Trump Is Losing the ‘MAHA Moms’

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2:04Make America healthy again. Make America healthy again. Make America healthy again. It's a relatively new movement comprised of vaccine skeptics, anti-pesticide activists, and proponents of so-called real food. It is the movement spurred by RFK Jr. that he named, obviously after MAGA, Make America Great Again, once he aligned himself with President Trump. And he brought all of his followers with him and they called themselves the Make America Healthy Again movement. Bloomberg's Dina Shanker has been reporting on the movement since its early days. The general consensus is that these voters were very much a factor in Trump's win.

2:50But lately, some in the Maha movement have been speaking out against recent moves by the Trump administration. President Trump just signed an executive order to ramp up the production of glyphosate. Moves they say are antithetical to the Maha movement that helped get him elected. It's an announcement from the president following his decision to pull the nomination of Casey Means. And these tensions are flaring, with a major test for Trump's second term just around the corner. midterm elections. I've heard people say that they may not vote at all. I heard one person who told me maybe she'll vote for a Democrat.

3:25We don't know how they will vote, but I can tell you that right now there's not a groundswell of Maha support.

3:38I'm Tim Stenevec, in for Sarah Holder and David Gurra, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, the straining ties between the Maha movement and the Trump administration, and what that could mean for Republican chances in November.

3:55A lot of the leaders of this movement are women who are also mothers. And for many of them, they talk about the importance of healthy food, of choice over vaccination. They talk about it from their position as mothers. And, you know, I will say that as a parent, as a mother, I both totally get that being a mom makes you more aware of, say, the toxicity of our environment or the problems with our food system, whether or not we can avoid them, wanting to protect our kids. I will say that before there was such a thing as Maha, there were parents, including fathers, leading legislation that in many ways now mirrors a lot of what Maha does.

4:40So a lot of what Maha talks about is something that a lot of people agree with. Some of it, especially on the vaccine side, is not something that a lot of people agree with. But I think specifically on the food side, there's a lot of general consensus around a lot of what Maha is now taking ownership of and what they have done. And I think really smartly is they've put a lot of it very much in the language of motherhood. Who are the ones that are leading the movement, who are, you know, for lack of a better term, rallying the troops. So there's a couple of online food activists who have been around for a long time.

5:16One of them is Vani Hari. She's known as the food babe. People, take a look at the ingredients in Subway's nine-grain bread. I wrote about her like 10 years ago when she named a chemical that was common in baked goods, the yoga mat chemical. Keep the yoga mat out of your mouth and on the floor. Do you know friends and family? And she called it that because it was indeed a chemical that was found in yoga mats. And she had an entire online campaign to get Subway to get the yoga mat chemical, quote unquote, the yoga mat chemical out of their bread. Subway is changing its bread recipe, removing a chemical also used to make yoga mats.

5:55A food blogger recently launched a petition asking the world's biggest sandwich change to stop using the ingredient. The plastic-based additive is legal in the U.S., but it is banned in Europe and Australia. She used to be a Democrat, and then she became a Republican and a Mahamam Republican and a leader when Kennedy took up her cause. There's also Kelly Ryerson, who goes online by the name Glyphosate Girl. Okay, time for a check-in, because this has been quite a week in the glyphosate world. She is a regenerative agriculture advocate. She is extremely anti-pesticides and specifically glyphosate, as you can tell by her online moniker.

6:34And there's also Zen Honeycutt, who actually straddles both sides, the food and vaccine side of the Maha movement. Day two, what am I doing to make America healthy again? Well, today I called a whole bunch of Georgia state senators. She started Moms Across America. And so there's a lot of people like this that have been beating these drums for a long time that really saw a lot of opportunity with Kennedy. When we think about health and kids and eating good food, some of the agenda, at least to me, sounds very similar to what First Lady Michelle Obama tried to do, promoting bringing healthy foods to kids.

7:14She planted this garden at the White House. She got people exercising with this Let's Move campaign. But not so long ago, conservative voices decried those moves. And some people argued that it was government overreach. How did the Republican Party under Trump pull off that rebrand? I think it really requires a little bit of political amnesia because after Michelle Obama instituted those school nutrition rules under the Obama administration, when the Trump administration came in, they actually rolled back some of those nutrition rules. The first Trump administration, along with the Republican Party, was generally anti-regulation.

7:57And often what Maha is calling for is more regulation, more regulation of the food that we sell in supermarkets, more regulation of what we serve in schools, more regulation of pesticides, et cetera. And so Trump's embrace of this movement really went against his priors, I would say. Broadly speaking, how would you characterize the state of Maha supporters in the Trump administration right now? I would say from the ones that I've spoken with, disappointed. But they have not necessarily lost faith that some good can be done by this administration. But a flurry of activity in D.C. in recent weeks has put some strain on the already fragile alliance.

