MAHA Versus the Machine

Washington, D.C., is a “tough” and “toxic” place,” wellness advocate Calley Means, a senior aide to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told the crowd of wellness activists, healthcare industry executives, and lobbyists gathered for this year’s second annual Make America Healthy Again Summit. “But,” he said, “I am more optimistic today than I’ve ever been” about “evangelizing the chronic disease crisis” and promoting the future of this nascent coalition, which was founded in 2024 with a bone to pick against pesticides, processed foods, and chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

Many MAHA activists wish they could say the same. Held on Tuesday at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, this year’s summit is pitched as a confab for those taking up “the work of a healthier America.” Yet a glance at the speaker agenda and sponsorship list revealed that the event was populated by the type of healthcare giants and start-up founders who dominated the field long before RFK Jr.’s movement seized Washington, from fitness tracker Oura to Walmart and Anthropic. (The event’s organizers rescinded press invites to a string of mainstream and conservative journalists.) The summit was the latest battleground in the struggle over the MAHA movement between its most avid activists and the pro-business wing of the Republican Party.

Caught in the movement’s crosshairs is Lee Zeldin, the former New York congressman who now leads Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Caught in the MAHA movement’s crosshairs is Lee Zeldin, the former New York congressman who now leads Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

For Zeldin, who sat for an interview with The Free Press during a recent swing through New York, there are two camps of MAHA activists.

One camp consists of “people who seek to use the coalition to try to advance a cause [and] that you could tell in the way they engage in rhetoric and tactics that they don’t support President Trump,” Zeldin told me, “whether it’s for clicks or relevancy, to gain following or fortune.” That’s code for leftists, armchair experts, social-media influencers, and grifters.