MARTINSBURG, W.Va.>> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Friday that the Trump administration will begin allowing states to bar recipients of federal food assistance from using the money to pay for soft drinks, a core component of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

Kennedy announced the change to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, in Martinsburg, W.Va. He appeared there with Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican who recently signed legislation banning foods containing most artificial food dyes and two preservatives, the first state to do so.The health secretary is talking to 15 other governors about similar moves, according to Calley Means, a health food entrepreneur who recently joined the White House to help carry out Kennedy’s agenda. Kennedy told the audience in West Virginia that the food companies had used science to make their products addictive, just as tobacco firms had.

“Food is medicine,” Kennedy told a group of teachers, children and parents in the gymnasium of a local school. He added: “It treats our health. It treats our mental health.” He framed being healthy as “an act of patriotism,” adding, “If you love this country, you need to take care of yourself.”

Kennedy does not have authority over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which falls under the Agriculture Department. But Means said the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has agreed to grant the waivers. There is some question, however, about whether the Trump administration has the authority to grant such waivers.

Joel Berg, chief executive officer of nonpartisan advocacy group Hunger Free America, called Kennedy’s plan “illegal and horrible public policy.”

He said a similar waiver request by the state of Minnesota was denied in 2004 because the law that created federal food assistance, then known as “food stamps,” barred the purchase only of cigarettes, alcohol and hot foods.

Berg, who said his organization’s $5 million annual budget included a grant of $40,000 from the beverage industry, said Kennedy’s proposal discriminates against low-income people. A far better plan for reducing obesity, he said, would be to expand SNAP funding so that Americans in need of help could afford to purchase healthier food.

“This isn’t really about improving the food supply,” he said. “It’s really about punishing poor people for being poor.”

About 40 million Americans rely on SNAP food assistance. Yet even as Kennedy pushes to steer them to healthier choices, Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed cutting as much as $230 billion from the program over the next decade to pay for tax cuts for wealthy Americans, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Kennedy’s visit to Martinsburg came one day after he announced he would shrink the Department of Health and Human Services to 62,000 employees from 82,000, including significant cuts to the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees food safety.

Kennedy’s appearance alongside a Republican governor speaks to a pronounced cultural change in the politics of food and health, as Republicans join the health secretary’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. But in a decidedly Republican twist, Morrisey also announced new “work, training and educational requirements” for SNAP participants.

Also on Friday, The Washington Post reported that Kennedy pushed out Peter Marks, the nation’s top vaccine regulator, two people with knowledge of the decision said.

Marks, an architect of the Operation Warp Speed program to develop coronavirus vaccines, was given the choice to resign or be fired from the Food and Drug Administration, according to two people with knowledge of the request.

Marks warned in his resignation letter that confidence in science is being undermined across the country, pointing to a worsening measles outbreak in Texas.