MAHA fights back

The MAHA movement is rallying behind its leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after senators berated the health secretary in back-to-back hearings this month for firing the CDC’s director and moving to revise vaccine guidance.

Now those in Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again Movement plan events in nearly a dozen cities, from Florida to California, on Sept. 27 to thank him for sticking up for kids’ health, they said during a call with supporters.

The advocates said they want to show lawmakers that MAHA represents a powerful political force and that those who oppose Kennedy do it at their own political risk. President Donald Trump has long believed his alliance with Kennedy is a boon to the GOP, but some Republicans began to waver after Kennedy fired the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month.

“One way you can really back Secretary Kennedy is to send a message to your senator, to your congressman, that you believe that Bobby Kennedy is trying hard to restore public trust in our health agencies, you support him, you want them to and you're not going to vote for them if they don't do it,” said Tony Lyons, the president of MAHA Action, an advocacy group leading the movement, during the call Wednesday.

Democrats alarmed by Kennedy’s moves to change vaccine guidance have assailed him at every opportunity since he dropped out of the presidential race and allied with Trump last year. Kennedy was an anti-vaccine activist before ending his 2024 presidential campaign and joining Trump’s team.

But the push to bolster the grassroots comes as MAHA advocates are feeling newly beleaguered because Republican support for him on Capitol Hill appears to be fraying. That stems from Kennedy’s decision last month to oust CDC Director Susan Monarez in a dispute over vaccine policy, prompting three other top officials at the agency to resign and denunciations from public health groups.

MAHA leaders were particularly alarmed this week when a Republican, Senate Health Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, held a hearing with Monarez, since she has accused Kennedy of disrespecting CDC staff and seeking to make unscientific changes to the vaccine schedule. Cassidy, along with two other Republicans on the panel, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, expressed concern about Monarez’s testimony at the hearing Wednesday.

Monarez told senators that she was fired after refusing to fire career staff responsible for vaccine policy without cause and to rubber-stamp changes to the vaccine schedule, regardless of scientific evidence.

“Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official,” she said.

Cassidy has warned Americans to ignore new guidance from a panel of CDC advisers that plays a role in setting the childhood vaccine schedule since Kennedy removed its members and appointed new ones who share his skepticism of vaccine safety.

Kennedy has revised guidance that said every American older than six months should receive an annual Covid shot – the guidance now says only elderly people and those with pre-existing conditions should – and he suggested plans to change guidance around childhood vaccines, such as for hepatitis B.

The panel is meeting Thursday and Friday at CDC headquarters in Atlanta with the hepatitis B shot on its agenda. That shot is currently given in the first day of life to prevent infants from contracting the liver disease, which spreads typically through sex or illicit drug use. Infants can get it from their mothers during birth. Kennedy has argued that only infants born to mothers confirmed to have the disease should get it. Cassidy, who was a liver doctor before entering politics, has pointed to a huge decrease in infections among infants since the shot’s arrival as evidence that the guidance should remain. He said the shot is not mandated and keeping the recommendation in place requires health insurance companies to cover the vaccine in full if mothers opt for their newborns to get it.

A blog post by a Kennedy supporter, Sayer Ji, published on a website managed by Lyons’ group, alleged before the hearing a plot by pharmaceutical interests to get Kennedy fired. Ji is the founder of an alternative medicine website and, like Kennedy, has said that Covid vaccines were more deadly than the virus. Ji’s blog post said that Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent aligned with the Democrats, and Cassidy, were involved in the pharma plot.

“Cassidy is defending corrupt corporate-sponsored science,” Lyons told POLITICO in a text message.

Sanders and Cassidy didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Still, the health secretary’s allies on the Wednesday call did not threaten Cassidy or other Republican senators who have criticized Kennedy with political retribution. If MAHA supporters were to oppose Republican lawmakers seeking reelection, it could affect competitive races. Cassidy is facing a primary challenge from his right in Louisiana, while Collins is Democrats’ top target in the Senate.

Instead, MAHA movement leaders called on fellow Kennedy supporters to show members of Congress how important the health secretary and his policies are to them. They castigated Democrats for opposing Kennedy’s questioning of vaccine science and described their cause as a fight against powerful industry interests that have poisoned Americans, causing a crisis of chronic disease.

“Everybody I think knows Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is under attack,” said Michael Kane, the advocacy director at Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group that Kennedy founded and chaired before going to work for Trump.

Kane characterized the hearing with Monarez Wednesday as an example of how “big pharma” and their “lackeys in the media” are trying to take down Kennedy.

Kennedy adviser Calley Means called on supporters to emphasize the health secretary’s achievements in office, such as his move to give greater regulatory scrutiny to food ingredients, his plan to revise dietary guidelines and to discourage consumption of ultraprocessed food.

Means suggested that Monarez, whom the Senate had confirmed only a month before her firing, had it out for Kennedy from the start, citing her choice of lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell. Both have represented anti-Trump clients.

“We have, I think, people's consciousness, we have people's support, and the more we can keep voter support and support for this movement, for this action, we are going to defeat what are clearly some very subversive and dark forces that are trying to tell the American people that these positive actions are a threat to public health,” Means said.