Standing on stage at Madison Square Garden last fall, Donald Trump foreshadowed how he would deploy Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his administration.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”
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Trump kept his word, naming Kennedy Health and Human Services secretary and allowing him free rein to pursue his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. But now, some Republicans want Trump to rein Kennedy in, saying they’re concerned his efforts could hurt them in the midterm elections, by raising costs for farmers and consumers as voters say prices remain their top concern.
“President Trump is working to fulfill the mandate the American people gave him to lower costs and ease the burden on working families, but members of his own Cabinet are undermining that mission,” a Republican strategist working on midterm races said. “RFK doesn’t care that Trump is already burning a lot of capital on his trade agenda, and if he continues to pursue ‘MAHA’ in such an ideological way, costs are going to soar and our chances of success in the midterms will be jeopardized.”
“It’s time to start to give RFK some handcuffs,” this person added.
The split highlights a MAGA divide between conservatives excited about Trump’s deregulatory and tax-cut agenda versus a new right that favors protectionism, tax increases on the rich and price-limits on prescription drugs, which Trump unveiled Monday in an executive order.
Kennedy’s mission is at the forefront of this split. The Cabinet secretary — who declared “sugar is poison” — has launched a war against the food industry, moving to phase out synthetic food dyes and artificial food additives and prevent food stamps from being used on soda and candy. As part of his “MAHA commission” to investigate chronic disease, he pledged to probe any connection with processed foods or pesticides. And Kennedy has gone on a nationwide tour to promote state legislation he sees as critical in getting food companies to negotiate with him.
Trump, known for eating McDonald’s and drinking Diet Coke, has repeatedly endorsed Kennedy’s effort. The president’s budget proposal included $500 million in spending on a Kennedy-backed MAHA venture. Last week, after replacing his pick for surgeon general with a Kennedy ally, Trump said he did so “because Bobby thought she was fantastic.”
“Mr. President, I want to thank you … for the 100 busiest days of my life,” Kennedy told Trump at a Cabinet meeting last month. “Over the next 100 days, we’re going to do much, much more.”
NBC News spoke with eight Republican operatives and state lawmakers for this article, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about Kennedy’s effort and potential its electoral impact.
Tensions on the right
A second Republican working on next year’s midterms warned that farmers would be hit hard by Kennedy’s effort as he takes aim at pesticides like glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide that faces some divide over whether exposure is linked to long-term adverse health effects.
“The underlying story here is a real tension between traditional Republicans and new right Republicans,” this person said. “The administration thinks that battle within the Republican Party has been settled. The more realistic way to look at it is … it’s a coalition that is tenuous at best and needs tender love and care to keep it together.”
This person added that operatives working on midterm races “really want a ratchet back to a deregulation agenda, a focus on tax cuts.”
“There’s a level of confidence that is not based on reality in the White House right now that they are totally correct on both the tariff strategy and the MAHA strategy. And that’s just dangerous,” this person said.
Some Republican lawmakers on Wednesday expressed concern with Kennedy’s efforts at a House hearing. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., pushed back against banning synthetic dyes, saying they have “been deemed safe for many years,” to which Kennedy responded that “good science” has linked them to neurological injury and cancer. At the same hearing, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, a former dentist, questioned Kennedy’s anti-fluoride push.
There’s enough concern that Republicans are already conducting polling on any impact Kennedy may have on the midterms. An internal poll conducted last month by the Tyson Group, a GOP-aligned data firm, and Plymouth Union Public Research of 813 likely Republican primary voters found that nearly 60% would be less likely to support a candidate for governor or state legislator if they “sided with RFK Jr. on food regulation, knowing it could undermine” Trump “and make food more expensive …”
But the survey also showed some of Kennedy’s and MAHA’s strengths with Republicans. Notably, more than 40% of likely Republican primary voters said siding with Kennedy even at Trump’s expense would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. An Economist/YouGov poll last month found that 42% of U.S. adults view Kennedy favorably — virtually in-line with Trump and higher than Vice President JD Vance and fellow Cabinet secretaries Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick and Kristi Noem.
Kennedy’s agency, which did not respond to a request for comment, on Tuesday signaled it is mindful of the cost concerns. In a statement, both HHS and the Food and Drug Administration announced a “Deregulatory Plan to Lower Costs and Empower Providers” that seeks information to help “identify and eliminate outdated or unnecessary regulations.”
“As the chronic disease crisis affects 60 percent of Americans, Making America Healthy Again is a bipartisan and overwhelmingly popular issue, which will ultimately lower health care costs,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “Empowering families to be healthy goes hand-in-hand with supporting our farmers as the administration works to deliver American-grown products to kitchen tables across the country.”
