Why is MAHA mad at Trump?

0:00Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:In one year, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made dramatic changes to the country's public health system. He has cut vaccine funding, reduced the number of federally recommended childhood vaccines, and laid off thousands of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services. It's all part of his Make America Healthy Again mission.

0:19Helena Bottemiller Evich:I'm proud that President Trump has appointed me to the position of trust to carry out his agenda to make America healthy again. This is the mission that President Trump and I hold in common, and that has inspired a tectonic outpouring of enthusiasm and support from the American people.

0:44Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:That is Kennedy speaking in February of last year after his confirmation. Along with President Trump, he's made promises to their base as well. Here is Kennedy in September 2024. With a mass movement behind us, President Trump and I are going to transform our food system. We're going to get the chemicals out of the water, out of our air, out of the food and out of the soils. Kennedy spent much of his career as an environmental lawyer fighting against glyphosate. That's the pesticide used in Roundup. In 2018, he won a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the maker of Roundup, arguing that the weed killer likely caused his clients cancer.

1:21Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Then last week, Trump issued an executive order clearing a path for the U.S. to produce more of it domestically. And in a lengthy response on social media, Kennedy defended the order, saying, quote, President Trump did not build our current system. He inherited it. I was outraged. I was actually sick to my stomach when I saw this executive order. It was basically a love letter to glyphosate. That's Zen Honeycutt, the founder and executive director of Moms Across America on CNN. I had hoped because Kennedy was brought into the administration and fought glyphosate and won, that perhaps glyphosate would be banned, as it should be.

2:00Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Consider this. A herbicide is putting Kennedy and his Maha supporters at odds.

2:11Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. This message comes from CBC. Do you want kids? The mother of all questions is questioned in, personally, creation myth. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the CBS Stephen Colbert dust-up is part of a pattern. Corporations are changing to avoid angering President Trump and his administration.

2:35Helena Bottemiller Evich:It's really the first time I can remember so many of these organizations have bent because of their own business interests.

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3:20Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:It's Consider This from NPR. Make America Healthy Against supporters are angry, and it's putting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a tough spot between his boss and his fans. Here's why. Last week, President Trump issued an executive order to increase domestic production of glyphosate, which is commonly used as a weed killer. You might know it by the brand name Roundup. And it immediately ignited an uproar in the Maha movement. Kennedy and his base have long believed glyphosate is a health risk, but now Kennedy says he supports Trump's order. So is this the beginning of a fallout between Trump and some members of his base?

3:59Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Joining me now to talk about all of this is Helena Bademiller-Evich, She's founder and editor-in-chief of the Food Fix newsletter. Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Okay, so just for starters, is this a fallout, a strain in the relationship, or how would you describe what is happening right now between Maha and Trump?

4:16Helena Bottemiller Evich:So I don't yet see this as a full-blown divorce, but we are definitely seeing a marital spat, and it's all happening in the public. So key Maha advocates and activists are really upset about this order, and they're being very vocal about it. It is all happening in full view on social media, but they are still holding out hope that this administration will, you know, kind of bend to the Maha agenda and keep moving forward. So it's not a full fallout, but it is a very messy moment.

4:46Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Okay, so glyphosate, which is an active ingredient in Roundup, as we mentioned, is at the center of this very sort of public messy spat. Why is it such a cornerstone to the Maha agenda?

4:58Helena Bottemiller Evich:So I think Maha at its core is really a concern about chronic disease. And there's a lot of different ways that people plug into this. Some of the Maha moms that you'll hear about are concerned about vaccines. Some of them are concerned about environmental toxins. They're concerned about microplastics. Pesticides is one of those kind of core concerns. And that's where glyphosate falls into this. It's the most commonly used herbicide in the U.S. It is really a pillar of the current agricultural system. And a lot of Maha moms want to see it dramatically reduced or even banned. And that has set up this conflict.

5:38Helena Bottemiller Evich:We have an administration that is decidedly more deregulatory. They want to be more industry friendly. They certainly want to, you know, stay friends with the agriculture industry. And this is really a big point of conflict.

5:51Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:And as I understand it, the science on glyphosate is pretty complicated. There's strong evidence for an association between the chemical and diseases like lymphoma and Parkinson's, but the level of exposure matters a lot. Is that right?

6:04Helena Bottemiller Evich:So there is a really active debate in this space. The EPA has long maintained that glyphosate doesn't present a public health risk. EPA has ruled that glyphosate is not likely to be a carcinogen. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is more commonly known as IARC, that's part of the World Health Organization, they ruled that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic. That was mainly looking at animal studies. One of the key studies that everyone has long pointed to to sort of back up the safety of glyphosate, however, was recently retracted. And that has thrown up this red flag and I think really fueled even more Maha concern that there are reasons to think that glyphosate might be contributing to cancer.