8:41First was at the Supreme Court, where the justices heard a case about glyphosate. That issue was a$1.25 million jury verdict won by a Missouri man who blamed the weed killer Roundup for his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Trump administration lawyers argued in favor of shielding Bayer, Monsanto's parent company, from liability. It's a move some Maha leaders saw as a betrayal. You cannot tell Americans to eat real food while protecting the cancer-causing chemicals sprayed on it. Maha leaders, including Vani Hari, held a rally outside the Supreme Court speaking out against the administration. To Hari, it was a twisting of the knife after the president signed an executive order earlier this year mandating that the U.S.

9:24maintain a, quote, adequate supply of glyphosate-based herbicide. She actually very explicitly called out President Trump at a recent rally. She said we wouldn't be here right now if President Trump didn't sign that executive order. So she's clearly telling people, telling her followers, her millions of followers, that President Trump has betrayed their cause. Then over on the Hill, the Maha movement scored a win when a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Maha Republicans succeeded in stripping out provisions from the Farm Bill. that critics of the language say would have shielded pesticide companies from liability.

10:01Those efforts worked. They got what they needed. That language was taken out of the farm bill. But less than two hours later, Trump delivered another blow to the movement by withdrawing his nomination for Maha's preferred candidate for Surgeon General, Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer who doesn't have an active license to treat patients. So it was a real whirlwind of events for Maha within like 48 hours. So what could all of this mean for the midterms? That's next.

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13:09President Trump's approval rating is the lowest it's been during either of his terms. This is according to a Washington Post ABC News Ipsos poll. Dina, what are you hearing from Maha moms, Maha supporters right now heading into the midterms? Are there indications that they'll abandon the Republican Party at the ballot box? Yes, there are indications that point in that direction. What we are hearing right now, we have, say, Vani Hari, food babe, saying that when people are not pleased, they will just stay home. So she's not exactly directing people to stay home, but she's also not calling on them to show up for the Republican Party.

13:49Now, I've heard from Maha voters that they're going to vote Republican because they will always vote Republican, but they're not going to say go knock on doors. They're not going to be organizing. They're not going to be putting out the signs for Republicans. I've heard people say that they may not vote at all. I heard one person who told me maybe she'll vote for a Democrat. We don't know how they will vote, but I can tell you that right now there is not a groundswell of Maha support for the Republican Party. What is the Trump administration doing? What are Republicans doing to try to make amends right now?

14:28I know these voters have talked about, you know, options for the White House or for the administration, other ways they could regulate pesticides. But that comes down to the EPA. And the head of that agency, Lee Zeldin. Lee Zeldin has been doing the opposite of regulating pesticides. He is giving a lot more room for pesticide use. He is, you know, pulling back regulations that were already on the books. So I am not sure how successful this administration will be in bringing these voters back. Are Democrats doing anything to seize on this fracture and use it as an opening to make inroads with members of Maha?

15:14So at that rally in front of the Supreme Court, it was notably a bipartisan lineup. So there was Congresswoman Shelley Pingree from Maine. I have been an organic farmer in Maine since the 1970s. Who has long advocated on food issues. And no one can tell me or the other farmers here today that we can't grow food without all of these toxic chemicals. Senator Cory Booker also spoke at that rally. He has long been an advocate for better farming practices, better food. And so these issues have been talked about by Democrats, but I don't know how many of them, if any, have ever really put them at the forefront of their of their platforms, of their campaigns.

16:04And it's interesting because Democrats talk so much about health care and health care coverage. And obviously, that is extremely important to a lot of Americans. How we eat and our access to healthy food is just the other side of the same coin as health care. So Democrats have a real opening here. In a kind of Maha catch-22, the USDA has introduced new requirements to make school lunches more nutritious and more often cooked from scratch, at the same time as the Trump administration has cut funding that would help schools pay for and prepare the kind of food the agencies require. And when it comes to glyphosate, the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, is broadly disinterested in upping pesticide and herbicide regulations.

16:50There's a lot of issues tied up in Maha and a lot of government agencies that would have to get on board for Maha to get what they want. And so far, we haven't seen much of that. And we'll see if that changes.

17:15This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Tim Stenevec in for David Gura and Sarah Holder. The show is hosted by David Gurra, Sarah Holder, and Wan Ha. The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Jeff Grocott, Patty Hirsch, Rachel Lewis-Kriskie, Katie McMurrin, Naomi N, Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shaven, Alex Segura, Julia Weaver, Yong Yong, and Taka Yasuzawa. There's much more on Bloomberg.com. Get unlimited access to all of our coverage at a special rate for listeners at Bloomberg.com slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.

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