When Michele Reneau upset incumbent Patsy Hazlewood in 2024’s Republican primary for a local Tennessee House seat, she ran the standard right-flank playbook: RINO accusations and aggressive attack ads. Adding a little flavor to this cynical mix, Reneau topped it off with her adherence to a budding political movement — Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA.
Now in her second legislative session, Rep. Reneau, R-Hixson, has a made a name for herself in the statehouse by establishing herself as the Tennessee expression of the broader movement behind MAHA, a term coined by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist now entrenched in power as the U.S. secretary of health and human services.
(IN THE NEWS: MAHA gains momentum in Tennessee)
A proud raw milk distributor and advocate, Reneau launched her career in politics a decade ago by lobbying for state legislation allowing farmers to skirt food safety regulations and conduct business directly with the public, including the sale of milk that has not gone through pasteurization — a process that rids it of bacteria.
Revealing the Orwellian foundation underpinning MAHA, consuming raw milk “can lead to serious health risks.” This is not a quote from some lefty loony. It is from the Kennedy-led Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.