'You will pay a political price': MAHA leaders threaten Trump, RFK Jr. for perceived mRNA betrayal

When the second Trump administration refused to settle a lawsuit to reinstate in-person prescribing requirements for an abortion pill — instead launching a safety review with no end date — pro-life activists warned it would depress GOP voter turnout this fall.

The old guard of the Make America Healthy Again movement, focused on reducing the power of the pharmaceutical industry and subjecting vaccines to far higher scrutiny, delivered an even more blunt message to President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: You're on the brink of civil war.

A "bait and switch," signers say

In a scathing open letter Monday, high-profile MAHA and "health freedom" leaders and at least three major political and media exiles from Trump's good graces threatened to go head-to-head with the president and MAHA's founder Kennedy, the nation's leading vaccine skeptic, unless they meet a list of demands.

"We did not fight to place you in positions of leadership so that our clearly stated policy goals would suffer a 'bait and switch' that rebranded the grassroots powerful objection to the damaging mRNA platform as a concern about coloring agents in Skittles," they wrote, referring to HHS's MAHA commission prompting candy ingredient changes.

"Health freedom voters can and will walk away if we continue to see inaction—or condescending non-policy—on our core issues," they said. "You will pay a political price" for ignoring the "centerpiece of our agenda," the total market removal of mRNA products with liability shields under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act.

"We will run our own candidates at the state level, and we will support other challengers and sponsors who share our values and advance our draft bills at the federal level for the midterms and for 2028," they warned.

"Secretary Kennedy has been clear that he believes mRNA products warrant heightened scientific scrutiny," press secretary Emily Hilliard wrote in an email Monday afternoon responding to the open letter. 

"HHS continues to support mRNA research where the science shows promise, including for hard-to-treat cancers," she wrote, referring to Kennedy committing the National Cancer Institute to a "public-private partnership to invest in research and clinical trials."

She emphasized that "HHS wound down investments in mRNA vaccines for upper respiratory viruses because the technology does not effectively protect against infection from rapidly mutating viruses such as COVID-19 and flu" and these makers "had already received substantial federal investment," so HHS "redirected those resources toward other promising technologies."

"HHS will continue to invest in innovative medical research based on the strength of the science and its potential to improve outcomes for American patients," Hilliard wrote.

Pressure from "people with loud microphones" gives RFK Jr. a support coalition

Lame-duck Kentucky GOP congressman Thomas Massie, former Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson are the highest-profile non-medical figures among the 168 signatories. Trump marginalized each after fallouts.

Massie demanded a year ago that the Food and Drug Administration "immediately revoke licensure of the mRNA COVID shots," but his breaks from Trump, especially by leading the charge for the release of the full unredacted Epstein files, prompted the president to support a successful primary challenger.

Louisiana Deputy Surgeon General Sean Troxclair, an internal medicine and critical care specialist who cited vaccine injury as the prompt for his Christian conversion, is the most high-ranking current government official short of Massie among signatories.

At least three doctors who faced serious professional repercussions for their skepticism of COVID vaccines — Idaho's Ryan Cole, Utah's Kirk Moore and Texas's Mary Talley Bowden — signed the letter, as did the man who hosted the gathering that produced the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker.

Others include mRNA technology pioneer-turned-skeptic Robert Malone, Vaccine Safety Research Foundation founder Steven Kirsch, former pharmaceutical executive and clinical trial manager Sasha Latypova, cardiologists Aseem Malhotra and Peter McCullough, medical scientist-turned-journalist Maryanne Demasi, comedy podcaster Jimmy Dore and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, a pillar of the onetime "intellectual dark web."

Bowden coordinated the letter and showed it to Just the News before sending it Monday, emphasizing they have a combined 35 million followers on X. It took about a week, led by Bowden "reaching out individually" to sought-after supporters and spreading the word in group forums for doctors.

Food activists "hijacked" MAHA movement, Bowden says

While they made a "smaller scale" effort last year to raise objections to the administration's perceived drift away from MAHA's core, this is the first to collect signatures from "people with loud microphones" and "build a big coalition," Bowden said. 

The letter represents an effort to reclaim the movement from the food activists who "hijacked" it, Bowden said. Kennedy "went silent on mRNA" after he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and threw MAHA's weight to Trump, but this "public pressure" gives Kennedy the "ammunition" he needs to restore mRNA opposition to the forefront, she said.

Food and wellness entrepreneur Calley Means reportedly facilitated what became Kennedy's coalition with Trump hours after the first assassination attempt of the former president. He's now a senior advisor to Kennedy on food and nutrition policy.

"Our timing is very strategic," with several weeks before midterm elections, Bowden told Just the News. Her recent informal poll on X found a third of respondents planned to sit out voting, and she cited a Rasmussen survey that found nearly a quarter of respondents said they "personally" know someone whom they think "may have" died from COVID vaccine complications.

"People are very fed up and [politicians] need our votes, the health freedom movement's votes," she said. "Politicians are willing to give their constituents a shot" but are likely making different choices for their own kids, Bowden speculated.

Non-response to COVID vaccine relabeling petition "speaks louder" than late schedule changes

The letter demands the administration "deliver our actual policy goals in the near term, or face the political consequences."

They want bans on "mRNA/gene therapy-derived technologies for all vaccines, due to their demonstrated abject failure regarding safety, efficacy, and disease prevention after more than four years of real-world use and billions of doses administered," and "pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising," which only New Zealand also permits.

The letter faults the recent approval of the Moderna mRNA flu shot mFlusiva despite not being tested against a "true placebo," with no long-term safety data, "hospitalization or death outcomes" or comparison against "early treatment or any alternative prophylaxis," when its own released data showed "significantly higher side effects" than the standard shot.

Signatories are upset that more than 50 million Americans have received mRNA COVID shots this year, including seven million children, "despite no studies demonstrating prevention of hospitalization or death and voluminous data demonstrating severe harms," including 10 deaths of children confirmed by former FDA vaccines chief Vinay Prasad.

Pfizer awarded $1.24 billion in contracts for future mRNA jabs

They object to HHS awarding Pfizer $1.24 billion in contracts for "future mRNA shots, including for children."

Trump and Kennedy must end "the PREP Act declaration for COVID injections, as no emergency exists" and this "ironclad liability shield for manufacturers and administrators serves no public health interest," and provide "meaningful help for those injured from the mRNA shots," the letter says, and continues to say they should press Congress to repeal the PREP Act for its "numerous constitutional conflicts."

The administration should review and revise HHS policies that "create perverse incentives for healthcare providers to engage in medical coercion," and end conflicts of interest at the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the letter says.

It emphasized that Kennedy-founded Children's Health Defense filed a petition with HHS more than nine months ago to relabel COVID vaccines as emergency use authorization "countermeasures," because they "never underwent legally valid investigational assessment for safety and efficacy." 

The administration's non-response to the petition "speaks louder" than its "placating" messaging on "vaccine schedule issues" ahead of midterms, the letter says. 

It faults CDC Director Erica Schwartz, in her confirmation hearing, for "presumptively" claiming mRNA technology is safe and effective "for all people or all ages and health statuses," which the letter calls legally invalid under the PREP Act.

The CDC refuses to "provide up-to-date cancer statistics amid rising concerns of accelerating incidence of cancer linked to mRNA shots" and the administration isn't enforcing mRNA vaccine providers' contractual obligation to report adverse events to the government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, the letter says.