Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some allies in his "Make America Healthy Again" movement are trying to get a toehold on Capitol Hill even as the food and agriculture industry worries about what role he could play in a second Donald Trump administration.
RFK Jr. got a standing ovation at the outset of a four-hour, standing-room roundtable hosted Monday by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building, made famous by the Watergate hearings.
Kennedy was joined by the brother-and-sister duo of Calley and Casey Means, prominent critics of U.S. agricultural policy and the health care industry, plus a collection of podcasters and bloggers.
Also making an appearance at the event was Idaho GOP Sen. Mike Crapo, who is in line to chair the Senate Finance Committee next year if Republicans win control of the Senate. The committee oversees Medicare and Medicaid as well as tax and trade policy.
“For 19 years, solving the childhood, chronic disease crisis has been the central goal of my life, and for 19 years, I have prayed to God every morning to put me in a position to end this calamity,” Kennedy said. “I believe we have the opportunity for transformational, bipartisan change to transform American health.”
Also Monday, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who serves on the House Rules Committee, said in a post on X that he met with Kennedy, Calley Means, Tennessee GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty and Rep. Tom Massey, R-Ky., along with Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and best-selling author popular in conservative circles. Peterson also participated in the Senate roundtable.
Casey Means also hosted a meeting Monday morning with congressional and Senate staffers.
Senate roundtable featuring RFK Jr.Kennedy’s potential role in a Trump administration remains a mystery, although he has said he is part of Trump’s transition team. Kennedy said in an interview Sept. 17 with Tucker Carlson that Trump has asked him “to help unravel the capture of the agencies by corrupt influence” and to “help him end the childhood disease epidemic.”
Kennedy went on, “I don’t have a post for myself. I know that I’m going to be deeply involved in helping to choose the people who can run FDA, NIH and CDC in a way that restores public health.” Kennedy added that he would “bring in people to run those agencies like Calley Means, like Casey Means.”
When Carlson remarked, “They have nightmares about that,” apparently referring to industry, Kennedy responded, "And they should."
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At the Senate roundtable, Kennedy also cited USDA as a villain.
“The FDA, the USDA and CDC are all controlled by giant for-profit corporations,” he claimed. “Their function is no longer to improve and protect the health of Americans. Their function is to advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry that has transformed them into sock puppets for the industry they're supposed to regulate.”
Calley Means made similar claims, specifically mentioning the dietary guidelines revision process, which he asserted is unduly influenced by industry. Means also called for restricting what kinds of foods can be purchased with SNAP benefits, an idea championed, unsuccessfully so far, by the chairman of the House Ag Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.
At the roundtable and later on X, Calley Means also delivered a direct message to congressional staffers who he said are “working to impress your future bosses at the pharmaceutical companies, the hospitals, the insurance companies … We are coming for you.” His X post added: “Corrupt congressional healthcare staffers are destroying the country. We see you.”
During the Senate roundtable, some agriculture sectors were spared from criticism: meat and poultry as well as organic production. Much of the criticism is aimed instead at the use of pesticides and the broad and ill-defined category of “ultraprocessed” foods
Rep. Chip Roy posted on X with RFK Jr.Podcaster Mikhaila Fuller, who promotes a plant-free ketogenic diet, declared at the roundtable, “The ecological war on meat needs to end,” an apparent reference to environmentalists' concerns about the carbon footprint of animal agriculture.
Crapo, who was invited to speak at the roundtable, talked about how he had shed weight by reducing carbohydrates in his diet.
“I’m hopeful we can get a focus on addressing the government’s part” in the health conditions discussed at the meeting, Crapo said, also indicating he favors expanding health savings accounts.
He didn’t say how rules for the accounts should be liberalized, but a major complaint aired at the meeting is that doctors aren’t reimbursed for alternative medicine.
After the meeting, Crapo used a post on X to thank Johnson and Calley Means for inviting him to the roundtable that “included many inspiring people working toward a healthier America.”
Calley Means' call for restricting SNAP purchase choices is one of the few MAHA ideas that has been tested in Congress but so far has found little traction. Harris has put a pilot program for SNAP restrictions in each of the last two spending bills for USDA but the provision was killed in negotiations on the final version of the fiscal 2024 legislation. A similar provision he put in the draft FY25 bill was stripped out in committee.
The top Republican on the Senate Ag Committee, John Boozman of Arkansas, told Agri-Pulse Tuesday he doesn’t think the food and agriculture sectors have to worry about Kennedy’s influence.
“That is a voice,” Boozman said, referring to Kennedy, “but Congress gets to decide.”
Mike Beam, the secretary of agriculture in Kansas, expressed confidence to Agri-Pulse that farm groups can overcome any MAHA-promoting critics in Washington.
“I have quite a bit of confidence that, no matter who is elected, that we will be able to unify behind, you know, a strong economic agriculture, we seem to have done that in the past, and I have the opinion that we'll be able to do so again, regardless of who's in the White House,” he said on the sidelines of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture annual meeting in Indianapolis this week.
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