RFK confirmed as HHS secretary — Calley Means and the MAHA movement claim a major win
Feb 4, 2025
Key Points
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation as HHS secretary delivers a major win for the Make America Healthy Again movement and Truemed co-founders Calley Means and Justin Mares.
- Pharmaceutical industry advertising spending and media dependency have historically insulated drug makers from scrutiny despite documented concerns about safety and marketing practices.
- Kennedy's confirmation gains cross-partisan support because the underlying critique—that regulatory capture weakens public health outcomes—resonates across the political spectrum despite MAHA's politicization.
Summary
RFK confirmed as HHS secretary—Calley Means and the MAHA movement claim a major win
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, marking what Calley Means, co-founder of Truemed, describes as the most important cabinet confirmation in American history. Means frames the win as a direct challenge to the pharmaceutical and food industries—the largest and most powerful sectors Kennedy and President Trump have targeted. The confirmation represents a major achievement for the Make America Healthy Again movement, which Means has spent considerable time advancing alongside his Truemed co-founder Justin Mares.
The resistance Kennedy faced was substantial. The pharmaceutical industry spends billions annually on advertising and lobbying at federal and state levels, creating structural barriers to reform. Legacy media outlets, dependent on pharmaceutical advertising revenue, have historically avoided critical coverage of the industry—a dynamic that created what amounted to financial suicide for outlets like CNN to run negative stories about drug makers. That media dependency helped insulate the industry from scrutiny despite documented concerns about drug safety, efficacy, and marketing practices.
The confirmation matters because American health outcomes have stagnated and declined for years. Lifespans have flatlined. The obesity and chronic disease burden has worsened decade by decade. There is broad agreement across the political spectrum that the status quo is unsustainable, even if the causes and solutions remain contested. What makes this win non-partisan in nature is that the underlying critique—that regulatory capture and industry influence have weakened public health outcomes—echoes arguments made by figures ranging from Kennedy (formerly a Democrat) to Noam Chomsky on the left, to policy hawks on the right who question why the current system exists.
The MAHA movement itself has been politicized despite its stated goal of improving American health outcomes through better information access and dietary change. But the core insight—that Americans should have the freedom to make their own health decisions with better data—is not inherently political. What changed was the political coalition willing to act on it.