childhood vaccine program. The Wall Street Journal reported on Trump’s frustrations that Kennedy isn’t doing more to probe the alleged connection between vaccines and autism.
However, his agency’s new childhood vaccine schedule was blocked in federal court, and an appeal of the preliminary injunction remains pending. The new schedule recommended fewer vaccines overall for children to give parents more flexibility, and grouped vaccines in categories including immunizations recommended for all children, for children in high-risk groups, and for children based on shared clinical decision-making.
When asked what he can do in light of the injunction, Kennedy told the Daily Signal he’s confident the administration will win the lawsuit.
“I think that ultimately the changes [to the childhood vaccine schedule] have to be made by the ACIP panel,” he said. “and we’re confident that we’re going to win this lawsuit and be able to get those changes, be able to make sure that we have high quality science, not only on efficacy but on vaccine safety as well, which has been lacking in the past.”
Other MAHA voters are disappointed that the administration has been too friendly to the pesticide industry after Trump signed an executive order prioritizing production of the pesticide glyphosate. The order cited the need to maintain a strong food supply system in the event of a national security emergency.
Mark Gorton, co-president of the MAHA Institute, said most MAHA voters understand that policies cannot change all at once, and that despite their concerns, MAHA voters will turn out for Republicans in the midterms because of Kennedy’s record.
“Anyone who has any experience with our system and the complexity of it will see just how much has been done in a limited time,” he told the Daily Signal.
MAHA voters are “perhaps one of the largest groups of potential swing voters in the country,” Gorton said.
“I know a lot of people for whom this is their number one issue, and this is what they’re choosing to vote on,” he said. “I really see this as a meaningful force in the American political landscape.”
