White House says it’s ‘done’ with vaccines. MAHA begs to differ

STAT News – Friday, March 13, 2026
By Daniel Payne and Chelsea Cirruzzo

White House officials are steering the Trump administration away from vaccine reform, fearing the political consequences of emphasizing a relatively unpopular issue in a key election year.

But the Make America Healthy Again movement, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a health secretary with a history of anti-vaccine activism — isn’t going along without a fight.

The administration’s shift began late last year, when Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio published a memo finding that “vaccine skepticism is bad politics,” especially as the midterm elections near.

This month, the White House fully pivoted the administration on the issue, according to two White House officials who were granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

“We’re just kind of done with the vaccine issue,” said one of the officials. “We’ve done what we want to do on the vaccine front.”

But parts of the MAHA movement are now pushing back against the strategy, insisting its cause, including some vaccine issues, has broad popularity. The work, they say, is far from over.

“We’re nowhere near done on the vaccine issue,” said Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer of the Children’s Health Defense, the highly vaccine-skeptical group that Kennedy founded.

Earlier this month, the Brownstone Institute, founded in 2021 to oppose certain Covid-19 measures like lockdowns, released its own poll, showing strong support for what the group calls “medical freedom.” Of the 1,000 American voters surveyed, just over 80 percent said adults should have the “right to refuse” vaccines, and close to half linked the childhood vaccine schedule with a rise in chronic disease.

Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of Brownstone, told STAT that they commissioned the poll after hearing that the White House was backing away from vaccines. He was critical of the wording Fabrizio used in his December poll, which found strong bipartisan support for the childhood vaccine schedule in key congressional districts. Fabrizio didn’t respond to a request for comment from STAT.

Tucker, along with Leslie Manookian, founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, which advocates against medical mandates of any kind, commissioned a poll from John Zogby Strategies in hopes of convincing Republicans that vaccine policies are winning issues.

Noting that it’s been just six years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Tucker told STAT that medical freedom is “massively important” to the public and could help Trump’s base at a time when most Americans oppose the military action the U.S. has taken in Iran.

“The MAHA positions are still strong,” he said. Though, he added, their poll hasn’t yet gotten as much attention as hoped.

The Trump administration’s shift away from vaccine policy comes after it landed another blow to the MAHA movement in encouraging the production of the herbicide glyphosate, which could further strain the odd-bedfellows alliance between Trump and Kennedy supporters. The outcomes of the MAGA-MAHA debate have political implications in the midterms and could also have far-reaching impact on the nation’s public health.

“It’s a low point,” one of the officials said of the state of the MAGA-MAHA alliance.

Still, the officials highlighted the huge changes already made to vaccine policy. The administration remade the federal vaccine advisory board, overrode normal scientific processes to create policy, upended the childhood vaccine schedule, surprised industry with unusual approval processes, and opened research to look for safety issues with shots — all of which are likely to change America’s vaccine landscape.

When asked about how Kennedy and other HHS leaders see the administration’s de-emphasis of vaccine policy, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement that the secretary “speaks about a broad range of issues that affect the health and well-being of American families.”

Nixon said the agency is focused on “the priorities Americans consistently say matter most to them, including tackling chronic disease, improving nutrition and food quality, and lowering the cost of care and prescription drugs,” but did not mention vaccines in his response.

Tucker suggested Kennedy has been politically cautious in melding the MAGA and MAHA movements, looking for progress over perfection: “It’s why he’s willing to put up with compromises and limits.”

The administration is now emphasizing issues more popular with key voters, the officials said. Healthy foods, as well as affordability in drug and insurance costs, are becoming the focus.

The move has coincided with a leadership shakeup at the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the departure of a top Food and Drug Administration vaccine regulator. It also comes amid new lobbying pushes aimed at the White House to rein in agency decisions, especially after a surprising FDA rejection of a vaccine.

Some Kennedy allies have kept pushing on vaccines anyway. On Monday, the MAHA Institute convened a roundtable focused on anti-vaccine messaging, including from the institute’s president Mark Gorton, who called for eliminating the childhood vaccine schedule entirely. Later, Children’s Health Defense Fund president Mary Holland told attendees they were “winning.”

And grassroots MAHA activists have seen changes at the federal level as a signal to become more aggressive in their efforts nationwide, including lobbying to eliminate vaccine requirements for school entry.

Some administration actions are likely to continue having impacts in the coming months. The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, for example, is reviewing the safety of several shots and their key ingredients, and plans to meet next week. Administration officials may be forced to accept — or reject — the recommendations from the findings.

But even some MAHA leaders see the political risk noted by White House officials.

In February, MAHA and Kennedy ally Tony Lyons pointed to the Fabrizio poll in a memo he sent to Republicans, first obtained by Politico, urging them to address vaccine issues “carefully and with nuance.”

“That’s because, overall, a slim majority of voters are not convinced there are negative health impacts from vaccines,” the memo reads. It urges Republicans to focus instead on “promoting choice and individual liberty around vaccine policies.”

Skewed polling to advocate for a particular position isn’t a new strategy, said Joel White, a Republican strategist and health care practice lead at Monument Advocacy.

“The credible polling clearly shows that people value vaccines and the health benefits they provide,” he said.

Still, the debate could be important.

“We’re in a political year, and the president is so good at driving messages on things that people actually care about,” said White, acknowledging the different opinions about the right approach on health — seen as a critical policy area for the midterms. “There’s friction right now between the two camps.”

A former HHS official with experience running campaigns, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the White House is more likely to just not talk about vaccines, adding that top officials know that the polls aren’t in their favor and everything they do now must be focused on winning the midterms. To come out in full-throated support of vaccines now, they said, would be a confusing message.

It’s not just the Trump White House seeing a political risk in Kennedy’s vaccine agenda. The Democratic National Committee last month highlighted growing measles outbreaks after it called attention to the health secretary’s changes to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which develops recommendations for preventive care. Vaccines have remained a focus for Democrats in hearings with health officials and nominees.

Sensing unrest and political risk, some MAHA leaders are pointing their movement toward unity.

“There will be those who want to manipulate and drive a wedge between Secretary Kennedy and the president, or between one faction of MAHA and another,” Lyons said on a MAHA action call this week. “We need to stick together. … They will win if they find a way to divide us.”

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