UPDATE—February 13, 2025: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is confirmed. The Kennedy family scion will serve as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Donald Trump administration.
The Senate voted to approve RFK Jr.’s nomination 52-48, mostly sticking to their party lines. Notably, former Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell voted against Kennedy, the only Republican to do so.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed after a contentious confirmation hearing, which included several Democratic senators questioning his controversial stances on vaccines and other issues. During the hearing, Glamour explored how he became such a popular figure among so-called MAHA moms online (the H stands for “healthy”). That original story is below.
ORIGINAL STORY—January 31, 2025: As I watched clips this week from RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing to potentially become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, I could only slowly shake my head in disbelief.
This guy? This guy? This guy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is the one that is going to “make America healthy again”? The guy who spends his time, according to his cousin Caroline Kennedy, making smoothies out of mice and chickens? The guy with a worm in his brain? The guy who only drinks raw milk?
I’m not trying to be judgmental of my fellow moms here. I just can’t believe this is the person I have seen so many rally behind. During the hearing, Kennedy told a Black senator to her face that she should be on a different vaccine schedule than white people. He’s insisted for decades that completely disproven links between vaccines and autism are real, harming thousands of people. An Esquire reporter wrote this week that when he mentioned to Kennedy during a 2020 interview that his six-year-old son had battled leukemia, Kennedy asked him if his son had been vaccinated, implying the writer could have been responsible for his child’s cancer. Kennedy, allegedly, sexually assaulted a babysitter. And these are just a few examples of his unfitness to serve.
Despite everything, this is the guy who I have watched countless women and mothers on social media fawn over as the savior of the health of our nation and our precious, sweet little babies. These women have taken up his “make America healthy again” or MAHA, mantle, proudly declaring Kennedy the hero who is going to put “kids’ safety first” and start a generational revolution. Sorry, but what is happening here?
Although it may feel like it, Kennedy’s ability to capture the hearts and minds of so many women, specifically mothers, is not something that came out of nowhere. It’s the latest development in a long-simmering obsession with wellness and conspiracy theories on social media, one that has ensnared thousands of women and continues to grow in prominence, as evidenced by Kennedy’s huge amounts of support online.
To back up: In 2020 during the first lockdowns of the pandemic, I first began to notice that many wellness influencer moms were sharing things that felt…off. They were making vague statements about not believing everything you read, about the COVID-19 pandemic being some sort of smokescreen, about praying for babies, and warning against “elites.”
