Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has inspired the nation, prompting a tidal wave of health reform bills at the local level in virtually every state.
At the federal level, Kennedy’s HHS has overseen the development of a landmark MAHA Commission, directing the FDA to end the process that allows corporations to label their own food ingredients safe and much more.
President Trump’s empowerment of Kennedy and his agency have in turn emboldened state legislatures to take up Kennedy’s mantle and try to codify his ideas on public health.
West Virginia’s legislature, for example, recently passed a first-of-its-kind bill banning synthetic food dyes, which have been linked to cancers, from being sold in the state.
Despite an intense lobbying campaign from various state and national beverage associations, West Virginia’s state senate concurred with the house and approved the legislative ban on synthetic food dyes on March 14. The bill now sits on Governor Patrick Morrisey’s desk awaiting his approval.
West Virginia’s State Senate concurred with the House’s final version of a bill to ban food dyes in the state today. The bill will now go to the Governor’s desk for him to sign.
— Rob (@RobMcGravytrain) March 14, 2025
The bill’s original author, State Rep. Adam Burkhammer, noted that over 20 other states are taking up similar legislation.
“I support all of those and us moving, again, to make all of our states, and to make our country, a healthier environment for our kids and for adults,” he told the Daily Caller.
“I think it’s doable and now’s the time,” he concluded. (RELATED: RFK’s MAHA Army Descends On Nation’s Capital — From Left, Right And Center)
Kennedy Jr. has previously highlighted the dangers of synthetic food dyes, touting studies which show the chemicals have negative effects on childhood behavior.
A new report, described as “the most rigorous assessment of the behavioral effects of food dyes ever conducted,” is based on a review of the results of 27 clinical trials in children performed on four continents over the last 45 years. #TheDefender https://t.co/TB4NzOUt9m
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 11, 2021
Secretary Kennedy even reportedly told food company executives that he would like to see them remove harmful additives and dyes from their products before the end of his term, according to ABC News.
In Utah, lawmakers recently banned community water fluoridation, a proposal that Kennedy Jr. has also endorsed. The move has prompted health and wellness professionals to encourage their own states to follow suit.
Helen Christoni, the senior vice president of water purification company AquaTru, has called on her home state of California to ban community water fluoridation, as well as to look at a whole host of other contaminants in the public water supply.
A longtime advocate for cleaner water, Christoni has been delighted to see Kennedy Jr.’s impact on the national health movement.
“With RFK and his position in the administration, I think it really has made it very mainstream news and people are really being forced to pay attention. It’s on our TVs, it’s in our podcasts,” she told the Caller.
“Outlets are covering it on all sides. So I’m really, really grateful that health and wellness is coming to the forefront,” she continued. “Consumers can make their own decisions. They can listen to different opinions … because there’s a real big problem with our water and it’s going to take a lot to fix it.”
While Utah is the only state to officially end community water fluoridation, many counties across the country have enacted similar legislation. Florida, in particular, has seen a surge of communities ending public water fluoridation following the advice of the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo.
🚨 LET’S GO!!
My county – Lee, Florida – just BANNED fluoride in the water.
Commissioners voted unanimously to do this.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo advocated for it.
LADAPO: “It’s insane to continue to support this with the information that we have now. And you… pic.twitter.com/c4USGkJdZJ
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 5, 2025
Christoni is far from the only health advocate to ride the wave that Kennedy’s HHS Secretary tenure has created.
Numerous notable public figures have taken up the MAHA mantle and carried it from coast to coast, congregating at statehouses across the country to advocate in favor of pro-MAHA bills and to denigrate the lobbyists who oppose them.
RFK allies like Vani Hari, who runs the massively popular “The Food Babe” social media brand, and Calley Means, who co-authored a best-selling book on metabolic health, descended on Phoenix, Arizona in mid-March to support a bill which would take certain ingredients in ultra-processed foods out of publicly-funded school lunches.
Helene Leeds, an expert in nutrition and holistic health, also joined the MAHA contingent in Arizona to voice her support for the bill. For Leeds, the idea of healthy lunches in schools is deeply personal.