6:48Helena Bottemiller Evich:Juries in the U.S. have awarded billions of dollars to individuals who believe their cancer cases were caused by glyphosate. And Bayer, which makes glyphosate, is now under tremendous pressure in the courts.

7:01Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Back in 2018, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the maker of Roundup, arguing that the weed killer likely caused his clients cancer. So why do you think it is that he is now moving to fall in line with President Trump's plan to produce more of it in the United States?

7:17Helena Bottemiller Evich:So what Kennedy has said publicly is that he personally believes that glyphosate does cause cancer. That is not the Trump administration's official position, to be very clear. He has backed the president's executive order here, basically saying, look, we are currently dependent on glyphosate. Like the U.S. agricultural system currently relies on this and we can't just walk away from it. It would be disastrous. He backs up the idea that we need to produce more domestically for national security reasons. This, however, has made, I mean, the Maha moms, the Maha advocates are absolutely furious over his defense of this executive order.

7:56Helena Bottemiller Evich:If you dive a little bit more into what he said publicly recently, he said that he believes the U.S. needs to transition away from using glyphosate, but we have to do so slowly. slowly. I think one of the key questions here for me as a policy reporter is like whether or not the Trump administration is actually going to come up with a plan to do that. That would still be a very controversial idea. And I've seen no evidence that we are actually moving in that direction. So it remains a really key point of tension within the Maha movement and within the Trump administration.

8:30Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:To your mind, Helena, is glyphosate the most contentious point or is it just the loudest when it comes to President Trump and the seeming rift with the Maha base?

8:41Helena Bottemiller Evich:I think it's all ripping open right now because of this executive order and also the tremendous litigation pressure that Bayer is under. There's also a case that is going before the Supreme Court in April, basically trying to decide whether or not EPA should have the final say on the safety of glyphosate and whether we should have federal preemption or whether a lot of the liability that Bayer has faced will stand. So basically, they're trying to stem the tide of these lawsuits. So far, the Trump administration has been on the side of Bayer. And Maha advocates are actually now planning a rally outside of the Supreme Court the day that the first oral arguments are being heard.

9:23Helena Bottemiller Evich:And so this is going to continue to be a very big conflict that's going to happen publicly. Within the Trump administration, we've seen most of their Maha wins and most of the Maha rhetoric so far going after the food industry. So they're talking about, you know, trying to phase out artificial dyes. They're trying to get more states to ban soda from SNAP. They are focused a lot on the rhetoric against the food industry, but the agriculture side, the politics are much trickier. And so I think we are going to continue to see this as a point of conflict. And this matters a lot because we're facing down the midterms.

10:04Helena Bottemiller Evich:And Republicans want to keep this Maha voting bloc as part of their coalition going into the midterms.

10:10Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:I know that you have been spending some time reading and hearing from members of this group. Based on what you know and what you've learned, how do you think this might end?

10:18Helena Bottemiller Evich:I really don't know where all of this is headed, but I think the big central question at the heart of all of this is whether a deregulatory sort of traditional Republican stance can square with what the Maha movement fundamentally is asking for, which is a crackdown on toxins in the environment, toxins in the food supply. And this seems to be the kind of the crash course that we are now on and that we are now seeing unfold. I think we're going to continue to see a lot of noise on this. The Maha movement, the grassroots is pushing back hard on the administration. And they are hoping that at the end of the day, Kennedy and the noise that they make on the outside can maybe shift the Trump administration in their direction.

11:06Helena Bottemiller Evich:I don't know that that will work, but that is what they are hoping for.

11:10Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Helena Bademiller-Evich is founder and editor-in-chief of the Food Fix newsletter. Thank you. Thanks so much.

11:40Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.

11:49Helena Bottemiller Evich:Get in, loser. We're taking a trip under the sea to a junkyard.

11:54Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:I've done Cobra helicopters. We've seen old washer machines. Does a second strip book count? This junk helped create one of the world's largest artificial reefs and a new home for many marine animals. But how did our trash become another fish's treasure? Find out on Shortwave. Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up on the Here and Now Anytime podcast, squirrels, ferrets, and moose. Oh my. Climate change is making it harder to be a mammal these days. Our reporting project, Reverse Course, returns with stories of science in action from the frozen north woods of Minnesota to the desert of Arizona.

12:34Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:Listen to Here and Now Anytime wherever you get your podcasts.