MAHA’s midterm report card

It’s been just over two years since the rise of Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA. The movement united a coalition of moms, wellness influencers and voters across the political spectrum over concerns about chronic illness and childhood diseases. And when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over as Secretary of Health and Human Services, it seemed like MAHA would be front and center in Washington. But as we approach the midterm elections, has the Trump administration made good on the MAHA agenda? On today’s episode, we dig into what’s changed, what hasn’t and what that means for your health. Interested in more health science? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:16Regina Barber?

  Hey, Gina here. If you have a friend who loves politics but also loves science, you should definitely share this episode with them. Sharing episodes really helps us grow the Short Wave community so that more people can learn about amazing mysteries in their everyday lives. And with that, here's the show. You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. The midterms are almost here, and this election season is hard to miss. The commercials, signage, texts, and it makes me think back to two years ago, when a new movement was catching fire ahead of the presidential elections.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Our food is being tainted by dangerous chemicals, and it's making us sick.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Don't you want the chemicals out of our food?

• 1:05Speaker 04

  This issue is nonpartisan and affects all of us.

• 1:10Regina Barber?

  Make America Healthy Again, or Maha, blew up over concerns about the rise of chronic illness and childhood diseases. This unlikely coalition of moms, wellness influencers, and voters across the political spectrum helped elect Donald Trump as president.

• 1:27Speaker 05

  We want every child in America to grow up and to live a long and healthy life.

• 1:34Regina Barber?

  And when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of Maha's very own, got the job as Secretary of Health and Human Services, things looked very promising for the movement.

• 1:46Regina Barber?

  But as we approach the midterm elections, has RFK Jr. and the Trump administration made good on the Maha agenda?

• 1:53Speaker 06

  So it's mixed.

• 1:55Regina Barber?

  That's Will Stone, health reporter at NPR. He's here to walk us through what the administration has been able to accomplish in the last two years and where it's fallen short.

• 2:05Speaker 06

  You know, the Maha movement made some pretty lofty goals early on.

• 2:11Regina Barber?

  Today on the show, Maha's midterm report card and what that means for your health.

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• 3:38Regina Barber?

  OK, well, it seems like Maha has a big to-do list. President Trump and the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. banded together just over two years ago in the run-up to the 2024 election. So can you remind us about some of the big items on their agenda?

• 3:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, Maha is a big tent, to say the least. Many of the issues that Kennedy and others in this movement talk about are supported by the vast majority of Americans. We're talking about improving the quality of our food, getting harmful chemicals out of our water supply, dealing with chronic diseases, and just more generally, a frustration with our medical system that's costly and doesn't prioritize prevention of illness.

• 4:17Regina Barber?

  So on its face, these seem like pretty universal issues. Is there anything that sets this movement apart?

• 4:24Speaker 06

  Well, what Maha really is, is to some degree in the eye of the beholder. Obviously, there's a vocal group of Kennedy supporters that are squarely focused on vaccines, and they are deeply suspicious of the medical and scientific establishment in general. This is definitely a legacy of the pandemic. But this midterm election is, I'd say, a stress test of the Maha coalition. And by that, I mean, how unified is this movement? And will people vote based on issues? And in some cases, will they break from the Republican Party? We'll see.

• 4:58Regina Barber?

  So, Will, we hear a lot about vaccines. You just mentioned them, but I know you have been tracking a lot of other Maha issues. Let's start with food. So how has the Trump administration done with its Maha promises when it comes to food?

• 5:10Speaker 06

  So it's a mixed bag. One area that many in Maha consider a success are the changes to the dietary guidelines. This is traditionally a pretty weighty policy document that's important, but mostly to nutrition researchers and folks in the federal government. It's supposed to be kind of a synthesis of the evidence and a roadmap for policy which affects programs like free school lunches. It's not necessarily something the average American cares much about, and research shows most people don't actually follow the guidelines in the first place.

• 5:42Regina Barber?

  I think I'm an anomaly, Will. Like, I think about it all the time.

• 5:47Speaker 06

  Well, Kennedy and his supporters talk a lot about the guidelines, and they talk a lot about saturated fat, protein, trying to get rid of ultra-processed food. The new guidelines do reflect that philosophy. The actual changes were not quite as dramatic as some people expected they would be. They did raise the recommended amount of protein. On saturated fat, they started encouraging eating full-fat dairy, beef tallow, but they did not actually change the recommended amount of saturated fat. And some critics pointed out, the math doesn't really work out here, that you will inevitably consume more calories from these sources than is being recommended. Either way, this was a big priority, and they did deliver on that to their supporters.

• 6:30Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I also remember Kennedy, like, really slamming food dyes. Did anything come out of that?

• 6:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, so they've got a bunch of major food companies to agree to phase out some of the popular food dyes, and that was billed as a big win for many in the Maha movement. It was voluntary, though. This was not a regulation. And there are certainly scientists I've interviewed who are supportive of eliminating dyes, but it's hardly the biggest issue when it comes to food and chronic diseases.

• 6:59Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I mean, what about ultra-processed foods? That does seem much more significant.

• 7:04Speaker 06

  Yes, and Kennedy has campaigned against ultra-processed foods aggressively. He's called it poison. The federal government has been undergoing this long process of coming up with specific definitions of ultra-processed foods, but it hasn't really taken meaningful regulatory action on it, and that's frustrated many advocates.

• 7:24Regina Barber?

  OK, so what about concerns around toxic chemicals in the environment? Because that's another big talking point for them, right?

