Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ramping up midterm travel to revive his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, armed with a carefully crafted list of popular food and fitness policies to sell — and divisive issues like vaccines to avoid.
“MAHA is a charged item tied to MAGA, but the issues that he's really delivered victories on are popular, and we're going to try to execute a strategy to talk, you know, really about those issues and what he's done,” said a senior administration official, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss the secretary’s midterm strategy.
Kennedy will appear alongside Republican House and Senate lawmakers in states with some of the most competitive House and Senate races this fall — as well as many of the 2028 presidential swing states. Kennedy is expected to visit Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Virginia, Ohio, Montana and Texas.
The Trump White House is leaning on Kennedy’s popularity to boost its messaging. A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the secretary, called him “one of our most requested surrogates and the Cabinet official that congressional candidates want out on the stump with them.”
The midterms will be a test of Kennedy’s influence and whether he can continue to channel his grip on MAHA into wins for the GOP. He is one of the most divisive members of Trump’s Cabinet — the face of unpopular policies like cuts to Medicaid that Democrats plan to hammer Republicans for in the midterms. Democrats also hope to exploit possible strains between Kennedy and his base after a recent decision by the Trump administration to shore up pesticide production infuriated MAHA advocates.
House Majority Forward, a nonprofit allied with House Democratic leadership, has already run digital ads in Republican districts, saying Kennedy “gutted the FDA, undermining food and medicine safety, and outbreaks of measles and whooping cough are on the rise.”
A March POLITICO Poll found early cracks in the movement that helped fuel Trump’s return to the White House: Fifty-two percent of Americans — including 41 percent of Trump’s 2024 voters — say the administration has not done enough to “Make America Healthy Again.”
Kennedy, in coordination with the White House, will focus his midterm appearances on issues the administration views as political winners, said a second administration official familiar with the planning. Those topics include lowering the cost of health care, cracking down on fraud in the health system, improving childhood nutrition and re-examining health policy such as the administration’s changes to hormone replacement therapy regulation.
“These are highly impactful domestic policy wins that will move the needle in midterms, and the White House knows it, and they're eager to have him go out and articulate it,” said the second administration official.
Kennedy is not expected to focus on his agency’s attempts to decrease the number of vaccines recommended for children, the person said. Those changes were recently blocked in court, and also triggered a dramatic public fallout with then-CDC Director Susan Monarez last year.
On vaccines, “the public is not there yet” and Kennedy and his team are aware that it’s “not an effective political strategy,” the second administration official said.
Polling from the bipartisan health research organization KFF shows parents remain overwhelmingly supportive of long-standing childhood vaccines. The POLITICO Poll found 44 percent of Americans say vaccines should be mandatory for school attendance, compared with 28 percent who say they should be encouraged but not required. Eighteen percent say they should be completely optional.
“RFK and the President’s embrace of MAHA helped build a historic coalition in 2024, and we’re intent to repeat that success two years later with MAHA messaging and policy wins,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told POLITICO.
Kennedy is expected to tout MAHA policies alongside state and federal lawmakers, health organizations and agricultural groups, the second administration official said. He will also continue to do longform podcast interviews, a staple of his media strategy.
As he has at past events, Kennedy is expected to focus on the revamped dietary guidelines, nutrition courses in medical schools and deals HHS reached with major food companies to voluntarily remove artificial dyes from food.
Kennedy will host events on issues where there’s common ground in hopes that he can “really make a concerted outreach to voters in the middle of the electorate,” the senior administration official said.
The POLITICO Poll shows that several core MAHA elements — with the exception of vaccines — have broad bipartisan appeal. For instance, a 64 percent majority of Americans support removing ultra-processed foods from American diets, including 73 percent of those who backed Trump in 2024 and two-thirds of those who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris. Three-quarters of Americans also support increasing physical activity, including 81 percent of Trump 2024 voters and 79 percent of Harris 2024 voters.
“It cuts across a lot of different lines,” the senior White House official said about the MAHA constituency, adding that it helps the White House with independents, young voters and mothers. “That's the beauty of MAHA, it's not necessarily constrained into just typical Republican conservative orthodoxy.”
The upcoming travel follows trips to Pennsylvania and Tennessee earlier this year, part of a campaign to encourage Americans to “take back” their health, which was interrupted by Kennedy receiving shoulder surgery. He was back on the road for a speech at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference and then attended an event about healthier food in hospitals in Florida.
"Secretary Kennedy’s ongoing ‘Take Back Your Health’ tour highlights the issues Americans consistently say matter most to their families, including chronic disease prevention, childhood nutrition, food quality, and affordable health care,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement.
While Kennedy ranks among the most popular figures in the Trump Cabinet, the POLITICO Poll suggests his political firepower may have limits — even as both parties credit him with mobilizing otherwise disengaged voters in the 2024 election.
His influence over Trump voters is relatively narrow: Eight percent of respondents who voted for Trump said they would not have voted for him in 2024 if Kennedy had not been involved.
Still, among those who said Kennedy positively influenced their 2024 vote, his role in 2028 could be significant: More than a third would choose a Kennedy-backed candidate over a Trump-backed one in a GOP primary.
Abby McCloskey, a GOP policy adviser, said Kennedy is a “very divisive figure,” but noted that he “does have some celebrity power to his name, and we're in an era of celebrity politics, so I think that’s an advantage.”
Health policy issues — and specifically those attributed with the MAHA movement — rank far below other issues likely to decide the midterms, such as affordability and economic concerns. But in a midterm decided by the margins, Kennedy’s popularity — or lack thereof — could be influential.
Constantin Querard, a GOP strategist who works on races in Arizona, said he would advise candidates to host events with Kennedy because even if it only brings a marginal boost, Kennedy’s health policies largely carry “crossover appeal.”
“It's nobody's top five issue. But who's going to disagree and be like, yes, we do need dyes in our kids cereals? If you can keep the focus where you want it, I could see where he'd be very useful in a swing district or a close race,” Querard said.
Querard also argued that there was minimal downside, even with Kennedy’s controversial stances on vaccines or the administration’s cuts to Medicaid.
“Who does he cost you? The voters that would be like, ‘Oh, Kennedy, I hate that guy.’ Did you have a shot with those voters anyway?” Querard said.
Eli Stokols contributed to this report.
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