For supporters of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, Tuesday's release of the MAHA commission’s recommendations was supposed to represent a sea change in how the government approaches regulation of food and chemicals.
While Kennedy’s first MAHA report, released in May, was aimed at identifying causes of the significant increase in chronic disease rates among children, the second report promised to identify strategies and specific actions the government could take to curb that trend. In the lead-up to its release, dozens of interest groups and activists sent letters to Kennedy and other MAHA officials urging action on specific items — from revoking liability shields for pesticide makers to increasing transparency in the food and agriculture business or even banning specific chemicals.
Traditional health and science groups, too, engaged with the Trump administration, urging Kennedy to reverse cuts to government research programs and not to further restrict access to vaccines.
Yet with the release of the much-anticipated report, Kennedy appears to have succeeded in unifying the desperate groups on one fact: The strategy document was, for the most part, a nothingburger.
Kennedy’s report, compiled with the assistance of officials across government agencies, includes 128 targeted directives aimed at addressing youth chronic illness.
“This is an existential crisis for our country, and I'm so grateful I work for a President that is willing to run through walls to stop this, and to heal our kids,” Kennedy said in remarks to press as he released the document, adding that many of the action items were “things I've been dreaming about my whole life.”
Yet with a few notable exceptions, many of those recommendations amount to little more than calls for further research and highlights of previously-announced initiatives.
“RFK Jr. deserves a lot of credit for making these issues — food-caused chronic disease, particularly in our children — a political priority,” Jerold Mande, a nutritionist who worked on government food policy during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, told Scripps News in an interview. “But there was a lot of pushback from the industries identified in that first report, and this second report, frankly, seems to have been written by industry experts, lobbyists working with White House staff.”
“The MAHA input almost seems to have disappeared in this report which is which is deeply concerning,” he added.
What's in the report, and what’s not
The report identifies four key drivers of chronic illness in youth: Poor diet, increasing exposure to toxic chemicals, lack of physical activity coupled with growing stress and so-called “overmedicalization,” described as a “concerning trend of overprescribing medications to children.”
Doctors and medical experts reached by Scripps News agreed those problems deserved scrutiny. But many highlighted the lack of attention given to other pressing health challenges for America’s youth.
Unmentioned in the report are issues of alcohol and tobacco use and abuse — well-known to cause significant and long-lasting damage to children — nor is there any reference to the number-one killer of Americans under 18: Guns.
Asked Tuesday whether the MAHA Commission would explore the impact of guns on children’s safety, Kennedy argued instead for further exploration into the impact of psychiatric drugs and violent videogames.
Critics of Kennedy also pointed out apparent contradictions between the stated goals of the MAHA commission and the actions of the Trump administration. While RFK Jr. has called for more investments in research, the Trump administration has slashed billions of dollars of government and nonprofit research grants and laid off tens of thousands of scientists and researchers. Similarly, as the health secretary advocates further scrutiny of toxic chemicals, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is rapidly rolling back regulations that limit their spread.
“This was nothing more than just a performative waste of time, for everyone,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, a former drug researcher who now runs 314 Action, a group working to elect more scientists in government. “One of the problems they diagnosed was that we need more investment in research. Meanwhile, they're decimating investments in American innovation and research programs. It is just more bunk coming out of this administration.”
MAHA acolytes were similarly dismayed with the report’s failure to propose additional regulations on pesticides and other chemicals. While the document does state that agencies will “develop a research and evaluation framework for cumulative exposure across chemical classes” and “work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s pesticide robust review procedures,” it stops well short of many actions proposed by MAHA supporters.
“This report is a major missed opportunity for the Trump administration and a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House and intentionally short-circuiting Trump’s campaign promise to the millions of MAHA voters who helped him return to power,” David Murphy — founder of United We Eat and a former Finance Director for RFK Jr.’s Presidential campaign — told Scripps News in a statement.
“Clearly, eliminating the words “glyphosate and atrazine” [that were in the first report] is not a result of new science that shows these two most widely used herbicides to be safe, but rather a tactic to appease the pesticide companies,” echoed Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America. “We can only continue to hold President Trump and Kennedy to their word and educate the public about the truth.”
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‘Momentum’ meets Washington reality
Insofar as specific actions were included in the report, most rehashed previously announced initiatives or included vague promises with no concrete timeline or metric for evaluation.
The report’s “policy reforms” section, for example, promises agencies will update the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, develop a formal definition for “ultra-processed foods” and establish guidelines on diagnostics and treatments for food allergies — though the document includes no estimate as to when those items would be addressed.
Perhaps the most significant, new proposal in the document pertains to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, with the report promising regulators will “increase oversight and enforcement” for violations of existing law.
President Trump signed a memorandum related to that effort at the White House on Tuesday, meant to "ensure that the current regulatory framework for drug advertising results in fair, balanced, and complete information for American consumers."
And on vaccines, the MAHA report promised officials would develop a new “framework” to ensure Americans have the “best childhood vaccine schedule” and “modernize” vaccines with “transparent, gold-standard science.”
Kennedy’s approach to vaccines has come under significant scrutiny: since taking office, he’s fired government scientists working on vaccine safety and replaced them with vaccine skeptics; cancelled research grants for new vaccine development; and changed recommendations impacting how many Americans can receive COVID-19 shots.
Science and medical organizations have decried such efforts. In recent days, both the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Family Physicians broke with the CDC to recommend COVID shots for a broader group of Americans than the government suggested.
And according to data shared exclusively with Scripps News by 314 Action, the group supporting scientist and doctors seeking office, more than 85,000 have signed a petition in recent days calling for Kennedy’s ouster.
To be sure, some MAHA supporters spoke highly of the report and Kennedy’s tenure in the government more broadly.
“It's not an easy job, and it's turbulent, but I do believe he's going to stay the course,” said Mary Holland, president and CEO of Children’s Health Defense, a group started by Kennedy that’s critical of widespread vaccine use. “I have had the opportunity to work with him for a long time, and I do believe he has a very clear vision of what's needed to make children healthy again, make the country healthy again.”
Still, even Holland acknowledged that many of Kennedy’s goals might be difficult to achieve in the current Washington landscape.
“I think the momentum is building, but there's a lot of pushback,” she conceded. “Washington has a way of watering things down and kind of neutralizing deep efforts to transform things. I hope that's not the case.”
