A coalition of 168 MAHA and health-freedom figures is demanding sweeping changes to federal mRNA vaccine policy and warning it may withdraw political support and back challengers if the Trump administration does not act.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.

A coalition of prominent figures associated with the Make America Healthy Again and health-freedom movements issued President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a political ultimatum Monday, demanding the removal of mRNA-based vaccines from the market and warning that supporters could organize against administration-backed candidates if their demands are not addressed.

The open letter reported Monday by Just the News bears 168 signatures spanning elected officials, physicians, researchers, media personalities and activists. Its authors contend the Trump administration has shifted attention away from what they regard as the movement’s central concern — mRNA technology — toward food ingredients and other health initiatives.

“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,” the signatories wrote.

The reference comes as Kennedy’s MAHA agenda has focused heavily on food ingredients and dyes, including changes announced by manufacturers such as Mars Wrigley.

The letter makes its political warning explicit.

“Health freedom voters can and will walk away if we continue to see inaction—or condescending non-policy—on our core issues,” the signatories wrote. “You will pay a political price” if the administration ignores what they call the “centerpiece of our agenda.”

“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 added.

Among the highest-profile signatories are Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; former Fox News host Tucker Carlson; Louisiana Deputy Surgeon General Sean Troxclair; and numerous physicians who became prominent critics of COVID-era vaccine policies.

Massie called last year for the FDA to “immediately revoke licensure of the mRNA COVID shots.” His relationship with Trump deteriorated over several issues, including Massie’s push for the release of additional Epstein records.

Troxclair has publicly discussed how an experience he attributed to a vaccine injury influenced his religious conversion.

Other physician signatories include Ryan Cole of Idaho, Kirk Moore of Utah and Mary Talley Bowden of Texas.

The list also includes Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker; Robert Malone, whom the letter identifies as a “pioneer of mRNA technology”; Vaccine Safety Research Foundation founder Steven Kirsch; former pharmaceutical executive Sasha Latypova; cardiologists Aseem Malhotra and Peter McCullough; medical journalist Maryanne Demasi; comedian and podcaster Jimmy Dore; and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, previously associated with what The New York Times termed the “intellectual dark web”.

The complete eight-page letter states that removing mRNA products protected by COVID-related PREP Act declarations remains a central objective of its signatories. The document’s claims about vaccine risks represent the authors’ interpretation of the evidence and in several instances differ from current FDA and CDC conclusions.

Bowden coordinated the effort and said the signatories collectively reach approximately 35 million followers. She told Just the News the letter took roughly a week to organize, with her “reaching out individually” to prospective signatories and circulating the effort through physicians’ groups.

A “smaller scale” attempt was made last year, Bowden said, but this effort was designed to recruit “people with loud microphones” and “build a big coalition.”

Bowden said she believes food-focused activists have “hijacked” MAHA’s priorities and argued Kennedy “went silent on mRNA” after ending his independent 2024 presidential campaign and supporting Trump.

She described the letter’s “public pressure” as potential “ammunition” for Kennedy to push mRNA policy higher on the administration’s agenda.

Food and wellness entrepreneur Calley Means, now a senior adviser to Kennedy on food and nutrition policy, reportedly played a role in establishing the political relationship between Kennedy and Trump during the 2024 campaign.

“Our timing is very strategic,” Bowden said of releasing the letter several weeks before the midterm elections.

She said a recent informal poll of her own audience found roughly one-third planned not to vote. She also cited a December 2022 Rasmussen Reports survey in which 28% of 1,000 adults said they personally knew someone whose death they believed might have been caused by COVID vaccine side effects. That survey measured respondents’ beliefs and did not establish whether the deaths they referenced were medically caused by vaccination.

“People are very fed up and [politicians] need our votes, the health freedom movement’s votes,” Bowden said.

“Politicians are willing to give their constituents a shot” while possibly making different decisions for their own children, she added, offering no evidence for the latter assertion.

The coalition also publicized its warning as part of its effort to increase pressure before the election.

The letter tells Trump and Kennedy to “deliver our actual policy goals in the near term, or face the political consequences.”

Its first demand is a prohibition 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.”

Federal regulators do not describe licensed mRNA vaccines as having demonstrated an across-the-board failure of safety or efficacy. The FDA continues to license mRNA COVID vaccines for specified populations and says it monitors their safety and effectiveness. CDC data also state that COVID vaccination can reduce the risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death.

The letter also demands a ban on “pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising.”

One focal point is Moderna’s MFLUSIVA, the first mRNA seasonal influenza vaccine approved in the United States. The signatories criticize its approval because the pivotal study did not use a “true placebo” and, they say, lacked long-term safety information and “hospitalization or death outcomes” and did not compare the product with “early treatment or any alternative prophylaxis.”

They further cite reporting alleging “significantly higher side effects” than the standard shot.

The FDA approved MFLUSIVA on Aug. 5 for adults 50 and older. Its pivotal efficacy study compared the mRNA vaccine with licensed standard-dose influenza vaccines rather than an inert placebo. FDA reviewers reported greater reactogenicity with the mRNA product but concluded the benefit-risk profile was favorable. All nine members of the FDA advisory committee voted that benefits outweighed risks for both the 50-to-64 and 65-and-older groups.

