(NewsNation) — Since Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was sworn in as the 26th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in February, the department has gone through a major overhaul as the former presidential candidate attempts to lay out the Trump administration’s health agenda.
The Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate-turned-Trump ally was considered a controversial choice to lead the health agency.
Kennedy has been a longtime anti-vaccine advocate and proponent of the health freedom movement.
After Kennedy was sworn in, President Donald Trump established the Make America Healthy Again Commission in February 2025 committed to Kennedy’s cause of addressing a “growing health crisis in America” with a focus on nutrition, chronic illness, drug safety issues, mental health, and more.
What is the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (MAHA) movement?
Kristin Davis, a former publicist for Kennedy’s presidential campaign Common Sense PAC, told NewsNation, that MAHA is, “more than a slogan. It’s a nationwide movement committed to restoring the health and well-being of the American people by addressing the root causes of our nation’s health crisis.”
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She noted that the conception of MAHA pre-dates the political scion.
“While the name MAHA was coined and trademarked a few years ago by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health freedom movement and what it represents has been evolving for over a decade. The health freedom movement is a grassroots coalition of doctors, activists, and informed citizens fighting for transparency, informed consent, and the right to make personal health decisions free from corporate and government coercion,” Davis said.
Davis added the health freedom movement, “challenges a system where profits often come before people and demands accountability for the rising chronic illness epidemic,” said Davis. “RFK Jr. helped give it a formal identity, but the movement itself predates the brand. (MAHA’s) key initiatives include revising the childhood vaccine schedule, eliminating harmful additives and toxins from our food supply, and advocating for transparency, informed consent, and real accountability in both medicine and government.”
What are the key initiatives of ‘Make America Healthy Again’?
The MAHA PAC website explained they advocate for addressing the origin of chronic illness like nutrition, and environmental toxins, and will focus on preventative healthcare and better quality food.
“We have one of the sickest generations of young people of any developed countries,” Dr. Phil McGraw said on NewsNation’s “CUOMO.” “We’re 33 out of 38 among developed countries right now in terms of the presence of chronic disease in young people.”
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Some of Kennedy’s objectives include stopping the use of fluoride in drinking water, banning artificial food dye, and this month he made a bold announcement that he would find the cause of autism by September.
When asked for comment the HHS referred NewsNation to Trump’s executive order creating the MAHA Commission.
RFK Jr.’s restructuring of the HHS
Since he became health secretary, numerous government health programs and employees have been eliminated.
According to a March 2025 HHS fact sheet, the agency in accordance with Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative cut roughly 20,000 full-time employees and downsized from 28 to 15 divisions including the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).
Kennedy promised he would overhaul the health system in the United States with a proposed $11 billion in cuts from state and local health departments.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said in the release. “This Department will do more – a lot more – at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
In his first network interview since being sworn in, CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, questioned Kennedy on the cuts. Kennedy replied, “No I’m not familiar with those cuts. We’d have to go … the cuts were mainly DEI cuts, which the president ordered,” and added he was also unaware that HHS cut $750,000 in grant research at the University of Michigan for adolescent diabetes.
How is RFK Jr.’s HHS leadership being received?
With regards to HHS’ cost-cutting measures, Mark A. Peterson, Professor of Public Policy and Senior Fellow at the Center for Health Policy Research at UCLA told NewsNation that cuts could affect research that has been “influential in improving the lifespan and quality of life of Americans.”
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“… terminating grants midstream, totally redefining the predicates of the research infrastructure without any transition and opportunity for universities and other institutions to plan and adjust and summarily firing highly trained and experienced federal employees without a care about either their contributions or their personal circumstances is unprecedented and completely counterproductive,” Peterson said.
U.S. Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA), an internal medicine doctor and member of the Congressional Doctors Caucus, has been vocal with his reservations about RFK Jr.’s medical perspectives and mass layoffs at the HHS, FDA, and CDC.
Bera told NewsNation on Thursday that the Secretary of HHS claiming to not know the specifics of the cuts was “disappointing because a lot of these programs we stood up post-pandemic to do better surveillance, wastewater surveillance, other things to be an early warning signal should there be a new novel virus popping up or even from a biosecurity perspective if someone’s introducing a biological agent or something like that I think that’s weakening our public health system.”
“It’s weakening our local public health systems at a time where naturally occurring pathogens, but also potentially man-made pathogens could be more prevalent,” he also said.
Davis, Kennedy’s former Common Sense PAC publicist, defended Kennedy’s swiping changes.
“People have bought into the idea of change without fully grasping what true reform demands,” she said.
“We didn’t reach this level of national unhealthiness and government corruption overnight and undoing it requires bold, sometimes uncomfortable measures that critics often resist out of vested interest and simple naivety,” Davis also said.
