Texas is looking at bills to bring back exercise. West Virginia is taking soda out of food stamp programs and outlawing chemical dyes. Utah is removing fluoride from water. Arizona has banned ultra-processed food in public school cafeterias.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, which focuses on ending what President Donald Trump’s health secretary calls the “chronic disease epidemic,” is finding success in state capitals as lawmakers and governors take up or oppose health-related measures ranging from vaccine “advisories” to food safety.
But Kennedy’s supporters aren’t following a simple partisan formula. They are opposing a Republican-backed bill in Tennessee that would limit the liability of pesticide companies, for example, while backing California Democrats on measures involving improved food quality for incarcerated people and limiting use of glyphosate, a herbicide linked to cancer.
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At the federal level, Kennedy in his opening months on the job announced a plan to phase out artificial dyes from the U.S. food supply and directed his department to conduct studies aimed at identifying “environmental toxins” behind the rising rates of autism. His critics have hammered him over his views on vaccines and for making major staffing cuts to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Outside of Washington, D.C., Kennedy’s followers appear to be scrambling the country’s stubborn red-blue divide.
Shifting from kind of ‘woo-woo’ to ‘kind of trendy’
“It’s considered less ‘woo-woo’ now,” said Emily Stembridge, a 39-year-old mother of three from Lehi, Utah, who recruited like-minded moms to lobby her Republican-dominated state to ban artificial food dyes from school lunches. “Now it’s kind of trendy, and so, it was the time to strike.”
Stembridge, a Republican who grew up in a health-conscious family, says she was intrigued by Kennedy’s 2024 presidential run, which ended last August when he dropped out and endorsed Trump before landing a job in the new president’s Cabinet. The way Kennedy talked about health during that White House campaign, with an emphasis on “moms and families,” spoke to her.
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“I’d never seen anyone in his position putting these issues in the forefront,” she said. “These are things a lot of us were recognizing in our day-to-day that no one else seemed to want to pay attention to.”
Stembridge, who calls herself a MAHA Mom, contacted Utah state Rep. Kristen Chevrier and urged the Republican to introduce a bill banning artificial dyes in public schools. The freshman lawmaker did not need much convincing. As a mother of three children with autoimmune issues, Chevrier said she is forced to shop at specialty stores or make everything from scratch.
“The whole mindset of our nation has shifted,” Chevrier said of her legislation, which Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed into law in March.
‘Dynamic change, state by state’
Kennedy’s momentum at the state level has not surprised Del Bigtree, CEO of the MAHA Alliance Super PAC and of MAHA Action, a nonprofit which tracks legislation throughout the country.
“What you’re seeing is what government does when the people are watching,” he said. “And now you are gonna see dynamic change, state by state, I believe, because Robert Kennedy Jr. is championing these issues.”
The other reason politicians are paying attention, Bigtree says, is they see MAHA Moms as a “powerful voting block.”“Moms are the most vocal voting block,” he said.
Kennedy this spring toured states that had passed MAHA-aligned bills and executive orders including West Virginia, Utah and Arizona. He visited Indianapolis for the launch of Gov. Mike Braun’s “Make Indiana Healthy Again Initiative,” where the Republican signed nine executive orders that called for the examination of the health impacts of artificial dyes and additives and increasing residents’ access to local foods.
At the Indiana meeting, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor whom Trump appointed to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was also present with Kennedy to put a MAHA stamp of approval on the governor’s efforts.
During last year’s presidential campaign Trump described Kennedy as a longtime friend and called his endorsement a great honor.
“I’m going let him go wild on health. I’m going let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said, at a rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, less than 10 days before he won the presidential election.
New laws in five states
Others have followed Trump and Kennedy’s lead. Governors in at least five states have signed MAHA-aligned laws and more than 30 more bills have been introduced around the country.
In March, West Virginia became the first state to enact a sweeping ban on artificial food dyes and Utah led the nation in banning supplemental fluoride in the water supply. Florida lawmakers followed suit in a bill that passed last week that is now awaiting a signature from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. In April, Arizona banned ultra-processed foods in public school meals and purchases of soda using food stamps. The same month, Idaho banned soda and candy purchases using food stamps.
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“Idaho welcomes the MAHA movement,” said Republican Gov. Brad Little, adding that Kennedy had called it an act of patriotism. “Idaho couldn’t agree more.”
White House Spokesman Kush Desai said the states’ embrace of the MAHA agenda proved that “everyday Americans support President Trump’s commonsense initiative.”
While at least 11 Republican-controlled states are taking the lead on introducing MAHA-aligned bills, the advocacy group “MAHA Action” is also supporting Democrat-led bills in blue states. For instance, the group is backing California’s Farm to School Program to improve student nutrition and a proposed bill in New Jersey banning the sale and application of the insecticide chlorpyrifos. People close to Kennedy, many of whom are former Democrats, say they see party lines blurring when it comes to health.
