Three days after last week’s “blue wave” election, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a warning on X to anyone suspecting his Make America Healthy Again movement had been weakened. “It’s time to unleash the Kraken,” he wrote.
The phrase, a reference to the 1981 movie “Clash of the Titans” that gained currency in 2020 among far-right internet personalities who claimed Democrats stole the election, suggests Mr. Kennedy will fight for his agenda and has no intention of leaving his job despite the defeat of several MAHA-backed candidates.
The question now is whether Democrats will use their new majorities in Congress to try to push him out.
Many want to investigate him, saying his vaccine agenda and handling of measles outbreaks have put American lives at risk. Some, including Senator-elect Annie Andrews of South Carolina, want to impeach him. Senator Angela Alsobrooks, Democrat of Maryland, wants Mr. Kennedy removed, but has not said how.
“The time is now,” Ms. Alsobrooks wrote on X the day after the election. “RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. End of discussion.”
But others want to work with Mr. Kennedy in areas where they can agree. They believe his food and environmental policies, which have run into roadblocks with the Trump White House, have a natural home with Democrats, and they see a chance to win over some of the health-focused coalition that helped propel President Trump to a second term.
Democrats like Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, a regenerative farmer, and Tim Ryan, a former congressman from Ohio, believe the party should not squander an opportunity to woo MAHA voters on those issues. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, a doctor and former state public health official, has proposed his own MAHA agenda under a different name: Build a Healthier America.
“This makes no sense,” Mr. Ryan wrote in response to Ms. Alsobrooks, adding, “Why wouldn’t we work together to see what wins we can get?”
Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said the secretary would “continue to serve the American people and welcomes working with all members of Congress to turn shared priorities into lasting MAHA reforms.”
MAHA activists across the political spectrum have soured on the Trump White House for stalling Mr. Kennedy’s effort to regulate ultraprocessed foods. Many so-called MAHA Moms, who believed Mr. Trump when he said he would let Mr. Kennedy “go wild on health,” felt betrayed by the president when he issued an executive order ramping up production of glyphosate, a weedkiller that some scientists link to cancer.
“Women feel like they were lied to,” Alex Clark, a conservative podcaster and MAHA influencer, said in February, after the glyphosate order.
Two prominent MAHA leaders, Vani Hari, a cookbook author and healthy eating activist who calls herself “the Food Babe,” and Zen Honeycutt, an environmental activist who founded the group Moms Across America, are former Democrats who followed Mr. Kennedy into Mr. Trump’s camp. Both say they vote the person, not the party.
“I’m frankly tired of reporters asking me, you know, whether I’m loyal to the Republicans, whether I’m loyal to the Democrats,” said Ms. Hari, who was a delegate for Barack Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. “I’m loyal to my children.”
On the day after the election, Ms. Honeycutt joined a webinar for leaders of MAHA Action, a nonprofit advocacy group that supports Mr. Kennedy. She implored Democrats to join forces with the secretary.
“I just urge every Democrat that is considering working against him to sit down and talk with him,” she said. “I think you’re going to love him. I think you’re going to enjoy working with him.”
The blue wave sent a string of Democratic doctors, scientists and health professionals to Congress, who arrived in Washington for freshman orientation this week. But working with Mr. Kennedy may be a hard sell to many of them.
In the past, most of the doctors in Congress have been Republicans, often self-employed and driven to run by business concerns. The new crop of Democrats with professional health backgrounds are animated by the cost of care, access to treatments and in some cases antipathy toward Mr. Kennedy. Ms. Andrews, the senator-elect from South Carolina, a state hit hard by the measles epidemic, ran on a platform of impeaching Mr. Kennedy.
“He’s a clear and present danger to public health,” Ms. Andrews, a pediatrician, said during the campaign.
After the election, Erik Polyak, the executive director of 314 Action, a political action committee that backs scientists and health professionals who run for public office, predicted a rough road ahead for Mr. Kennedy. “We’re going to see R.F.K. Jr.’s head on a platter,” Mr. Polyak told Politico.
