How ‘crunchy mom’ vaccine skeptics joined RFK Jr.’s MAHA movement | The Excerpt

On the Wednesday January 21, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: The “crunchy mom” movement once centered on wellness and holistic living. Now, some adherents are embracing vaccine skepticism and aligning politically with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement. USA TODAY extremism reporter Will Carless joins us to explain how the shift happened and why public health experts are concerned.

In cities across the country, a growing number of American moms are embracing a lifestyle built around natural foods, fewer screens, homeschooling, and avoiding processed ingredients. On the surface, it sounds like a return to simplicity, part back to the land, part clean living. But something else is happening inside this movement, distrust of the medical system. Conspiracy theories about vaccines abound amid a political shift toward Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and is Make America Healthy Again Agenda.

Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, January 21st, 2026. USA TODAY National Extremism Reporter, Will Carless, has been reporting on the rise of so called crunchy moms, the online ecosystem that shapes their beliefs and the very real consequences the movement poses to public health. Will, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Your piece starts with two mothers in suburban Cleveland who proudly describe themselves as crunchy. They garden, check food labels, avoid dyes and homeschool their kids. Who are crunchy moms, Will, and how do they define themselves?

Well, the label has definitely changed over the past couple of decades, really. I mean, back in the day, crunchy really described a... I say sort of an archetypal liberal, like somebody who was very progressive, your sort of classic tree hugging liberal mom. These days, what's interesting is that the crunchy label has actually come to represent a very different group, which is a group of conservative moms who tend to have very traditional kind of Christian values.

What's similar about the two groups is that they're all about, as you mentioned, nutrition. They're all about what their kids eat, about ingredients, about checking health and things like that. But there's also this kind of anti-vax element of crunchy moms as well. And so today when you hear crunchy moms, basically you're talking about a conservative mother who is more than likely an anti-vaxxer.

Dana Taylor:

And this aligning with conservative or anti-establishment politics, what's driving that shift?

Will Carless:

I mean, essentially you have a distrust in medical science, I think is what it comes down to. It's a distrust in science in general, but a distrust in medical science particularly. And one of the things we examine in the episode is this kind of dichotomy between these people. They trust the science in some ways, but they don't trust the science when it comes to vaccines. And you have this sort of grassroots crunchy moms movement happening at the same time as you have this very organized, very driven political movement that is led by RFK.

And then when we look at that contradiction, Will, how do they reconcile those two views?

Will Carless:

It's really hard to describe, but essentially... I mean, I really pushed them hard on this during my interviews. But it's very strange because they trust the sort of established science when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to food. They will sort of say things like, "Well, heavy metals are very bad for children to ingest." And the evidence that they point to are sort of National Institute of Health studies and studies by large scientific organizations.

But when it comes to vaccines, the studies that they're pointing at are sort of these niche, not established scientists. They're pointing at people who are really kind of outliers in the scientific establishment and they never really explain that dichotomy. I'd say the best way they describe it is by essentially saying that most people are coming at vaccines the wrong way. They're coming at vaccines from a place of implicit trust and implicit faith in science.

And they say that they simply don't have that when it comes to medical science. They say that while they will trust what the science kind of shows in general, when it comes to the medical establishment, they believe it's sort of controlled and manipulated and they refuse to believe the evidence that's placed in front of them and the studies that are placed in front of them.

Dana Taylor:

Well, you recently spoke with Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about vaccines. What did he tell you?

Will Carless:

So yeah, I asked him about his own personal history of vaccines and he had some pretty interesting stuff to tell me.

When was the last vaccine you yourself had?

I took a lot of flu shots up until probably mid 1990s. I was getting a flu shot every year.

Well, I actually stopped in 2005 when I began looking at the side effects. And actually, I was litigating against them. I was preparing litigation against some of the flu shots several years ago. And one of the injuries that was listed on a lot of them was spasmodic dysphonia, which is an injury I have to my voice. That's why my voice is so screwed up.

Brandy and April, they are two conservative moms who describe themselves as crunchy. They run a podcast called Crunchy Moms Unfiltered, and they're all about all of this stuff. They're all about the nutrition, reading food labels, teaching other mothers, you can do this, you can get into this, you can focus on what your children consume, both in terms of what they're watching, what they're listening to, and what they're eating and physically consuming.

But they're also, I'd say, very far to the right when it comes to politics. Their podcast focuses on things like conservative values, but it also focuses a little bit on some of the big sort of conspiracy theories of the right. And they're also very interested in vaccines and focus a lot on skepticism of vaccines. I don't want to say anti-vaccine, but I would certainly say that they're very skeptical about vaccines and about the medical establishment.