Though other Republicans who spoke with NBC News said they “heard grumblings” over cost concerns associated with Kennedy’s agenda, they either did not see them as particularly worrying for the midterms or believed the electoral benefits of MAHA outweighed any potential price hikes.
“It just seems like they would be totally picking the wrong battle,” a GOP campaign operative said of Democrats if they take aim at Republicans over MAHA legislation. “If that’s the battle they wanted to pick, like, that would be fine with me. I’m happy to have that debate.”
This person and others also questioned whether the MAHA agenda would broadly be enacted soon enough to have any practical impact on costs before November 2026. Some state level legislation that has been signed into law won’t take full effect until as far out as 2028. On Tuesday, the White House celebrated an inflation report that showed prices in April grew at their slowest pace in more than four years — while grocery price increases saw their sharpest slowdown since 2023 — though the full impact of Trump’s tariffs have yet to be felt.
“There are a lot of hypotheticals that would have to happen in order for it to even be a conversation” on costs, this person said. “Would it be enacted before the election with enough of a time frame for costs to rise? There are a lot of leaps to get to the point. If the left is going to hit us on an RFK thing, this is pretty weak.”
Part of the reason for MAHA’s ascendance within the Republican coalition is how much credit Trump allies have given to Kennedy and his supporters for bringing Trump over the top last fall. Kennedy, who ran for president himself, dropped out of the contest and backed Trump at a moment when then-Vice President Kamala Harris was building momentum. In an interview with longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said last week that “the MAHA movement” joining Trump’s coalition was “how we won.”
“Trump did a really good job coalition building,” a national Republican operative said. “MAHA is a great piece of that. … If you’re able to actually deliver some wins there, I think that’s huge. The food dye is just such a low-hanging fruit. It’s an easy thing for them to kind of put some points on the board. Get in line with the rest of the world.”
Yet some divides in the MAHA movement have emerged in recent days. After Trump announced he was withdrawing the nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as surgeon general and replacing her with Dr. Casey Means, a wellness entrepreneur and influencer, the pick came under fire from Kennedy’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who suggested Kennedy is being controlled by others around Trump.
That Kennedy was tapped for health secretary came as a shock to many given that he had built up his bonafides in recent years as a staunch anti-vaccine activist who repeatedly made false claims linking autism to childhood vaccinations, among other controversies. Now, Kennedy is investigating that supposed link at Trump’s behest.
State-level MAHA initiatives
The MAHA food agenda stands to have more in common with traditionally Democratic policies. California was the first state to enact legislation banning some food dyes last year, and Kennedy’s allies are supporting aligned legislation there and in New Jersey. (Separately, much of the MAHA school lunch agenda echoes former first lady Michelle Obama’s initiative that was derided by Republicans.)
Kennedy in recent months has toured states including Indiana, Utah, Arizona and West Virginia to boost state-level MAHA initiatives or legislation that echo his federal priorities, including bills to ban artificial dyes and bar ultra-processed foods in school.
West Virginia has enacted the most sweeping legislation of any Republican-aligned state so far, banning a number of food dyes in all food sold in the state beginning in January 2028. West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrissey said he would also move to request federal waivers to bar food stamps from being used to buy soda.
West Virginia state Del. Adam Burkhammer, a Republican who introduced food dye legislation in his state, said while his party has not yet “fully embraced” the MAHA movement, he sees broad agreement that lawmakers “have got to do something different” to address health concerns.
“I think our food is where we start with that,” Burkhammer said. “That seems to be the easy start. Now there are additional things that we can begin to look at, but let’s clean up our food first. And I think we’re going to see health improvements right away, just by eating healthier.”
Burkhammer acknowledged there were concerns over food prices with his legislation, but he said rising prices shouldn’t prevent change.
“I would just really disagree with this notion that to keep things affordable, we should allow them to cause adverse health conditions on all of our population, but really our children,” he said. “And so I’m willing to offset that cost, because I think our children’s health is more important.”
Utah state Rep. Kristen Chevrier, a Republican who introduced a bill to ban artificial dyes in the state’s public schools, said the Republican Party is still coming around to MAHA’s branding.
“There are still some people who cringe when you say MAHA, but these same people will vote in favor of removing food dyes from school,” she said. “Some people just don’t like the terminology, but I I think that they embrace the concept.”
She said Americans ultimately need to rethink their relationship with food.
“I think people just need to change the way they look at food,” she continued. “We need to eat a whole lot less. We need to be less addicted to certain things. And I think by getting away from some of the chemicals, we may find that we are less addicted to eating. If you eat less, maybe it would be less expensive, too.”
