Moms Need to Give MAHA a Taste of Its Own Medicine

New York Times

7 hours ago

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, offered an opening statement during his confirmation hearing in January, a gaggle of supportive moms sat behind him. Some of these women wore branded MAHA T-shirts, and many others had satisfied grins. In his speech that day, Kennedy called this army of mothers in his Make America Healthy Again movement 'one of the most powerful and transcendent' groups he's ever seen.
Kennedy innately understands that Americans place a kind of halo on mothers when it comes to the nation's health, and he uses that to bolster his message. And mothers who care about children need to wrest this moral authority away from him.
While the number of self-proclaimed 'MAHA moms' is difficult to quantify, they certainly have an influential social media and podcasting presence and a direct line to health policymakers. In March The Wall Street Journal described a 'closed-door MAHA moms Roundtable' with cabinet members and other Trump administration officials where the agenda included 'food additives, infant formula and screen time.'
One of the bitter ironies of the MAHA moms is that they champion some policies that could have broader support among people who don't support Kennedy or this administration. I bet I agree with 75 percent of what was said in those closed-door meetings about food additives and screen time. Yet those aren't the areas where they've had much success.
A draft of the 'Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy,' a White House report on children's health that was leaked last week, stops 'short of proposing direct restrictions on ultraprocessed foods and pesticides,' according to my newsroom colleagues. Many in the MAHA movement reacted with profound disappointment to the toothless recommendations. Moms Across America, one of the highest-profile MAHA grass-roots groups, described the vague single-sentence approach to pesticides in the report as 'beyond laughable. It's an embarrassment. It's an insult to the intelligence of the American people. A stalling tactic with dangerous and deadly results.'
In contrast, vaccine skepticism — Kennedy's long-term pet cause — is where MAHA has already been able to cause irrevocable damage. In just six months, Kennedy fired all the expert members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and canceled almost $500 million in mRNA vaccine research, and he may alter the federal vaccine court in a way that could cause some Americans to lose access to certain immunizations. The 'Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy' suggests that the administration will focus on vaccine injuries — which are mentioned multiple times in the draft, even though they are rare — rather than ensuring access to lifesaving inoculations.
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