The Make America Healthy Again movement rallied voters around fears of industrial chemicals, pesticides and corporate agriculture — but the Republican administration it helped elect keeps siding with the chemical industry. As The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff argues, the midterms are testing whether the GOP can hold together that “bizarre” MAHA-MAGA alliance.
The administration’s response to MAHA’s concerns has been “largely symbolic,” Aronoff writes. HHS, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., launched a $144 million research program on microplastics. But in June the EPA declined to add them to its priority list of drinking-water contaminants to monitor, agreeing only to study them — short of what activists like Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of Moms Across America, had pressed for.
Industry has fared better. A New York Times investigation found chemical trade groups sought a two-year exemption from Biden-era limits on ethylene oxide, a carcinogen — and in July “got what they wanted.” Their PACs gave $50,000 to Republicans on a single day in March 2025, versus $10,000 to Democrats. Aronoff argues GOP leaders have “sold [MAHA voters] out to Dow and Bayer.”
Cracks are showing inside the movement, too. Calley Means resigned as Kennedy’s senior adviser, reportedly over the slow pace of progress, and Honeycutt has grown “increasingly critical” of the administration even as she campaigns with Kennedy. Kennedy’s own stumping has been “something of a mixed bag.” A MAHA summit drew sponsors like Walmart and Hims & Hers, which “aren’t known for their health bona fides,” and Jennifer Galardi of the Heritage Foundation warned the movement away from the “dystopian religion” of headliner Bryan Johnson’s quest to transcend death.
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Voters’ priorities may not line up with MAHA’s agenda anyway. A KFF poll found about 41 percent of Americans identify with MAHA, most of them Republicans who also embrace MAGA — but even they “cared more about bringing down the cost of health care” than food policy or vaccines.