• 7:32Speaker 06

  Definitely. This is an area where there has been a lot of discontent. And I will note that much of the influential regulation and policy decisions do fall outside of Kennedy's purview. They are up to the Environmental Protection Agency and the USDA to some extent. But from the outset, the administration really took an approach that runs counter to what many influential people in Maha want to see. They staff the EPA at the highest levels with people who have well-established ties to the chemical industry, lobbyists, former employees. And with that, the agency, led by Lee Zeldin, took a very aggressive policy of deregulation for a wide swath of chemicals and pollutants.

• 8:12Regina Barber?

  Yeah, we're talking about PFAS, or forever chemicals, in our water, air pollutants, mercury, formaldehyde, right? That's what we're talking about.

• 8:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, and the list goes on, Gina. I mean, what's striking is that a lot of these chemicals were actually called out in the administration's own Maha report as areas of concern. One person I've been speaking to periodically over the last two years about all of this is Kelly Ryerson. She's a Maha activist and runs a nonprofit called American Regeneration, and she did not mince her words when we spoke recently.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Complete disaster. I cannot think of a single good thing that the EPA has done during this administration.

• 8:55Regina Barber?

  Oh, wow. She's a Maha loyalist and she's like, this EPA has not been doing well?

• 9:01Speaker 06

  Yes. She's pretty influential in the movement. She's a registered independent who is helping campaign for the Republican candidate who is running for governor of Iowa right now because she sees him as a Maha ally. But she also supports Democrats who care about these issues.

• 9:17Regina Barber?

  Interesting.

• 9:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, and Kelly goes by the handle Glyphosate Girl online, and that's another big source of tension within the Maha movement.

• 9:25Regina Barber?

  OK, so you mean pesticide glyphosate. What's the deal with that?

• 9:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, glyphosate is a weed killer. It's the main ingredient in Roundup. And when you look at what's animating grassroots Maha folks, concerns about what's sprayed on our crops is really right at the top. There are long-running concerns about the safety of glyphosate. The World Health Organization concluded it's probably carcinogenic. And there are consensus statements from leading scientists in the field to a similar effect. Now, historically, the Environmental Protection Agency has not agreed with this finding, although the agency is just now reviewing the data on glyphosate after being pressured to do that for some time. But when you look at what the Trump administration has done, I mean, its actions the past year or so, they've really sided with the industry.

• 10:10Speaker 06

  They backed the agrochemical company Bayer, that's the maker of Roundup, during a high-profile Supreme Court case earlier this year, which the company ultimately won. And Trump even signed an executive order to encourage a domestic production of glyphosate.

• 10:27Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I'm guessing glyphosate girl, you know, Roundup girl, she is not happy.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Not at all. She and many people in her camp really saw it as a betrayal. And it's when you started to see big cracks in the coalition, Maha influencers and advocates who'd been very much on the side of the administration really started publicly criticizing the White House.

• 10:49Regina Barber?

  So, Will, it seems like Maha is a bit of like a choose your own adventure. We're talking about food, we're talking about chemicals, but there are all these other issues related to wellness and experimental therapies that it seems we hear a bunch about. Like, where does that fit in here?

• 11:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'll say Maha is very plugged into the wellness zeitgeist and the entire kind of online ecosystem of wellness and functional medicine. And it is part of their appeal, elevating areas that are typically positioned as kind of outside of the traditional medical system. I always think back to the post on social media that Kennedy made in October 2024, right before the election, where he said he planned to end the, quote, FDA's war and aggressive suppression of psychedelics, stem cells, peptides, raw milk, ivermectin, vitamins, and a number of other things, including sunshine. This may have seemed like a bit out of nowhere to people who weren't in these spaces, but

• 11:48Speaker 06

  he was signaling to a lot of different groups that he understood these issues and he would be on their side, and you have seen that.

• 11:56Regina Barber?

  Yeah, with peptides, we've definitely seen that. They've almost become a household name at this point.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  They have. Kennedy has been a big proponent, and he has signaled that the administration wants to make these therapies more available, even though they are not FDA-approved. And most of the wellness peptides we are talking about have not been studied in human trials. But there are a lot of examples here. They've promoted psychedelics, which are becoming increasingly mainstream. Trump has signed an executive order to try to help get more of these drugs approved. There's other topics like testosterone therapy. HHS and FDA have made changes to make that more widely available, and the list goes on.

• 12:37Regina Barber?

  I mean, it sounds like some of these issues the administration, like, is delivering on, but others not so much. So what should we be watching during the midterms?

• 12:48Speaker 06

  Well, I'm interested to see how the Maha brand evolves. There are races where Democrats are trying to take more ownership of these issues and draw attention to how Republicans have not kept their promises. Will that messaging land? Do voters care enough that they will vote on these issues, not on the party? I spoke to Democrat Shelley Pingree recently about this. She's a Congresswoman from Maine who's trying to organize her party around Maha issues.

• 13:17Regina Barber?

  Well, I think the toxics in our food is a big one. It crosses over all demographics. Parents worry about what they're feeding their children. Senior citizens worry about their own health. People just have huge suspicion of the chemical companies and big corporations and their dominance in the food system. And you couple that with affordability, people are just really mad about many of those issues.

• 13:42Speaker 06

  And the Congresswoman is trying to form a caucus around these issues. She's an organic farmer and has credibility on this. And when I asked Kelly, the Maha activist from before, about the future here of Maha, she said it's very possible that they may need to kind of shed the Maha label or expand it so the movement isn't just tied to Republicans. What happens in the November midterm elections could really help determine the future of this movement.

• 14:11Regina Barber?

  Will, thank you so much for bringing this, the story.

• 14:14Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 14:16Regina Barber?

  This episode was produced by Alana Gordon. It was edited by Lauren Gonzalez, and Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keely was the audio engineer. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from NPR.

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