California, led by two-term Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, was the first state to ban some artificial dyes last year. The state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment found a potential link between these dyes and hyperactivity.
MAHA: An ‘awakening for the Republicans’?
Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner, has known Kennedy for almost a decade. A former Democrat who is now an independent, Cole said there’s a “realignment playing out in real time.”
“I feel like it’s an awakening for the Republicans,” he said, adding that the GOP has been “abysmal” when it comes to these topics.
Before the MAHA fever took hold, he would have been described as a “crunchy leftist” in certain Republican circles, said Cole, whom the actress and wellness mogul Gwyneth Paltrow credits with helping her on her health journey.
Bigtree, who grew up in Boulder, Colorado, favoring outdoor sports, natural food stores and a “very liberal” mindset, echoed that sentiment.
“The entire idea of natural health and natural living and getting chemicals out of food used to be completely a liberal perspective,” he said. “And now, suddenly in one of the most amazing shifts we’ve ever seen, we’re seeing dyes being removed by a Republican administration.”
Both Bigtree and Cole talked about how after years of chasm, health care policy might finally be the unifying element between the two parties.
Democrats tried for decades to pass comprehensive healthcare legislation before finally succeeding without any GOP support in 2010 under President Barack Obama. That effort cost Obama’s party control of the U.S. House of Representatives, while Republicans failed in their own bids to repeal the law. Kennedy’s supporters say one crucial way in which their work differs is in its intense focus on prevention and understanding the root causes of chronic diseases along with making healthcare more affordable.
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The policy team at MAHA Action is primarily focused on health-oriented bills at the state level because that’s where most U.S. health policy is made, said Bigtree.
He said the “incredible success” of the MAHA movement at the state level is applying “immense pressure” on the U.S. Congress to follow suit. The organization is currently working with members of both parties in Congress to co-sponsor future bills, Bigtree said while declining to identify what legislation or which Democrats the organization was working with.
“Too soon,” he said.
Calley Means, an entrepreneur who serves as an advisor to Kennedy as a “special government employee” said MAHA is about transparency. Kennedy has accused Big Pharma and Big Food of keeping Americans sick for profit.
“It’s about making sure the incentives of our health care and food systems are prioritized to American health,” he said, adding that Kennedy would use “his levers of power to spur transparency with the American people.”
Cole said he believes the most important thing holding together the diverse coalition of people within the MAHA movement is “freedom of speech and diversity of thought” around health and medicine.
Kennedy’s Instagram account was taken down by its parent company Facebook in 2021, for sharing “debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.” Cole said the way speech around health was handled online by major technology companies became a “bonding cause” among classic liberals, moderates, libertarians and conservatives.
“We are not gonna agree on everything. Many of us are gonna be socially liberal people,” he said. “So it’d be interesting to see how we can continue to work together.”
Critics worry about RFK Jr. and MAHA movement’s sway on public health
Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he agrees with Kennedy’s encouragement of bans on soda and candy from the food stamp program. But he said Kennedy’s views on most other things are “dangerous” to children.
“He’s an anti-vaccine activist. He’s a science denialist, which is why I don’t trust him with the science of food either because he’s so willing to deny the science of vaccines,” Offit said. “Why is he suddenly going to be much more reasonable about science regarding anything else?”
Taking fluoride out of the drinking water, which Kennedy has encouraged states to do, will only increase cavities in that state, Offit said.
Tennessee state Rep. Dr. Brock Martin, a Republican, said seeing Kennedy assume the position of health secretary was one of the coolest things he’d seen in the new Trump administration. Back in his home state, Martin said one of his priorities will be to propose a bill that would help increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables in areas considered to be food deserts.
“As a legislator, that’s exciting because I know it’s gonna drive cost down on health care,” he said.
More: RFK Jr. to go after fluoride in tap water as dentists warn of disastrous health impacts
At the same time, MAHA Action is opposing a GOP bill in Tennessee that would limit the liability of pesticide companies if they were not labeled as harmful by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “That is a tricky one for me because I’m in farmland where all my farmers who put food on the table are reliant upon that product,” Martin said. “I was kind of torn on that one. I didn’t know honestly where I was gonna vote on it once it got there.”
The bill, which passed the state Senate, was held up in the House and has been tabled for now, he said.
Stembridge, the mother who pushed for the ban on artificial food dyes in Utah, met Kennedy when he visited her state to celebrate the passage of the bill.
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“It was exciting because he’s actually addressing the giant elephant in the room of humanity,” she said. “Like, America is sick and someone’s finally pointing that out, and then saying, ‘And what are we gonna do about it?'”
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK’s followers are scrambling the country’s stubborn red-blue divide
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