FDA reviewers also examined an imbalance in deaths observed in the clinical program. The agency concluded the deaths were unlikely to be related to the study vaccine while requiring or seeking additional postmarketing surveillance for mortality and several other outcomes.

The coalition separately objects to continued use of mRNA COVID vaccines.

Its letter says more than 50 million Americans, including 7 million children, have received mRNA COVID shots this year “despite no studies demonstrating prevention of hospitalization or death and voluminous data demonstrating severe harms.”

Current CDC guidance, however, cites evidence that COVID vaccination provides protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, with recommendations based on individual decision-making and the strongest benefit expected among people at increased risk of severe COVID.

The signatories point specifically to reports concerning 10 pediatric deaths.

A November 2025 internal FDA email from then-vaccine chief Vinay Prasad said career staff had concluded that at least 10 children died “after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination,” with staff assigning likely, probable or possible causality. The memo did not publish detailed case-level evidence or a peer-reviewed analysis, and the conclusion prompted debate among vaccine experts and former FDA officials.

The FDA has separately required updated warnings about myocarditis and pericarditis on mRNA COVID vaccine labeling. The agency said the observed risk has been highest among males ages 12 to 24 and estimated approximately eight myocarditis or pericarditis cases per million 2023-24 mRNA doses among people ages 6 months to 64, rising to approximately 27 per million among males ages 12 to 24.

The letter also objects to what it describes as HHS awarding Pfizer $1.24 billion in contracts for “future mRNA shots, including for children.”

Public federal procurement records show multiple Pfizer vaccine contracts, including a 2026 adult COVID vaccine contract with a maximum value of about $505 million and a broader Vaccines for Children contract with a maximum value exceeding $2 billion. The specific $1.24 billion characterization in the letter was not independently established by the federal records reviewed for this report.

Another major demand concerns the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act.

The signatories want Trump and Kennedy to end “the PREP Act declaration for COVID injections, as no emergency exists,” arguing that an “ironclad liability shield for manufacturers and administrators serves no public health interest.”

They also demand “meaningful help for those injured from the mRNA shots” and want the administration to urge Congress to repeal the PREP Act because of what they call its “numerous constitutional conflicts.”

The COVID PREP Act declaration, which provides specified liability protections for covered countermeasures and covered persons, was extended in late 2024 through Dec. 31, 2029. PREP Act protection is not absolute; federal law contains exceptions, including for willful misconduct, and establishes a compensation mechanism for certain qualifying injuries.

That declaration is separate from the federal Emergency Use Authorization declaration.

Kennedy announced in June that HHS had determined the circumstances justifying COVID emergency-use authority no longer exist. The EUA declaration for drugs and biological products is scheduled to terminate June 29, 2027, following a transition period. Fully licensed vaccines are regulated separately from products available only under EUA.

The open letter nevertheless argues that COVID vaccines should be redesignated as EUA “countermeasures” and says they “never underwent legally valid investigational assessment for safety and efficacy.”

That is the position advanced in a citizen petition filed by Children’s Health Defense, the organization Kennedy founded before entering government. FDA records currently list products including Comirnaty and mNexspike as licensed vaccines approved through biologics licensing pathways, rather than solely as EUA products.

The signatories say the petition has gone unanswered for more than nine months and contend the administration’s lack of action “speaks louder” than what they call “placating” announcements on “vaccine schedule issues” ahead of the elections.

They also criticize CDC Director Erica Schwartz for what the letter characterizes as “presumptively” declaring mRNA technology safe and effective “for all people or all ages and health statuses” during her confirmation process.

The letter further calls on HHS to revise policies that it says “create perverse incentives for healthcare providers to engage in medical coercion” and demands changes addressing alleged conflicts of interest at the FDA, CDC, National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

It accuses CDC of failing to “provide up-to-date cancer statistics amid rising concerns of accelerating incidence of cancer linked to mRNA shots” and says federal officials are not adequately enforcing adverse-event reporting requirements.

The claim of a link between mRNA COVID vaccination and rising cancer incidence has not been established by current evidence. The National Cancer Institute states that there is no evidence COVID vaccines cause cancer, cancer recurrence or disease progression.

The signatories continued circulating their demands Monday as they sought to turn disagreements over federal health policy into organized political pressure.

The dispute comes amid other tensions between the administration and parts of its political coalition over health policy. Anti-abortion advocates have also criticized the administration’s handling of litigation involving mifepristone after federal officials opted to conduct a safety review rather than immediately restore an in-person dispensing requirement. Federal courts have paused several challenges while the FDA conducts that review.

For the MAHA signatories, however, the immediate dispute is broader than any individual vaccine or regulation.

They are demanding a categorical federal break with mRNA vaccine technology, termination of PREP Act protections connected to COVID countermeasures, restrictions on pharmaceutical advertising and changes in how federal health agencies regulate vaccines and monitor adverse events.

Whether the administration adopts those demands remains unresolved. HHS has already reduced federal investment in some mRNA development and begun terminating COVID emergency-use authorities, while FDA continues to license mRNA products that meet its regulatory standards.

The coalition’s message is that those steps do not go far enough — and that it intends to treat the disagreement as an electoral issue rather than solely a regulatory or medical dispute.

Original article