Clive, Iowa — Former Health and Human Services senior adviser Calley Means told – News that Iowa could become a national proving ground for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. He pointed to the state’s agricultural economy, widespread concerns about cancer rates, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn’s willingness to confront difficult questions about food, farming, and public health.
The MAHA PAC held its “Get Out the Vote Rally” in Clive, a Des Moines suburb, on October 28, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The event featured Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Lahn, Means, as well as other Republican candidates, elected officials, and advocates focused on health, consumer issues, and agriculture.
In an exclusive interview after the rally, – News asked Means whether Iowa could serve as a model for putting MAHA policies into practice elsewhere and helping elect candidates who support the movement.
“Iowa is ground zero,” Means told – News. “When we think of agriculture, we think of Iowa and the MAHA message that we need to put farmers at the center of health and have a thriving farm economy.”
He said that goal would require asking fundamental questions about the future of farming and how to produce “great, safe, real food.” In his view, those agricultural questions are inseparable from the broader debate over Americans’ health.
“Zach has bravely talked about the cancer rates in Iowa, and that’s a big topic around the Iowa kitchen table,” Means said. “And as Bobby Kennedy said, the path is honest conversations and plotting a future where we have healthy Americans and great food.”
“I think this existential conversation starts in Iowa,” he concluded.
Means spoke less than a week after announcing his resignation from the White House in an October 22 post on X. In the message, he expressed “tremendous respect for President Trump and Bobby Kennedy” and said he remained committed to the MAHA movement.
“They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick,” Means wrote. “More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals in the past 2 years than any time in history – and I know this movement is just getting started.”
“It was an honor to advocate for MAHA moms in the administration and steer policies like Dietary Guidelines reform, psychedelic reform, removing soda from SNAP, removing food dyes, GRAS reform, and overhauling government food procurement,” he added.
At Wednesday’s rally, Means discussed his departure from the administration and described his experience working with Kennedy.
“I left my job very recently, which means I can spill the beans. I can give the truth about Bobby Kennedy’s tenure in the Trump administration from the inside,” Means told attendees.
“What is so clear to me from spending, from having the privilege to spend every day of the last two years with Bobby Kennedy, is that there has never in modern history been a person with more integrity that has come to the halls of power in Washington, DC, than Robert F. Kennedy,” he said.
Means called Kennedy “the most fearless man I’ve ever met” and said he was fighting daily for MAHA supporters, including the women attending the rally. Kennedy, he added, was working with President Trump while confronting what Means described as a “broken D.C. infrastructure.”
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“I think we can feel that we’re living in consequential times. I think we can feel that the next ten years are going to be decisive for America,” Means said. “They’re going to be some of those disruptive, consequential years in American history.”
He argued that public institutions in Washington and across the states were approaching a breaking point, blaming what he called the cowardice and incompetence of their leaders.
Means also struck an optimistic note, saying the country could improve. He credited Kennedy, MAHA supporters, and leaders such as Lahn with demonstrating what was possible, while urging voters to place them in positions of authority.
“This is a moment for truth to ask questions that the special interests don’t want us to ask,” Means said. “To ask questions like Zach has framed his campaign on: why, out of every geographic location in the world, why is the ground we’re standing on, why does it have the highest cancer rates of any place in the world?”
Means said some people resist that discussion. He recalled a Washington lobbyist telling him that Iowans could not handle the complexity of the issue, a characterization Means rejected.
“I said the people of Iowa can handle two issues at once,” Means recalled. “Of course, we need stable input prices for our farming, but we also care about the health of our children, the health of our food, and we can grapple. The people of Iowa can grapple with complex challenges.”
Means said Lahn, together with Kennedy, had also raised a broader spiritual question about the relationship between farmers’ well-being, the success of family farms, and the health of Americans.
“The fat cats and the pharma companies are making all the money off this chronic disease, but nobody has the common sense to say where we can have a spiritual revolution in this country to recognize that the farmers are the key to our health crisis, and we need to respect farmers,” he continued.
“And the road to better health goes to our fork, not the prescription pad,” Means said. “And that’s the important long-term conversation that Zach Lahn and Bobby Kennedy are representing, and that’s an existential question for America.”
He questioned why international consolidation in agriculture had contributed to the decline of family farms, why government incentives appeared to favor larger operations, and why Chinese investors and hedge funds were purchasing so much Iowa farmland. He also asked why so many Iowa children were experiencing poor health.
“The answer to these questions is actually very simple. It’s because very powerful industries profit from these dynamics,” he continued. “Very powerful industries profit from family farms going under, and they profit quite frankly from sick kids who need care for the rest of their life, and we need candidates with the courage to see that as it is, and call it out.”
“The buzzword of this election cycle is corruption,” Means said. “Corruption is now the number one issue for Americans, and the reason we have an affordability crisis, the reason we have a crisis in agriculture and with our farmers, and the reason we have a healthcare crisis, is not because of any specific policy solution.”
“It’s because of corruption. It’s because there are so few leaders like Zach who have a willingness to tell the truth,” he concluded.
