Iran war enrages Make America Healthy Again movement

Activists and insiders in the Make America Healthy Again movement are petitioning for an end to the escalating conflict with Iran and for President Donald Trump’s administration to focus instead on “building a safe, clean, healthy and prosperous society.”

A petition entitled “Health Not War!” was launched on Monday, written in large part by Charles Eisenstein, a senior advisor and speechwriter for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy‘s 2024 presidential campaign.

“We remind members of Congress, and the Trump administration, that our nation has squandered $8 trillion on regime-change wars since 9/11. We remind them that our nation’s infrastructure, its middle class, and its health have all been hollowed out to fund these wars,” the petition reads in part, calling on members of Congress to support a war powers resolution on Iran.

“We call on them to turn America’s attention, money, technology, science, and resources toward rebuilding our nation from the inside out,” it says.

“I believe that most people who identify with MAHA are also anti-war,” Eisenstein told Salon. Eisenstein said his petition aims to create “a national peace movement that unites left and right” that is consistent with previous MAHA policies.

“‘End the forever wars’ was a major plank of the Kennedy 2024 campaign, Eisenstein said.

Others close to Kennedy have voiced their disdain for the conflict they see as a product of Trump’s brash foreign policy.

“This is absolutely devastating,” former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, told Salon, calling it a “catastrophe.”

“It’s a circus of miscalculation. Everything about it is wrong,” he said. Kucinich, who served in Congress for 16 years and was Kennedy’s 2024 campaign manager, said that the decision to go to war “isn’t [Kennedy’s] call,” as he must “wear two hats” as HHS secretary and nominal MAHA leader.

“He’s not going to attack the president. That’s not going to happen. Kennedy helped create the president. He’s hardly a vassal,” Kucinich said. “People in that cabinet know that they’d better stay in their lane.”

Kucinich has long opposed U.S. military intervention, going so far as to sue President Barack Obama over his 2011 intervention in Libya. He is worried about the ripple effects of the decision to invade, especially within America’s foreign policy more broadly, which he says is becoming “a very malign intent to dominate.” This is despite Trump’s prior claims he would avoid foreign wars.

“Foreign wars do not make America great again — he made that clear.”

Eisenstein said the war is a bad look for MAHA and Kennedy’s work at the HHS. “It associates the noble goals of the movement with an immoral war,” he said. “In my opinion, HHS was one of the few bright spots in the Trump administration.”

David Murphy, founder of the food and health policy group United We Eat, said that MAGA should be “putting the Constitution first,” criticizing Trump’s “command” of the military.

“When hostilities proceed without congressional authorization or an attack on the United States, honoring Congress’s constitutional role is essential to preserving democratic accountability for future generations,” Murphy said in a press release for the petition.

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A possible consequence of MAHA’s disagreement over MAGA foreign policies is the threat of losing Republican voters in the upcoming midterms. While Kucinich noted a “convergence” of political beliefs within MAHA, a February report from MAHA Action President Tony Lyons warned that “the Republican party is renting MAHA voters.”

“Embracing RFK and Trump’s MAHA message earned the GOP the most votes in American history,” Lyons wrote, pointing to data that showed 4-6% of new Trump voters in 2024 did so because of the movement.

Kennedy has enjoyed broad support from the Trump administration, with an administration lawyer saying on Thursday that Kennedy has “broad, unreviewable authority” in his position, specifically on his measles vaccine policy, even as the country strains under a historic measles outbreak.

“If the secretary were to say, under my judgment herd immunity is the best way, that would be unreviewable,” the lawyer said.

For its part, the White House is rejecting any kind of gulf between MAGA and MAHA. “While the U.S. military wrecks the Iranian terrorist regime, the Trump administration remains laser-focused here at home to deliver on the President’s MAHA agenda: from cracking down on artificial ingredients in our food supply to revising federal Dietary Guidelines to finally lowering prescription drug prices,” the White House told Scripps News in a statement.

Kucinich posited that MAHA and its voters are becoming increasingly outside the president’s control.

“MAHA is evolving as a political movement. It is a movement that goes beyond who the president is,” Kucinich said, noting that the anti-war petition is a “signal” to pay attention to. “It means neither MAHA nor MAGA is being dragged into a war without objecting.”

The relationship between MAHA and MAGA has also been strained recently by Trump’s executive order protecting producers of the herbicide glyphosate. Kennedy has publicly supported the decision, which resulted in harsh blowback within the movement.

“I just feel like it is the ultimate betrayal,” Shaughnessy Naughton, the president of the science-forward political action committee 314 Action, told Salon. “I think this is a big problem for the MAHA movement.”

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