Chemtrails, autism and processed foods highlight KY’s first MAHA task force meeting

Lawmakers on Wednesday rattled off a sprawling list of public health issues facing Kentuckians they hope to find solutions to at the first meeting of the Make America Health Again Kentucky Task Force.

Those priorities included tackling childhood obesity, lowering health care costs, understanding why autism diagnoses have spiked in children and how to incentivize adults to exercise more.

Republicans formed Kentucky’s MAHA task force during the 2025 General Assembly on the coattails of President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again movement – and his executive order forming the Make America Health Again Commission – led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The Kentucky iteration was borne out of two resolutions charging the group of lawmakers to “explore ways to integrate the principles of the Make America Healthy Again movement to improve health outcomes of Kentuckians.”

On Wednesday in Frankfort, prompted by co-chair Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandra, each members listed their priorities they would like the task force to address.

Just about every major health problem facing Americans was mentioned.

That list included: access to reliable health care, food literacy, food deserts, the importance of dental care, how to get more people back to work, how to better meet the mental and behavioral health needs of children and adults, lessening the saturation of processed foods, increasing the science proficiency rates in school-age kids, getting to the root of why so many children and youth are diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders and lowering the rate of diabetes in Kentucky.

“What I’m really looking forward to introducing is health responsibility,” Nicholasville Republican Sen. Donald Douglas, a doctor, said. “The truth is, we are personally responsible for our health, and I want to bring that to this committee.”

After hearing other task member ideas, Funke Frommeyer and co-chair Rep. Matt Lockett, R-Nicholasville, said their objectives would likely remain “food-focused,” the specifics of which are still being determined.

“A lot of this is borne out of, when we look at health outcomes in Kentucky, we see that we lag behind a lot of other states in the nation,” Lockett said.

He added that the goal was to come up with recommendations for combating these poor health outcomes, “possibly in the form of legislation.”

MAHA and evidence-based health care

Though the core guiding principles of the national movement are fairly simple – improving the collective and holistic health of Americans, generally – Kennedy and factors motivating his federal health plan have come under fire from an array of health experts. They take issue with Kennedy denying evidence-based health care practices in the process, including the safe use of vaccinations to blunt the spread of infectious disease.

RFK, Jr. notably peddled the long-ago disproven theory that “autism comes from vaccines,” before he suspended his Democratic campaign for president last year.

The trend of spreading misleading or false information continued more recently, when RFK, Jr.’s federal MAHA commission issued a sweeping report on chronic disease in children in late May that included hundreds of citations to health studies and related research. Dozens of the citations were found to cite fake research or studies that didn’t exist at all.

The ascension of Kennedy has buoyed a growing population of Americans who are skeptical of health care research institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Health experts have criticized the broader intention behind MAHA as one of rooting out health care cabals that want to lie to the public about safe health care.

Funke Frommeyer, who chairs Kentucky’s committee, has raised concerns to this end.

Earlier this year, she co-sponsored a bill to make it illegal to administer any mRNA vaccine, including a COVID-19 vaccine, to anyone under the age of 18.

“We want to come out of this with actionable items,” she said Wednesday. “We will be making some changes, I feel wholeheartedly about that.”

Rep. Marianne Proctor, R-Union, said she’d like the commission to research “looking outside the traditional medical scope, from the way we treat cancers to the way we treat chronic disease,” and improve access to locally-grown food.

The task force presented a national MAHA commission report from May 22 with “state-level action opportunities” as a helpful road map. It keys in on six areas states can address, including the “overmedicalization of children”; “scientific integrity and corporate influence”; “ultra-processed foods,” and the “cumulative load of chemicals.”

Funke Frommeyer signaled that her party will try once again to pass a bill to make the fluoridation of public drinking water systems in Kentucky optional rather than mandatory – another policy goal buoyed by Kennedy, who in April told the CDC to stop recommending drinking water be fluoridated. He has previously called fluoride “industrial waste.”

Kentucky Republicans tried unsuccessfully to de-fluoridate the water again last legislative session with House Bill 16, though it ultimately didn’t pass into law. It’s a measure rooted in the belief that fluoride, even in trace amounts, is harmful to adults and children, despite disagreement from major research institutions, including the CDC. The bill progressed through the House, despite vocal opposition from pediatric dentists, the Kentucky Dental Association and staff in the University of Kentucky’s periodontal department.

Funke Frommeyer said the task force had a “meaningful conversation” with RFK, Jr.’s team last week about reviving this proposal, and Kennedy’s team provided “additional support documents” from other states that have “removed (fluoride) from their main water source.”

Aside from the more controversial topics mentioned, many of the community health issues task force members mentioned overlap with work and data collection already done by local public health departments in Kentucky. Three public health department staff, who spoke during the public comment section of the meeting, offered their resources and insight.

“At the core of our mission is promotion, protection and prevention,” said Lawrence County Public Health Department Director Debbie Miller, who also serves as vice president of the Kentucky Health Department Association. “We really look forward to being a resource to this task force and being involved in any way we can.”

Though the commission, like Kennedy’s MAHA, espouses it will seek outcomes based on evidence-based research, that stated objective has become muddied, and at times, veered conspiratorial.

Sally O’Boyle, who founded the Kentucky Food Independence Club, asked the task force to “bring two urgent public health issues into focus: electromagnetic radiation exposure, especially from smart meters, and geoengineering, commonly referred to as chemtrails.”

O’Boyle, the final speaker to address the task force, said the “data on the dangers of smart meters – and the wireless infrastructure surrounding them, including 5G towers – is overwhelming, yet the public is not being adequately informed or being given a choice.”

She said 5G towers and related smart meter infrastructure are exposing Kentuckians to “chronic levels of radio-frequency radiation.”

The American Cancer Society, citing research from the FDA, said in January, “it is very unlikely that living in a house with a smart meter increases cancer risk.”

Of chemtrails, O’Boyle said, “Across Kentucky, citizens have reported unusual sky patterns and residue, raising valid questions: what is being sprayed? Who is authorizing this and what are long-term health effects of exposure to airborne particles such as aluminum, barium and strontium?”

Kennedy has also fanned the flame of the widely-debunked conspiracy theory that chemtrails left in the wake of airplanes are part of a sinister plot to release toxins under the guise of climate modification, but for more nefarious reasons like mass sterilization. A handful of Republican-controlled states have moved to restrict chemtrails, including Louisiana just this week.

Closing out the meeting, Funke Frommeyer asked O’Boyle to email her the research and sources she’d referenced so the task force could examine the impact of chemtrails on farmland where food is grown.

As for 5G towers, many farmers in Kentucky have allowed the towers to be erected on their land, “but we haven’t necessarily understood the side effects and such,” Funke Frommeyer said.