On November 12, 2025, after clearing a thorough Secret Service screening, I walked into the MAHA Summit at the elegant Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Washington. This hush-hush gathering – invitation-only and closed to the press – made one thing unmistakably clear: MAHA has morphed from a grassroots, mom-driven crusade into a fully Washington-sanctioned tech-and-wellness juggernaut.
The Summit had an Official Washington stamp of approval, with appearances by Vice President JD Vance and the top leadership team from the Department of Health and Human Services, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, MBA, MD, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD.
Along with these Administration heavyweights, other prominent speakers included UFC impresario Dana White, former IndyCar driver Danica Patrick, and comedian & actor Russell Brand.
The only public session, a fireside chat with Vice President Vance and Secretary Kennedy, showcased their shared distrust of scientific orthodoxy, with Vance openly calling “bullshit” on Kennedy’s critics, noting that the current scientific establishment is unwilling to challenge orthodoxy, while pointing out that "convention is often wrong and that the people who make advances on science almost 100 percent of the time are people who are willing to challenge orthodoxies and advance heterodoxies and talk about new ways of thinking." Kennedy then invoked the motto, “Question Everything,” from the Royal Society in London, the oldest and most prestigious scientific society in the world.
Inside the closed-door sessions, tech and biotech dominated the program. Executives from CRISPR Therapeutics, Elon Musk’s Neuralink, psychedelic-therapy startups, and a sea of high-end wellness companies crowded the agenda. Some longtime MAHA supporters told me they felt the movement had been co-opted by “tech bros,” while others embraced the shift.
In a nod to America’s “sickcare” system, NIH Director Bhattacharya urged Big Pharma to diversify its portfolio with health-focused products & not just sickness treatments. He also argued for a pivot from incremental to transformative research with the capacity to make "huge advances" in treatments for chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Dr. Bhattacharya questioned the rising rates of cancer and autism, noting cancer mortality is down but prevalence is up and that autism rates have skyrocketed from 1 in 150 children in 2000 to 1 in 31 children in 2025,
The Summit notably sidestepped MAHA’s signature issues – pesticides, soil health, vaccines, infant formula – though Scott Morris, SVP for Food and Consumables at Walmart joined a “food as medicine” panel to highlight ingredient transparency & consumer pressure and announce the removal of a long list of additives from Walmart’s private label food products. Vani Hari, the "Food Babe," who appeared on the panel with Morris, commented after the panel that MAHA has changed how Americans eat, since they now look at the ingredients list on the label.
GLP-1 medications emerged as a flashpoint. Despite Sec. Kennedy’s past condemnation of these drugs, the administration is now expanding access and lowering prices, sparking backlash from MAHA purists. Tensions spilled into panels and social media, with critics accusing MAHA of going soft on Big Pharma. I heard lots of grumbling around me about GLP-1s.
Playing into the controversy, CMS Administrator Oz told attendees that oral versions of GLP-1 medications would be available in March. (The Trump administration announced in early November 2025 that the GLP-1 pills would cost $150 through the direct-to-consumer TrumpRx platform.) Dr. Oz estimated that could help Americans lose "135 billion pounds" by the midterm elections next year .
Policy largely took a back seat, aside from an FDA session on food-additive oversight and the agency’s plan to remove long-standing hormone replacement therapy black-box warnings. Commissioner Makary emphasized moving away from the Biden FDA’s goal of fighting “medical misinformation” and toward delivering cures, improving food for children, and breaking with entrenched medical dogma.
In response to attacks on the Trump/RFK HHS and its various agencies and divisions for positions "not supported by science," Dr. Makary noted that medical group think has been wrong about avoiding peanut butter for children until age three, the cancer risks of hormone replacement therapy, and saturated fats causing heart disease. When asked about the notorious FDA-to-Pharma-to-FDA revolving door, Dr. Makary announced, to ringing applause, his pledge never to work for Big Pharma after his stint at FDA.
Big picture: MAHA has gone mainstream, flush with money, influence, and tech-sector momentum. But the movement now faces an internal identity crisis – torn between its anti-establishment, natural-health origins and its new embrace by biotech, AI, and the broader Trump coalition. How MAHA navigates the GLP-1 divide and its tech takeover will determine whether its coalition stays cohesive heading into the 2026 midterms.