Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s health crusade is coming apart at the seams, and one columnist says its toughest opponents are about to arrive.
In a column published Saturday by The New York Times, opinion writer Jessica Grose argued that a slate of physicians and public health experts on the ballot Tuesday could deliver a crushing blow to the Make America Healthy Again movement that the health and human services secretary built.
She pointed to Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician and the Democratic Senate nominee in South Carolina; Dr. Amy Acton, Ohio's former health director now running for governor; and Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist seeking a Senate seat in Michigan.
Grose noted that MAHA owed much of its rise to savvy branding and a partnership with wellness influencers who spent years spreading misinformation, but she maintained the movement never spoke for most Americans who care about their health. Polling she cited from Reuters/Ipsos ahead of the 2022 midterms and from KFF before the 2024 election showed voters trusted Democrats over Republicans on health policy.
The cracks are now showing, she asserted. Calley Means, a former senior adviser to Kennedy, is among the MAHA loyalists reportedly breaking away over the administration's stalled food agenda, while a survey released this month found voters trust Democrats roughly twice as much as Republicans on health care costs. Grose also highlighted a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and de Beaumont Foundation poll showing that only half of U.S. adults now trust guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, down from 77 percent in spring 2025.
She added that Kennedy moved this week to sidestep the Food and Drug Administration and open access to a range of unproven peptides, overriding the advice of the Trump administration's own scientists. Physicians in Congress, Grose contended, would have the expertise and standing to finally hold him accountable.
Andrews, the columnist suggested, may be the sharpest weapon of the bunch. Grose observed that the mother of three bears a striking resemblance to the anti-vaccine influencer moms who helped lift Kennedy to power, yet clearly enjoys taking him on. In her campaign launch video, Andrews branded Kennedy "the vaccine-denying brain worm guy" who "is gutting our nation's health care system."
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