By Liz Essley Whyte
Tony Lyons, longtime book publisher for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., seems to be everywhere in the Make America Healthy Again movement.
He has raised what he said would be as much as $100 million toward Republicans in the midterms and convened scientists at a hotel near the White House to discuss vaccine injuries and other health topics. His efforts also include spending millions on a Super Bowl ad on nutrition featuring Mike Tyson, and bringing together representatives from Google, Walmart and other firms for a "MAHA Summit" that offered corporate sponsorships at rates from $250,000 to $1 million.
The end goal: proving to the White House that the MAHA coalition is a reliable voting bloc, and that it would be wise to give more priority to Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy's agenda after the midterms.
"If Secretary Kennedy is going to complete the mission of really trying to stand up to these corrupt companies, to these corrupt agencies...he has to have more time," Lyons said in an interview.
The challenge for Lyons, a member of Kennedy's inner circle who runs the political operation behind the MAHA movement, is motivating a growing group of Kennedy fans who are sharply critical of the administration's recent moves on pesticides and other actions and want MAHA groups to amp up their criticisms. Worries at the White House about the unpopularity of Kennedy's vaccine agenda led to a recent shake-up at the top ranks of his department.
MAHA "needs to distinctly be its own thing that will eventually transcend MAGA when this term is over," said Alex Clark, an influencer whose "Culture Apothecary" podcast was an introduction to MAHA causes for many conservative women.
"Tying it to one admin is a mistake and could cut the legs off its longevity," said Clark, who was recently among the activists invited to the White House in a bid to win back MAHA support.
Lyons -- who wears many hats in the movement without getting paid, he says -- wrangles a long list of groups, influencers and donors and urges them to support the administration and make MAHA a deciding factor in the coming midterm elections. Lyons said he views maintaining a strong alliance with Trump and the GOP as a strategic necessity to ensure Kennedy can have the power needed to take on corporations and change federal health agencies.
"I think the best possible place for him is to run HHS for eight years," Lyons said. "I was talking to him once and he said that he felt that this was the job he was put on this planet to do."
Lyons met Kennedy around 2010 and remains devoted to him, people around him said. Lyons -- the chief executive of New York-based Skyhorse Publishing, known for taking on contrarian authors -- went on to publish many of Kennedy's books, including the bestselling "The Real Anthony Fauci." He said he was attracted to Kennedy's skeptical tone on vaccines: Lyons now blames his own daughter's autism on a combination of a vaccine and the Tylenol he guesses they gave her after the shot.
He has his hands in a cluster of entities with MAHA in the name. There is MAHA PAC, the political-action committee Lyons helps lead, which has pledged $100 million to Kennedy-aligned candidates in the midterms. Currently, the PAC has about $400,000 in the bank, according to its most recent Federal Election Commission filing. The PAC plans to put money behind more than a dozen candidates this year, including Republicans Brandon Herrera in Texas and Mike Rogers in Michigan.
Lyons serves as president of the nonprofit MAHA Action, which hosts frequent livestreams for Kennedy fans featuring MAHA celebrities such as Russell Brand and Calley Means. He also helps lead the MAHA Institute, an entity that has hosted a series of hourslong salons at D.C. hotel Willard InterContinental near the White House on topics such as vaccine injury and weaning farmers off pesticides. He sits on the board of MAHA Holdings, which hosted the summit in downtown Washington last year that included representatives from Google and Walmart. Lyons said the summit will be an annual event.
When evaluating which candidates to back with the $100 million pot of money he has pledged to raise for the PAC, Lyons said the organization is looking for politicians "who are open to the idea that we can do a better job protecting public health" and want pharmaceutical and food companies to be "watched very, very closely."
In addition to Herrera and Rogers, the PAC is considering supporting candidates including: Zach Lahn for Iowa governor in a race that has become more competitive than expected; Michael Whatley in a hotly contested Senate race in North Carolina; and a host of House candidates in Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, Maine and Iowa.
It has already pledged $1 million to Rep. Julia Letlow, running for the Republican Senate nomination in Louisiana against GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy. He had cast the deciding vote in Kennedy's confirmation but has recently been more critical of HHS's vaccine moves.
Lyons raised the funds needed for the Super Bowl advertisement featuring Tyson, which reached an estimated 135 million viewers. A different nonprofit group, MAHA Center, which Lyons said is educational and where he is the president, backed that ad.
A growing faction of grumpy supporters wish Lyons and his groups would criticize the administration for its backing of a pesticide that Kennedy has litigated against. That support, along with other environmental policies and the war in Iran, have emerged as breaking points for many in the movement, supporters say.
"MAHA was supposed to be a fairly radical movement," said Jeff Hutt, a former RFK Jr. presidential campaign worker who has worked on MAHA-friendly state political efforts. "We kind of settled on somewhere middle of the road."
Write to Liz Essley Whyte at liz.whyte@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 19, 2026 05:00 ET (09:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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