MAHA to Democrats: Ditch RFK Jr. and you lose our votes for good

Democrats are riding high, but their hoped-for courtship of the Make America Healthy Again crowd is already curdling — and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the reason. The party wants to sell itself to health-conscious voters as the one that will actually act on food and pesticide rules, yet plenty of Democrats treat any alliance with the Health Secretary as a nonstarter. They're already threatening to investigate him and trading blows over vaccines, which could shove nutrition and pesticides to the back of the line.

The timing is rough. Most MAHA-backed candidates lost at the polls last week, and movement leaders pin the GOP's ugly election night on their own people staying home. Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, said voters delivered a blunt message to the White House and every party: broken promises don't earn votes. MAHA faithful were disappointed with the Trump administration's lack of progress on food and environmental issues, she said — but they remain fiercely loyal to Kennedy, who built the movement out of his 2024 presidential run.

Some Democrats had been laying groundwork anyway. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has said he's willing to work with Kennedy on cleaning up the food supply, school lunches and banning certain pesticides. MAHA Action president Tony Lyons responded last week on the group's weekly call, saying there are good people across the political spectrum to fight alongside — and pushing back on any talk that the movement is finished, insisting it has won the hearts and minds of the American people.

Here's the wall: Honeycutt is open to working with Democrats, with one condition. She wants them working with Kennedy, not against him, calling it the red line for almost everyone in the movement and warning that going after Kennedy means never getting their vote. After Maryland Democratic Sen. Angela Alsobrooks called for Kennedy to resign or be fired, MAHA influencer Kelly Ryerson — known as Glpyhosate Girl — said the strategy will lose many future voters, while Food Babe Vani Hari told Democrats it's a way to waste time while children keep getting sicker. Honeycutt called the idea of ousting him over vaccine safety work absolutely insane.

Democrats, meanwhile, have drawn their own line: no adoption of Kennedy's medical freedom agenda, no fresh scrutiny of vaccine safety, and little appetite to accommodate a man likely to be a prime oversight target once they hold power. Kennedy keeps relitigating vaccine safety claims mainstream scientists say have been thoroughly debunked. That combination is likely to kill any bridge-building before it starts.

The strange part is how popular the platform is. MAHA has no major political wins or raft of new laws to show, yet large chunks of its agenda poll well across party lines, independents included. For the new Democratic majority, according to Axios, notching progress on those issues may matter far more than winning an endorsement from MAHA's leadership.