No candy for you: Republican state lawmakers embrace RFK Jr.’s health policies

Republican state legislators across the country are filing a flurry of bills to advance the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda promoted by activist lawyer and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s in line to be the next U.S. health secretary.

Under the MAHA banner, state lawmakers are working to regulate candy and soda purchases under social welfare programs, remove fluoride from public water systems, roll back state vaccination requirements, and remove ultra-processed food from schools.

They’ve enlisted celebrities to help. They’re using #RFK and #MAHA hashtags on social media to share legislative wins. Lawmakers even walked the red carpet at a January gala celebrated as the official start of the MAHA movement in the Trump era.

“It’s pretty exciting for me,” said Wyoming Republican state Rep. Jacob Wasserburger, who has sponsored a MAHA bill in his state.

“I was a pretty overweight kid when I was growing up. … When I was about 16, I started trying to get healthy, and it seemed to me like there were some badly flawed issues with our health care in this country that weren’t being addressed,” he said.

Kennedy is a vocal vaccine skeptic with controversial and sometimes misleading views on a number of public health policies, from fluoride in public water to the underlying causes of HIV and autism. He’s decried ultra-processed foods, government overreach and greedy corporations for harming human health and the environment.

His often unorthodox — and in some cases, false — views have inspired some conservative lawmakers and given political cover to others, spurring them to reshape public health policy in myriad ways.

Candy, soda and SNAP

One popular MAHA measure is to prevent families who qualify for food stamps from using their benefits to purchase candy or soda.

Republican legislators in states including Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming have introduced bills directing their respective state agencies to ask the federal government to allow them to remove candy and soda from the list of eligible products that can be purchased with food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a letter to the feds in December asking them to bar junk food items from SNAP, which is a federal program administered by the states.

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In Wyoming, Wasserburger sponsored a bill that would prevent people in SNAP from using their benefits to purchase candy and soda.

“I’m all in favor of people having food choice and freedoms, but if taxpayers are going to be funding the cost of that food with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the funding should be going to what it says: nutrition,” Wasserburger told Stateline.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the soda and candy bars. Anybody can go buy that with their own money.”

The bill recently passed the Wyoming House and is headed to the Senate.

Proponents of the SNAP bills argue candy and sugary drinks harm the health of recipients, many of whom are children. And taxpayers, they say, shouldn’t have to pay for unhealthy foods that can lead to obesity and other issues.

Critics of the bills argue that the fundamental problem for SNAP recipients is that healthy food is more expensive and can be harder to find in low-income neighborhoods. Lobbyists contend that identifying foods as “good” or “bad” amounts to government overreach.

And even some Republicans say the definitions in the bills are too vague. Arizona’s bill, for example, could have prevented SNAP participants from buying granola bars and some cereals, while allowing them to buy potato chips. The Kansas bill defines prohibited candy in such a way that Kit Kat and Twix bars, which contain flour, wouldn’t be restricted.

Many of the state bills follow on the heels of a federal version, the Healthy SNAP Act, which Republicans reintroduced in Congress last month.

State and local governments, medical groups and other advocates have for years urged the federal government to restrict junk food purchases through the SNAP program. But the attention on junk food is an abrupt about-face for many conservatives, some of whom a decade ago fought then-first lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to make school lunches healthier.

And it’s a change under a Trump administration. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. Department of Agriculture denied Maine’s request in 2018 to prevent SNAP benefits from being used to buy candy and sugary drinks.

Wasserburger said he was asked to sponsor his bill by representatives from the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based conservative think tank that’s pushed state legislation to repeal Medicaid expansion, restrict SNAPin other ways, and thwart state ballot initiatives. Representatives from the foundation spoke in favor of the Kansas SNAP bill.

“It’s one of the bills they’ve encouraged a lot of people to run,” said Wasserburger, who added that he was surprised how little pushback he received when he presented the bill, which sailed through committee and earned House approval in less than two weeks. He attributed the warm reception to Kennedy making the issue a high priority.

But some critics warn that conservative groups like the foundation are glomming onto MAHA enthusiasm to further restrict public aid programs such as SNAP.

School lunches

At a news conference in Arizona last week, actor Rob Schneider — wearing a tall chef’s hat — and former race car driver Danica Patrick stood alongside Arizona state Rep. Leo Biasiucci to plug a bill that would ban public schools from serving foods with certain additives and dyes that Biasiucci argues are harmful to children’s health. Officials from national conservative groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability and Turning Point Action, also spoke at the event.

During the news conference, Biasiucci thanked Kennedy for bringing attention to the issue of food additives.

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“It took Bobby to get into the position that he is in now for something to happen,” said Biasiucci, who also sponsored Arizona’s SNAP bill, which failed in committee late last month. “I can’t thank him enough for being the microphone … at the high level, to finally put a spotlight on this.”

In Utah, a Republican state representative last week introduced a similar bill to ban some food additives.

Vaccines

Republican lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills to change their vaccine rules, including Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Virginia. And in West Virginia, which historically has had one of the strongest school immunization rates in the country and only allows medical exemptions from state-required vaccines, Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey last month signed an executive order directing the state to come up with a policy to allow parents to claim a religious exemption.

Kennedy has denied that he is anti-vaccine. But over the years he has made numerous baseless or false claims about vaccines, including linking them to autism and cancer, saying there is “poison” in the coronavirus vaccine, and suggesting Black people shouldn’t have the same vaccine schedule as white people because they have different immune systems.

His skepticism has given some legislators the political cover they need to roll back vaccination policies in their states.

If confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he’ll oversee most U.S. vaccination efforts, from funding new vaccines to distribution through public programs.

Fluoride and drinking water

Kennedy has called fluoride “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

And now Republican state legislators are taking aim at fluoride.

Fluoride in public water has slashed tooth decay, but some states may end mandates

Legislators in several states have introduced bills that would prohibit adding fluoride to public water systems, including Arkansas, Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee and Utah. Other states, such as Kentucky and Nebraska, are considering bills to make fluoridation programs optional.

Most major medical organizations including the American Medical Association and American Dental Association, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support public water fluoride programs, and say fluoride at recommended levels is safe and an effective way to prevent cavities. However, some studies of pregnant women and their children suggest that fluoride might harm developing brains at levels of 1.5 milligrams or more per liter. Nearly 3 million Americans live in areas where the fluoride level in tap water is at or above that level, according to one 2023 study.

And the National Toxicology Program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, earlier this year concluded with “moderate confidence” that higher levels of fluoride in drinking water — above 1.5 milligrams per liter — are associated with lower IQ in kids.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.