The comment ricocheted across the internet, as news organizations declared that “Dems smell blood” and were “coming for” the health secretary. But in an interview, the founder and president of 314 Action, Shaughnessy Naughton, dismissed Mr. Polyak’s statement. “That is not rhetoric that belongs in this conversation,” she said.
Still, Ms. Naughton, who is a chemist and former congressional candidate from Pennsylvania, saw the election results as a repudiation of Mr. Kennedy’s policies, including his attacks on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
“We have been warning Republicans for months that voters were going to hold Republicans responsible for the recklessness of R.F.K. Jr.,” she said.
For the moment, Democrats are more focused on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth than Mr. Kennedy. “I don’t think Democrats can spend their time trying to impeach the entire cabinet, and if there are any impeachments, it should start with Secretary Hegseth,” Ms. Pingree said.
But Mr. Kennedy’s detractors may soon get some ammunition. Early next week, an arm of the World Health Organization is expected to strip the United States of its designation as a nation that has eliminated measles. The disease has killed 11 people in the country since Mr. Kennedy took office.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats and is likely to become the next chairman of the Senate health committee, told CNN on Sunday that he is “absolutely open” to impeachment. In a statement to The New York Times on Saturday, Mr. Sanders sidestepped questions about whether he would rather impeach or work with Mr. Kennedy.
“R.F.K. Jr. is, by far, the most dangerous health and human services secretary in our nation’s history,” Mr. Sanders said in the statement, adding that his committee “will hold Secretary Kennedy accountable.”
While the election confirmed the rupture between the MAHA movement and Republicans, paradoxically, Mr. Kennedy’s hand inside the White House may now be strengthened. Last week, Mr. Trump announced that he was replacing his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who has been accused of blocking some MAHA policies, with Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s hard-line immigration policies. Mr. Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, was Mr. Kennedy’s spokeswoman during the transition.
“Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on X, in his “unleash the Kraken” post.
Some Kennedy allies are urging the secretary to take advantage of MAHA’s fractured relationship with Republicans, and the switch in the White House leadership, to advance his agenda. Ms. Clark sees two options for Mr. Kennedy. One is to quit, and plan a run for president in 2028. “The other option,” she said, “is to go in, guns a-blazing, I don’t care, I’m going to treat every day like the president is going to fire me.”
Even Tony Lyons, the conservative publisher and close Kennedy ally who runs MAHA Action and its sister political action committee, is noticeably shifting his rhetoric.
Early in the election cycle, Mr. Lyons vowed to raise $100 million to elect “MAHA-aligned, Trump-endorsed” Republicans. The MAHA PAC did help elect one Republican, Julia Letlow, the senator-elect from Louisiana, though she did not flip a seat. She will replace Senator Bill Cassidy, who lost to her in a primary.
But some of the MAHA PAC’s marquee Republican candidates lost last week. They include Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas; Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who was running for Senate; and Zach Lahn, who hoped to become Iowa’s governor. At the MAHA Action post-election event, Mr. Lyons blamed corporate influence and “Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma” for the outcomes.
He did not talk about Trump-endorsed Republicans. “We have the building blocks of an incredibly powerful, independent movement that is beholden to no one,” he said.
Mr. Kennedy seems unbowed. At a MAHA Action party in Washington on Monday night, he was surrounded by fans, jockeying to take selfies; one young woman posed holding a small rabbit. He spoke for about 10 minutes, praising Mr. Miller and Ms. Wiles.
But in addition to criticizing Democrats, Mr. Kennedy also took aim at Republicans, who refused to confirm several Trump health appointees, and suggested he may have a freer hand now that the president’s party is no longer in power.
“Every time I tried to do something robust, I would get calls saying, ‘If you do that, we’re not going to confirm your appointees,’” he said. He added: “The Senate no longer has any leverage over me. And you know, that’s a big deal.”
Dani Blum contributed reporting from Washington.