Her daughter suffered severe health complications after gaining weight from eating ultra-processed foods at school. Leeds, who has a Masters degree in nutrition, packed her daughter a healthy lunch every day. But said her daughter still managed to eat unhealthy foods.
“She would trade with friends at first and go to the neighbors’ houses and, little by little, she just started getting more and more influenced, and she started to desire those foods more, and she just got overweight more and more. And she by the time she was 15 years old, she was 320 pounds,” Leeds shared with the Daily Caller.
Her daughter ended up suffering from anxiety, depression and ADHD. She was even suicidal at one point, Leeds shared. However, once the Covid-19 pandemic hit and schools closed, Leeds was able to help her daughter get off her ultra-processed diet and she lost 160 pounds.
Leeds’ experiences with her daughter, her background in holistic health, and her early support for Kennedy during his lawsuit against chemical giant Monsanto made it an easy choice for the self-described “MAHA mom” to join the movement.
“I’ve just been a really big supporter of Kennedy. When he joined Trump’s campaign, of course, all of us were surprised. But you know, we all love Kennedy so much. We’re like, absolutely, because we trust and know that he’s going to stand for what we agree with and believe in. And there’s nothing more sacred and important than our children,” she told the Caller.
While Kennedy Jr.’s recent policy focus has been on food standards, the issue that slingshotted him to the forefront of the national conversation even before his upstart independent presidential run was his vaccine skepticism.
His message on vaccines has been noticeably less extreme during his time in the Trump cabinet — he even encouraged Americans to get vaccinated for measles in early March — but he has continued to be a strong critic of the Covid-19 vaccines. (RELATED: Big Pharma Tax Loophole Costs Americans Over $1 Billion Per Year, According To Recent Study)
He has repeatedly criticized the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an agency his HHS now oversees, for adding the Covid-19 vaccine to the childhood vaccine schedule. He has also bashed the underlying mRNA technology in most Covid-19 vaccines and vaccine makers’ ability to avoid liability for injuries caused by their products.
We clearly have a systematic problem when government health regulators have utterly abdicated their responsibility to safeguard public health + refer safety concerns about shoddily tested, zero-liability vaccines to pharmaceutical companies. #TheDefenderhttps://t.co/D13ELNAGqL
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) December 17, 2020
Some state lawmakers, like Iowa’s, have followed his lead on that issue.
Iowa’s state legislature introduced House File 712, which would force vaccine makers to waive their immunity to lawsuits for any potential vaccine liabilities.
“If you come up with a new idea, and people love it. That’s great. But if it causes injuries, even injuries that are at first hidden, it’s always been the reward you have to pay for the injury caused,” State Rep. Charley Thomson told the Daily Caller.
“The benefit of the system is that it creates a body of potential litigants, potential injured parties who will, as consumers, hold the system to accountability in a way that government never can. So it’s really a safety mechanism that the free market has for making sure that the public is protected,” he continued.
Thomson did also note that opponents to the bill have called his office to express that the bill’s passage could limit vaccine availability in Iowa, a concern he said was valid.
Though he was not overly optimistic that it would make it out of the legislature this year, Thomson ultimately supported the bill.
“If you make something that turns out to be hazardous, you’re going to pay the consequences,” he told the Caller. (RELATED: RFK Jr. Brought Republicans A New Wave Of Voters — Can They Keep Them?)
When asked if he believed Kennedy Jr. and the MAHA movement have had an influence on the unusually high number of calls he has gotten about the bill, he answered “No question in my mind.”
The MAHA movement still has a long way to go, however, to make true believers out of everybody. In February, Montana’s legislature struck down a bill which would ban mRNA vaccines in the state.
But MAHA has doubtlessly provided momentum for health advocates everywhere. In Florida, Ladapo is leading the charge on banning fluoride and mRNA. At least 23 other states have taken up MAHA-related bills since Kennedy’s HHS nomination, as well, according to Calley Means.
24 states have introduced MAHA bills in the past month – many of them bipartisan.
I testified today w @drmarkhyman @ferrisbuhler81 @humankarp and @travelingenes in Texas about no brainer bills to improve education + transparency for our kids, and clean up school lunches. pic.twitter.com/iWcT5yqEMY
— Calley Means (@calleymeans) February 26, 2025