Anna Gleaton and her husband run a small homestead on 60 acres outside Gainesville in Texas, a rural city south of the State Line Oklahoma. Their farm, which works on the principles of regenerative agriculture, includes pigs, goats and milk cow, which Mrs. Gleaton has described as “adventure”. Another adventure: home school of their nine children aged 2 to 16 years.
Mrs. Gleaton, 36, is described as a conservative Christian and voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. This time it was not optimistic that it would focus on the problems most related to it, including contaminated soils and waterways, factory meat and factory meat and lobbying agricultural corporations.
But Mrs. Gleaton now gets goose wounds when she looks forward, mainly because Mr. Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Ministry of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy faces confirmation hearing on Wednesday and Thursday.
“It’s not too often that my world, my empire, is mainstream,” she said.
Mrs. Gleaton is part of a growing crowd that challenges not only educational institutions as what they consider to be Liberal Orthodoxy, but also “Big Ag” and “Big Pharma” – tilted as progressive.
In this sense, Mr. Kennedy has been talking for years. He criticized ultra -processing foods, warned against the dangers of specific food additives, and questioned fluoride safety in water supply.
Mr. Kennedy’s opinions on vaccines have long been concerned about public health experts. Denied that he was against vaccination, Styling like a security activist Szo Questions Corporate Influence About science. However, he was a skeptic of Covid-19 vaccines and accepted the revealed theory that vaccines could cause autism. In the appearance of a podcast in 2023, he said that the palsy vaccine caused cancer that killed “many, many, many, many, many other people” than polio. In December, he said he was “everything for a child’s polio vaccine”.
Among mothers with home schools, such as Mrs. Gleaton, Mr. Kennedy has long been considered a bold truth that understands their skepticism about educational and healthcare facilities, including traditional vaccines. And its growing profile comes when this particular constituency also comes to its politically and culturally.
“He says what parents like me have been thinking for a long time,” said Nicki Truesdell, five and home activists in Gainesville. “In the world” crispy “is very well known and loved.”
When the son of Melissa Crabtree, who is now 22 years old, was just a few weeks and breed, began to show symptoms that seemed to her as an allergic reaction after consuming corn or dairy products. Her pediatrician said she couldn’t have an allergy to food at such a young age, remembered and prescribed antibiotics. Months later, after trying to test, her child was diagnosed with more food allergies.
“That was my first lesson as a mother I had to watch my intestine,” she said. “God gave me my brain and gave me this child to take care of it.”
For Mrs. Crabtree, who lives in Washington, her home school was her two children naturally expanding her decision to cook most food from zero and research links between the pharmaceutical industry, medical faculties and Washington medical agencies.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, while she lived in Oklahoma, she also participated in politics and joined the “health and parental rights” group, which lobbies on questions such as mandates for school children.
Mrs. Crabtree watched Mr. Kennedy for years. She said that many people in their network considered him almost the same way he saw Mr. Trump: someone whose wealth and influence allow him to tell the truth, no matter who they could offend.
“In the end, there is a bull in the Chinese shop,” she said.
Mr. Kennedy ran for the president on the platform to “make America again”, which was accepted by Mr. Trump when they joined in August. The slogan encapsulates a large but eclectic agenda aimed at increasing prevention before treatment. Many supporters consider this to be an inversion of an approach driven in recent decades with corporate interests. Online, home schools and other “crunchy mothers” use Hashtag #maha to share their enthusiasm for the vision of Mr. Kennedy.
During the pandemic, home schools have expanded dramatically, as many Americans grew skeptical about the expertise of public health. And even though the classrooms returned to normal, the number of families with home schools continued to rise. Of the 21 countries that reported data from the school year 2023-24 to the Homeschool Research Laboratory on Johns Hopkins School of Education, 19 reported more domestic children than in the previous year.
The motivation of parents to collect public education is very different, as well as their religious and political beliefs. For many people, including conservatives, questioning traditional education often leads to skepticism of other institutions.
“If you are sufficiently anti -cultural to take over the strictness of home education, and to risk social bike, it is likely that you are much more willing to be open to other forms of anti -culturalism,” Rod Dreher, “a conservative writer wrote in -mail.
Mr. Dreher informed about the phenomenon of what he called “crunchy conservatives” in the title story for the National Review at the beginning of 2000, which later became his first book. At that time he wrote – and part – subcultures that many conservative Christians did not know.
Since then, “crunchy” has come to conservatism.
Joel Salatin, a “Christian libertarian ecological capitalist lunatic farmer,” has been described independently, has been a crispy conservative for decades. In books and articles, he evangelized that his life was running his children’s farm and home.
In the age of 90, he said that liberals-“Huggers, earthly muffins, Greenie Weenies” -In mostly those who made pilgrimages on their farm. Now the conservatives appear in larger numbers. They want to “separate”, he said from the most dominant institutions of the company, including public schools, extensive agriculture and the main medicine.
“I feel like Cinderella – I came back to the ashes forever and suddenly we were asked to dance on the ball,” he said. “This is the same big cultural shift as I saw in my life.”
Mr. Salatin joined Trump’s administration. But today Mr. Kennedy is the bearer of the flag conservatives. Along with his emphasis on vaccines and food, he is considered a supporter of mothers.
They often share a quote from Mr. Kennedy: “The last thing that stands between the child and the industry full of corruption is a mother.”
Hannah Burlaw, 37 years old, a home school of two oldest children in a small town in New Mexico, where the family raises chickens and ducks. Reading about birth practices and vaccine plans began with what she described as “my way in the Maha movement”.
“Many people say,” You don’t know what you are talking about – you’re just a mother, “she said. But Mr. Kennedy has always been” a really strong advocate to listening to mothers “.
A week before Christmas, Mrs. Gleaton gathered with several friends in New Life Bible Church in Gainesville. The church became a magnet for home schools in most rural community. Of the about 80 children who regularly attend services – many of them raced corridors or played on a swing set – women could only think of one who was written in a traditional school.
Lives are connected here. Most families sacrificed themselves to live on one income. Women exchange freshly laid eggs for chicken broth, sausage yogurt and sourdough bread honey. Men help each other with household repairs and small construction projects.
They had tangible confidence in what they saw as a future: one with less pesticides and chemicals, without mandates of vaccines for their children.
“Parents wake up,” said Mrs. Gleaton. “Rebel things are beginning to normalize.”