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One Year After RFK Jr.’s Confirmation, MAHA Looks to the Future of the Health Movement
Public health and public policy experts convened at The Heritage Foundation on Monday to celebrate “One Year of MAHA.” The leaders discussed how President Donald Trump has enacted policies to improve the health and well-being of Americans and what the administration could do over the next three years.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined The Heritage Foundation event to share the accomplishments of the Make America Healthy Again movement about a year into his tenure. Introducing the secretary, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts praised the administration because “they’ve begun the process of reversing childhood chronic disease, releasing new dietary guidelines that are going to get Americans eating real food again.”
The event explained how Kennedy and Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins collaborated with the top nutritionists in the nation and initiated research to uncover the root causes of America’s health epidemic. Kennedy is proud that the administration’s findings are “written in plain English, and you can summarize it with three words: ‘eat real food.’”
“The primary culprits is ultra-processed foods, refined carbohydrates,” Kennedy said of their findings. “Seventy percent of the foods that our kids eat are ultra-processed foods, and it’s killing them, and it’s a spiritual warfare.” Children’s Health Defense General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg also spoke at the Monday event. Though America is wealthy, Mack Rosenberg claimed, “We have the sickest kids with the poorest health outcomes in well-developed countries.”
Attorney General Marshall Urges Supreme Court to Strike Down California’s COVID Vaccine Mandate
Office of the Attorney General of Alabama reported:
Attorney General Steve Marshall joined an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a constitutional challenge to a California school district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, Health Freedom Defense Fund, Inc. v. Carvalho, was filed after the Los Angeles Unified School District fired over 500 employees who refused to comply with the district’s vaccine mandate in 2021. The en banc Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the employees’ claims.
The States’ brief argues that the Supreme Court’s review is needed to reaffirm the Constitution’s protection of an individual’s right to refuse medical treatment. While the Court has in the past recognized a narrow exception to that right — as in a 1905 case allowing a city to require vaccines to stop the spread of smallpox — the States urged the Court to correct the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that allowed the exception to swallow the rule.
By allowing governments to force vaccination even when doing so does not prevent the spread of disease, the States argued, the Ninth Circuit’s holding gives governments “carte blanche to require a vaccine or even medical treatment against people’s will.
“California’s political theater of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for school employees is obviously unconstitutional,” Attorney General Marshall said. “And the Ninth Circuit’s decision treats a very narrow exception for protecting public health as a green light for governments to impose unlawful medical policies across the board. This case is thus about drawing a clear line between legitimate public health measures and radical mandates that infringe on individual freedom. We urge the Supreme Court to take the case and reverse the Ninth Circuit’s decision.”
Alabama joined the Texas-led brief and was joined by Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Utah.
Vaccine Skeptics Renew Efforts to Rescind New Hampshire’s Vaccine Requirements in 2026
New Hampshire Bulletin reported:
A contingent of vaccine skeptics in the New Hampshire House of Representatives has again brought a slate of vaccine-related legislation to the State House in 2026. Some proposals go further than others.
House Bill 1811 seeks to eliminate nearly all vaccine requirements in New Hampshire outright, while House Bill 1719 targets just the hepatitis B vaccine. Others are much more limited in scope and don’t target the requirements as much as specific aspects of the state’s broader vaccine policy, such as House Bill 1022, which seeks to standardize and simplify New Hampshire’s already permissive religious exemption policy.
Another, House Bill 1584, would also simplify the exemption policy and require state agencies to better advertise them. House Bill 1616 would completely forbid state agencies from advertising vaccines, and House Bill 1449 would forbid vaccine clinics from being held at New Hampshire schools during school hours. Lastly, House Bill 1219 would prevent state agencies from requiring that people receive any extra vaccines in order to be a foster parent.
Three States Weigh Bills to End Public School Vaccine Mandates
Amid a national debate about the safety of vaccines, several states may soon stop requiring immunization for school children.
New Hampshire, Iowa and West Virginia are considering legislation to terminate vaccine mandates for public school students, allowing parents to decide if and when to immunize their children.
Currently, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have vaccine mandates, although Florida has signaled it too will consider eliminating such requirements.
Without School Vaccine Mandates, Many Kids May Never See a Doctor
Every December brings an end-of-year crush to Washington, D.C.’s pediatric clinics. In addition to the usual culprits — colds, the flu, RSV — that’s also the time when the city school district issues notices reminding parents of children who are behind on required vaccinations to get caught up by December 8, or risk being turned away from school.
For Dr. Megan Prior, a pediatrician in the district, the vaccine rush brings an opportunity to catch families up on more than shots.
“Having vaccine mandates reminds parents to engage in their kids’ health,” Prior said.
Like the federally recommended childhood vaccination schedule, those state-level mandates are under steady attack. Last year, at least 10 states made it easier for families to opt out of vaccines required by schools.
For example, Iowa now requires school districts to disclose information on the vaccine exemption process on their websites and in school registration materials. Idaho prohibits day cares, schools and employers from mandating “medical interventions” of any kind — most pointedly, vaccines.
More than a dozen similar bills have already been introduced in 2026, with lawmakers in Indiana and New Jersey, for instance, proposing that those states develop reporting systems for documenting “adverse events” related to childhood vaccines. A South Carolina bill would prohibit any vaccines from being mandated for children under the age of two.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues Snapchat Over Accusations of Inappropriate Content and Addictiveness
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday sued the company that owns Snapchat, accusing the social media organization of failing to adequately warn parents about inappropriate material on the platform and downplaying its addictiveness.
The lawsuit alleges that Snapchat, a free multimedia messaging app, violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by listing itself on app stores as appropriate for children ages 12 and older, despite frequently exposing users to dangerous and mature content that includes profanity, sexual content, nudity and drug use.
The filing also cites multiple other features of the app, including “Snapstreaks” and other incentives to use the app daily, that causes harm to young minds due to their addictive nature.
New Study Examines Possible Risk Factors Linked to Childhood Food Allergies
A new study on food allergies has found that as many as 1 in 20 children may develop a food allergy by age 6. The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed 190 studies of more than 2.7 million children across 40 countries and identified major and minor risk factors linked to food allergies. It found about 5% of kids in the U.S. had a food allergy by the age of 6.
According to the study, some of the major risk factors included early allergic conditions such as asthma and eczema; antibiotic use in the first month of life; having parents with food or related allergies; delayed introduction of foods like egg, fish, fruit, and peanuts; identifying as Black; and having parents who migrated before birth. Minor risk factors included being male, birth via cesarean section, being firstborn, and certain skin-barrier-related genetic differences.
The most common food allergens for children and babies include milk, eggs, peanuts, and shellfish, according to StatPearls, an online library published in the National Library of Medicine. “The big thing researchers say is food allergies are not just genetic, it’s multifactorial,” ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Tara Narula, who was not involved with the study, explained this week. “It is genetics, plus environment, plus microbiome, plus, possibly, your skin health. All of that really put together, that might be causing food allergies.”
