Stephen Miller’s Appointment Energizes Rfk Jr. And His Maha Allies

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again devotees are setting sky-high expectations for the White House now that Stephen Miller is running the show there.

Since President Donald Trump named Miller to replace Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, Kennedy and his supporters have celebrated Miller as a steadfast ally.

“Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration,” Kennedy wrote on social media platform X Friday. “It’s time to unleash the Kraken.”

If Kennedy’s right, it would be quite the comeback.

Most MAHA-backed candidates lost in last week’s election amid the movement’s mounting frustration with the GOP and as other issues like the economy took priority over MAHA's concerns.

The disappointment of Kennedy’s supporters with the White House reached a flashpoint when Trump moved to bolster the production of a pesticide they think causes cancer in February. Their suspicions that corporations were influencing White House policy were reinforced when administration aides delayed the release of Kennedy’s plan to define ultraprocessed foods. Last week, former Kennedy adviser Calley Means confirmed their fears in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. Means accused Wiles of doing industry’s bidding by holding Kennedy back. A spokesperson for Wiles has rejected Means’ accusations.

Miller is best known as the architect of Trump’s mass deportation campaign, but he’s also been an enthusiastic supporter of Kennedy’s agenda in White House conversations with MAHA activists.

“It's like somebody hit the UNO reverse button. …This is the restart that was needed if [MAHA] was going to have a fighting chance,” said Alex Clark, a MAHA influencer at Turning Point USA, a conservative group.

At an April White House meeting during which officials sought to calm MAHA activists angry about Trump’s February order protecting the pesticide glyphosate, Miller spoke candidly about his concerns about water contamination, according to Kelly Ryerson, a MAHA influencer on pesticide issues known online as Glyphosate Girl, who attended the meeting.

“He was talking about his own concerns around food and water contamination, and that it's a really enormous deal, and that he himself, with his own family, takes precautions with filtering their water,” she said.

Miller, 41, was a member of the Kennedy-led MAHA Commission Trump set up last year, which released a report outlining policies to improve children’s health.

A father of four young children, he also supported Trump’s August executive order directing federal agencies to reduce the number of recommended vaccines for children and spread out the shots over more doctor appointments. That order came months after White House aides said they were downplaying vaccine discussions because it wasn’t politically popular.

“The pressure from the pharmaceutical industry and from aspects of the medical industry to pump your kids full of shots days after birth with no understanding of the long-term consequences has been a medical travesty,” Miller said at the signing of the executive order, speaking in the Oval Office alongside Trump and Kennedy.

Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, a former White House aide, shares Kennedy’s concerns about vaccines and talked about some of her children’s vaccination history on her podcast. In a January episode, she argued that “healthy children can do a lot better not being vaccinated.” Katie Miller said her oldest child, who is fully vaccinated, has a milk-soy protein allergy, while her third child, who was not vaccinated, is the healthiest among the Miller children. However, studies have not found that vaccination makes people more likely to develop allergies.

Means called Miller’s appointment to replace Wiles “a very good sign for America” in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.

Means said Miller “understands the corporate capture of our political system” better than any other government official and wants to “go hard against special interests.”

Several MAHA supporters told POLITICO they hoped Miller would act to restrict the use of glyphosate and other pesticides, release the definition of ultraprocessed food and align school lunches with the new dietary guidelines Kennedy released in January.

“There has been disappointment in MAHA circles and questions about whether we're headed in the right direction. Here is a chance for Trump and Miller as his chief of staff to really heed the call,” said Hilda Gore, also known as Holistic Hilda, who supports MAHA’s goals.

A food industry representative granted anonymity to speak candidly said that Miller might be more open to MAHA policies but argued that the midterm elections showed voters were concerned with affordability and that trying to define ultraprocessed food would increase grocery prices.

Zen Honeycutt, a MAHA supporter and founder of Moms Across America, hoped Miller’s appointment, along with a Democrat-controlled House and Senate next year, would lead to tougher actions on pesticides.

“The past two years have been a failure in pesticide reform, and the following two years could be successful if the Democrats and Stephen Miller and the president work together,” she said.

Ryerson said she'd like to see Miller help ban pre-harvest desiccation — the use of glyphosate to kill weeds shortly before harvest — and reduce the EPA’s allowable limits for pesticide residue on crops.

MAHA supporters told POLITICO that Miller could be crucial to Republican 2028 efforts to mobilize the voters they credit for helping deliver Trump’s victory in 2024. Democrats have recently made overtures to the movement, and Neera Tanden, head of the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress has called on Democrats to woo Kennedy’s supporters.

“The Republican Party's future right now is hanging on the ability for Stephen Miller and Robert Kennedy Jr. to deliver what Trump said he would deliver,” said Del Bigtree, who was Kennedy’s communications director during the health secretary’s 2024 presidential campaign and is the founder of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit that questions vaccine safety and opposes school vaccination mandates.

Grace Yarrow and Cheyenne Haslett contributed reporting.