Bluesky

We’ve now had a year and a half to see what the “Make America Health Again” movement has wrought. Under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we’ve seen a full-scale attack on vaccination in the United States and the decimation of agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, among many others. American public health and biomedical research are in free fall—and it’s all hazardous to your well-being. And MAHA and MAGA, despite bumps in the road, are partners in an authoritarian mission to put American health and lives under the thumb of Donald Trump and his henchmen hiding in the shadows, from Russell Vought to Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Oz.

Yet, despite the people hurt by the administration’s policies, there are always others ready to make excuses for people in power. At the beginning of President Trump’s term, there were those who were in the mode of “wait, hear me out, RFK Jr. has some good ideas on what is wrong with health in America.” This logic depended on cherry-picking a few items on the MAHA agenda—on processed food or pharmaceutical advertising, for instance—while downplaying the very real dangers RFK Jr. posed overall. While these people may have seen themselves as bridge-builders to the new administration, they were really just offering up their own personal and professional credibility to people who didn’t give a damn what they thought. I still can’t fathom why they would do so.

All these months later, those voices have largely gone silent. Apparently, playing footsie with RFK Jr. is not what it used to be. However, what has persisted are those commentators who want to partake in another game of “just pick the cyclospora out of your salad.”

This time, rather than seeingm RFK Jr. as a possible partner, these individuals are seeking to separate MAHA supporters from those who lead the movement. Their pitch: The rank and file of MAHA are not all anti-vaxxers. They have real concerns about pesticides, ultra-processed foods, and the failure of the American healthcare system. You cannot lump them in with RFK Jr. and his ilk—these regular MAHA folks are real people we can work with.

The first problem with this argument is that there are many ways to tackle these issues that don’t involve cozying up to the MAHA faithful. There is an entire environmental movement addressing pesticides, many people addressing the lack of healthy food for millions of Americans, and hundreds of groups pushing for healthcare reform. For the rank and file, the decision to remain affiliated with MAHA and its pernicious politics is a choice. You may have come for the raw milk and beef tallow, but if you stay for the eugenics and outright racism built into the MAHA agenda, these pundits should at least ask why this is so. (What’s more, this country’s political leaders usually promote policies that make their supporters’ day-to-day lives more difficult. Why stay in what is an abusive political relationship?)

Another problem is that the image of MAHA as a broadly bipartisan movement is just not true. In fact, political affiliation is the strongest predictor of identification with MAHA; a Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post poll taken last fall found approximately “six in ten (62%) Republican parents identify[ing] with the movement, rising to eight in ten (81%) among Republicans who support the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.” The numbers for Democratic parents identifying with MAHA are much lower at 17 percent and among independents down to about a third.

But none of these questions matter to the MAHA-curious. In fact, for them it’s not MAHA that’s the problem; it’s public health. It’s true that trust in many civic and governmental institutions has been in decline across the board for over a decade. Public health is no exception, and the Covid pandemic did not help. But there is a profound ignorance of history that resides in these arguments. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, in their book Merchants of Doubt, have described the long-standing campaign to undermine trust in public health and scientific institutions on topics as diverse as tobacco, global warming, and pesticides. During Covid, new merchants of doubt were out sowing discord and anger, often funded by far-right foundations, as well-documented by Walker Bragman and Alex Kotch. At the very least, some acknowledgement that trust can be actively undermined as a political strategy needs to be confronted by these commentators, which they are often not willing to do. They pass over the conservative actors and media ecosystem at work in fueling this crisis.

Improving public health depends on building a big tent. But it is an odd strategy indeed to always look rightward for allies and ignore those who are being hurt most by this administration’s policies—to eschew solidarity with those most in need of someone to care about them and their plight. To build your liberal brand on fetishization of conservative voices is a now well-worn and satirized trope (e.g., the New York Times Pitchbot’s “In this Ohio diner…” series). But in the context of these commentaries on public health, whom you seek out also tells you who matters, and whom you’re willing to leave behind.

A broad-based coalition for public health can be built, but if your starting place is kicking back a cup of coffee in the Ohio diner with MAHA influencers, rather than with the miners in Belmont County dying of black lung disease while the feds block new silica protection rules; or with the families living in food deserts in the Milo-Grogan and Linden communities in Columbus while President Trump axed a probe into price-fixing and collusion between this country’s biggest food company and its biggest grocer; or some of the hundreds of thousands of Ohioans about to lose Medicaid coverage under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, I’d repeat the words of Florence Reese, who sang in 1931 during the Harlan County, Kentucky miners’ strike: “Which side are you on?”

There are always grifters and opportunists ready to seize the moment, and the false populism of RFK Jr. and Donald Trump and the false tribune-of-the-people liberalism of MAHA’s fellow travelers strangely connect in a disinterest in the millions upon millions who will suffer from this administration’s policies. And yes, I think there are also those who, in good faith, see those among the MAHA rank and file as worthy of our concern. I do too. Health is a human right, and it belongs to all of us. But a new collaborationist politics is sprouting up which excuses too much and pretends that the world of MAHA is something other than it is: a movement built to destroy and built on lies by its founders.

If we want to build trust, we can start by telling the truth. To MAHA supporters, we can say in all honesty and with kindness and patience: The people you follow, the movement you are part of, is a con. Those who would redirect you to see public health as “the problem” are leading you astray as well. In the end, MAHA and its not-you-it’s-me mirror image of an illegitimate, untrustworthy conception of public health are just leading us down rabbit holes, away from the core problems we face today.

If you want to strike at the root of what ails all of us, stop and look at the politicians and their billionaire allies who have enriched themselves at our expense, gutting the programs that provide protection from health threats across the board, slashing programs that ensure healthcare for millions, leading many Americans to an early grave. This great unraveling is happening right before your eyes, and things are about to get a lot, lot worse. There is an epic political struggle brewing right now, and distraction is something we cannot afford in this existential moment, whether it is from a Kennedy or the pied pipers of the podcasts.