The movement that helped make Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the secretary of health and human services converged politically with right-wing populism only in the last few years, but in spirit the holistic, outsider critique of modern medicine had a lot in common with MAGA populism long before the “MAHA” neologism came along.

Like populism, the MAHA movement spoke to widely shared frustrations with a medical establishment that didn’t seem to have answers to persistent problems and left people who felt failed by the system feeling unheard and disdained.

But like populism’s critique of insider politics, the outsider critique of the medical establishment has always struggled to offer an alternative vision that’s rigorous rather than credulous.

And like MAGA populism, MAHA now finds itself in a comp

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