Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fielding pressure from the White House to relax his controversial approach to vaccine policies as the midterms near, but his most steadfast supporters are pressing for more aggressive action — like restricting covid-19 vaccines and pesticide use — to carry out the Make America Healthy Again agenda.The tensions risk fraying Kennedy’s dynamic MAHA coalition, potentially driving away critical supporters who helped fuel President Donald Trump’s 2024 election win.The movement’s grassroots membership includes suburbanites, women, and independents who are generally newer entrants to the GOP and laser-focused on achieving certain results around the nation’s food supply and vaccines.Promoting healthy foods tops their list and will be at the center of the White House’s pitch to voters during the midterm election cycle.“President Trump’s mass appeal partly lies in his willingness to question our country’s broken status quo,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “That includes food standards and nutrition guidelines that have helped fuel America’s chronic disease epidemic. Overhauling our food supply and nutrition standards to deliver on the MAHA agenda remains a key priority for both the President and his administration.”At the same time, with most Americans opposing efforts to undermine vaccines, the White House has cooled on Kennedy’s aggressive policies to curb vaccines and MAHA’s interest in tamping down environmental chemicals that are linked to disease.The result: Republicans are realizing just how demanding the MAHA vote can be. Moms Across America leader Zen Honeycutt warned that Republicans are facing their biggest setback yet with the MAHA movement, after Trump signed an executive order to support production of glyphosate, a herbicide the World Health Organization has linked to cancer.“It has caused the biggest uproar in MAHA,” Honeycutt said during a CNN interview in late February.A White House WarningTrump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, cautioned in December that an embrace of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policies could cost politicians their jobs this year.Eight in 10 MAHA voters and 86% of all voters believe vaccines save lives, his poll of 1,000 voters in 35 competitive districts found.“In the districts that will decide the control of the House of Representatives next year, Republican and Democratic candidates who support eliminating long standing vaccine requirements will pay a price in the election,” a memo on the poll stated.The White House has since shaken up senior staffing at HHS, including removing Jim O’Neill from the deputy secretary role and his job as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in which he curtailed the agency’s childhood vaccination recommendations. Ralph Abraham, a vaccine skeptic who as Louisiana’s surgeon general suspended its vaccination promotion program last year, stepped down as the CDC’s principal deputy director in late February.Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor who said in congressional testimony that he doesn’t believe vaccines cause autism, is now running the CDC in addition to directing the National Institutes of Health.Though Trump himself has frequently espoused doubts and mistruths about vaccines, polling around anti-vaccine policy has undoubtedly shaken the White House’s confidence during a tough midterm election year, said former U.S. Rep. Larry Bucshon, an Indiana Republican and retired doctor who left Congress last year.Bucshon said Republicans can’t risk alienating voters, especially parents of young children who might be moved by Democratic attack ads on the topic at a time when hundreds of measles cases are popping up across the U.S.“That’s the reason you’re seeing the White House get nervous about it,” Bucshon said. “This is just the political reality of it.”Kennedy built some of his MAHA following with calls to end federal approval and recommendations for the covid vaccines during the pandemic. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a federal panel of outside experts who were handpicked by Kennedy to develop national vaccine recommendations, is expected to review and possibly withdraw its recommendation for covid shots. Its February meeting was postponed and is now scheduled for March 18-19, when the panel plans to discuss injuries from covid vaccines, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed on March 11.“I’m not deaf to the calls that we need to get the covid vaccine mRNA products off the market. All I can say is stay tuned and wait for the upcoming ACIP meeting,” ACIP Vice Chair Robert Malone said on MJTruthUltra, a conservative account on the social platform X, before the meeting was postponed.