Yeah. So April broke down what crunchy means in today's internet parlance for me.

April LoConti:

So it's like a mainstream name for when you're really holistic or natural or the crazy moms who give no toxins and dyes to their kids. But we loved that term because it just took off and people would go, "How crunchy are you?"

Dana Taylor:

What drove moms like Brandy and April to seek medical answers outside of the doctor's office?

Will Carless:

Well, I think one has to distinguish between people like Brandy, who have a direct experience or say that they have a direct experience of vaccines either harming or in some way kind of impacting their lives, and then people who are influenced by that story. So I'd say that there's kind of a core group of people who themselves have had some sort of experience with vaccines or believe that they've had a negative experience with vaccines and that kind of brings them into this world. And that's what happened with Brandy.

I don't want to be part of this movement. I'm going to cry. I didn't ask to be part of this movement. I'm part of this movement because I listened to the science and I trusted the doctors and my newborn baby was injured. I got forced into being part of this movement.

Dana Taylor:

How representative is this kind of narrative within the broader movement?

Will Carless:

Yeah. So I think people like Brandy who've had these kind of direct experiences, well, they have a ripple effect across the crunchy mom universe. So what you have is you have a relatively small number of people who think they've been impacted by vaccines, but their stories are very influential and very moving for kind of the broader community. And so you have people... April and Brandy are a good example. Brandy has a direct or says she has a direct link to problems with vaccines. April doesn't, but April has kind of come along and has believes in a lot of this stuff, mainly because of Brandy's own experiences, even though they're not her own experiences.

And so I think that that speaks to the larger community of crunchy moms where a lot of these people might not have direct connections to this, but they read the stories, they see stories like Brandy's, they hear testimony from these people and they think, "Oh, I don't even want to have anything to do with that," and so they become skeptical about vaccines themselves.

Dana Taylor:

Will, you describe these moms as being steeped in a, quote, "parallel online world of science and pseudoscience". What does that ecosystem look like and why is it so effective at pulling people in?

Will Carless:

So when you cover extremism and you cover extremist movements, there's a lot of stuff that's very easy to dismiss because it's just kind of nonsense on the face of it. Racism is nonsense. White supremacy is nonsense. You're able to look at it. The problem is with the anti-vax movement and the vaccine skepticism movement is that there's kind of a kernel of truth in a lot of the things that these people believe. The study of vaccine safety, for example, was a very complex, very nuanced world, and it's not simple. It's not cut and dry.

And so the people who are pushing vaccine skepticism are able to point at the sort of anomalies and the questions in the study of vaccine safety, for example, and that draws people in. You do have people who are impacted by vaccine. Brandy may be one of them. And so those stories are able to influence a lot of people. Now, let's be very clear, the vast number of people who take vaccines have no problem whatsoever. But as one of our experts says, the problem with vaccines is that the good that they do is kind of invisible to society, right? It's sort of always there. You don't see that people aren't getting measles because they're not getting measles.

And so what you do see is if one in a million people has an allergic reaction to a vaccine, then that's sort of a very tangible thing that people can grab hold of. So basically the complication with covering this world is that there is a kernel of truth to what they're saying and that there are certain people out there who are manipulating and using that kernel of truth to cast doubt on medical science in general, to cast doubt on vaccines. And of course, that according to the experts, is very, very dangerous for society.

Dana Taylor:

A big part of your reporting focus is on the link between crunchy moms and RFK Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again Movement. The moms you spoke with see him as someone who is double checking the system. How central are they to MAHA's rise and what political influence do they actually have?

Will Carless:

I don't have any data for you, but I think it's very clear that on the grassroots level, I mean, this is a big movement. These are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are watching these videos on Instagram, who are watching these TikToks, who are reading these posts on Facebook, who are deeply, deeply involved in this movement. I think anybody listening to this will know somebody who believes these things and who is in this movement in some way, shape or form.

Now, they're not all calling themselves crunchy, they're not all getting out there and kind of preaching this and posting themselves, but a lot of people out there have this kind of skepticism. And so I'd say it's a very significant movement. And in keeping with our show, Extremely Normal. I mean, the whole point of what we're trying to do is to describe these movements that have come from the fringes to the mainstream. I don't think you can describe crunchy moms as an extremist movement anymore. I think that they're deeply embedded in conservative politics today.

Dana Taylor:

You also spoke with Dr. Jonathan Howard, a neurologist who's been battling vaccine misinformation for years. He had a very different perspective, especially on herd immunity. Let's give a listen to that.

Dr. Jonathan Howard:

If enough parents refuse to vaccinate their children that we will lose herd immunity and we will see the return of vaccine preventable diseases, which is already happening. We're at a 35-year high, I think, for measles here in the United States.

Dana Taylor:

When you hear warnings like that, how concerned are public health officials about the scale and the speed at which these anti-vaccine beliefs are spreading?

Will Carless:

They're terrified. I mean, I don't think I can stress that enough. I mean, there is a huge amount of fear out there in the world of immunology and virology. I mean, people are terrified. I mean, we're in uncharted waters. I would describe it with an analogy. It's kind of like the climate crisis. It's like we don't know really what the impacts are going to be, but we know, at least the people who study this stuff know that... They're very worried about it, but they don't know how it's going to kind of manifest itself.

The basic problem is, as Dr. Howard describes, is that if we lose herd immunity or if these viruses are able to somehow change and develop because we no longer have that herd immunity, then that could spell new diseases, it could spell new strains of these viruses that we don't know about yet. It's uncharted waters and it's very, very scary for the people who are involved.

Dana Taylor:

Some of the mothers told you they felt dismissed or shamed by doctors and that poor communication pushed them further into distrust. How much of this movement is rooted in misinformation and how much is about people feeling unheard by the medical system?

Will Carless:

I think it's definitely both. I mean, look, everybody we spoke to, from the expert, to the kind of people on the right, to the people on the left, everybody agrees that there's a problem with the medical system in this country in general, but that there's also a problem with the way that doctors and experts talk to patients and talk to the general public.

One of the reasons that the crunchy moms movement and the MAHA movement and the vaccine skeptic movement has been able to flourish, I believe is because of this perception of doctors as being in this kind of ivory tower and not being in touch with the general public. And that's, of course, something that politicians have been very eager to grab hold of. "There's these sort of elites over here that are running everything and that they're sending us the wrong way and that you guys are being led," that's a very compelling argument to a mother who is trying to do the best for her children, and fathers, of course, obviously.

But it's a very compelling message for parents. "I've got to be vigilant and I've got to be careful and make sure that I'm really doing the best for my children." And so, yes, everybody agrees that there's a problem with the way that things are communicated and that that has been either exploited, as some people would say. And of course, I mean, RFK Jr. For example, would say the big problem is that the medical establishment has become too entrenched and that he's coming in and that he's kind of grabbing it by the lapels and shaking it up. So depending on where you're coming from, I'd say politically, it makes a big difference as to how you see what the solution is and how things need to change within medicine.

Dana Taylor:

Well, that brings me to another mother you spoke with, Bianca Herres. She calls herself crunchy, but still trusts vaccines in modern medicine. Does she represent a possible middle path, one where you can embrace holistic living without falling into the anti-science pipeline?

Will Carless:

I think she does exactly that. I mean, Bianca is... As you say, she's very kind of crunchy. She's also very skeptical about doctors and about medicine, but she hasn't lost faith. She hasn't lost faith in medical science. She still reads the scientific papers. She still believes them, unlike April and Brandy, who simply just don't believe them and will only believe certain things that are told to them.

So I think, yes, Bianca, I think represents this group of, again, a lot of mothers, a lot of parents out there who want to do best for their children and who believe the science when it comes to nutrition and when it comes to things like screen time and being outdoors and all the things that the experts say is good for our children, but also believe it when it comes to vaccines and when it comes to medicine. And so I think she very much represents that kind of middle ground.

Dana Taylor:

Finally, Will, what's the main thing you took away from reporting on this story?

Will Carless:

Just that there has been a massive erosion in trust in established knowledge and established science. And that is a big part of my beat. It's a big part of what I report on is this kind of general... We used to generally believe in the same things as a society. We used to generally believe in facts and in the established knowledge, and that's no longer the case.

I mean, a good portion of this country simply does not believe the things that the experts, the things that the government, the things that the large scientific and research institutions are telling them. They just don't believe it. They will only believe a version of things that is given to them that comes from outside of that, and I don't know how we fix that. And I want to encourage everyone to tune in tomorrow to hear my full interview with RFK Jr., which will be shared right here on this feed.

Dana Taylor:

And if viewers want to learn more about the Crunchy Moms movement, they should watch Will's documentary series Extremely Normal. We'll have a link in today's show notes. Will, as always, thank you so much for sharing your reporting on The Excerpt.

Will Carless:

Thanks, Dana.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan and field producer, Lamar Salter for their production assistants. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts at usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.