MAHA Moms Turn Against Trump: ‘Women Feel Like They Were Lied to’

The MAHA Moms have turned on President Trump.

When Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threw his support behind Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign for the White House, his corps of health conscious, mostly female, followers embraced the president, who pledged to address Americans’ concerns about “toxins in our environments and pesticides in our food.”

Some of the women, who call themselves the MAHA Moms after Mr. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement, abandoned the Democratic Party to vote for Mr. Trump.

But the executive order Mr. Trump issued Wednesday to increase domestic production of glyphosate — a widely used weedkiller and possible carcinogen that has been the target of thousands of lawsuits, including one brought by Mr. Kennedy — stunned and infuriated the activists.

It now threatens to turn the brief MAHA-Trump marriage into a divorce.

“Women feel like they were lied to, that MAHA movement is a sham,” said Alex Clark, a health and wellness podcaster for the conservative group Turning Point U.S.A., which is closely allied with the president. “How am I supposed to rally these women to vote red in the midterms? How can we win their trust back? I am unsure if we can.”

Across the country on Thursday, many women who identified with the movement expressed similar feelings of betrayal from the president. But Mr. Kennedy, who issued a statement saying that Mr. Trump’s order would strengthen “our defense readiness and our food supply,” was spared the wrath of the movement’s leaders, if not its rank and file.

“Secretary Kennedy has done everything he said he’s going to do,” said Vani Hari, a healthy eating activist and one-time Democrat (she worked to elect President Barack Obama) who has advised the administration on food policy. “He has upheld his commitment to the American people, Now, whether his boss is doing that is another story.”

Ms. Hari has millions of social media followers. “There is a level of anger and frustration like I’ve never witnessed before,” she said.

On her Instagram page, some of that anger was directed at Mr. Kennedy. “This begs the question why didn’t sec Kennedy have a say and stop it,” one commenter wrote.

It is unclear whether the secretary was consulted on the order before it was issued. The White House and a spokesman for Mr. Kennedy would not say.

“Where is RFK Jr.?” another commenter asked.

In issuing his order, Mr. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, a Korean-war era law that allows the government to compel the manufacture of supplies that are critical for national defense.

The order is aimed at boosting domestic supplies of phosphorous, which is necessary for the manufacture of certain munitions, as well as for glyphosate, which has been deemed “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Glyphosate is marketed as the weedkiller Roundup. In 2018, Mr. Kennedy helped win a $289 million jury award against Roundup’s maker, Monsanto, now owned by Bayer.

“Ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is thus crucial to the national security and defense, including food-supply security,” the order said. Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, defended the order, saying it was “not an endorsement of any product or practice.”

In a statement on behalf of Monsanto, a Bayer spokesman said Mr. Trump’s executive order “reinforces the critical need for U.S. farmers to have access to essential, domestically produced crop protection tools.” The company will “comply with this order to produce glyphosate and elemental phosphorus,” he said.

The order provides limited legal immunity to glyphosate’s makers, though it is unlikely to protect them against product liability lawsuits. Mr. Trump’s critics see the president helping the chemical industry and question whether there is legal justification for the order.

“Invoking the Defense Production Act to spur the domestic production of glyphosate is a gross abuse of presidential authority,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University. “There is scant evidence that the United States’ agricultural sector and its ability to ensure a stable food supply is at risk.”

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The campaign against glyphosate has been central to the MAHA movement. Zen Honeycutt, the founder of the advocacy group Moms Across America, has been a leader in that campaign, commissioning private laboratory testing for pesticide residue and petitioning retailers to remove the chemicals from their shelves by framing it as a risk to children.

In an interview, Ms. Honeycutt called Mr. Trump’s order “an egregious offense to what he promised” and “a betrayal.” As for Mr. Kennedy, she said his hands are tied: “Bobby is not in charge of Trump.”

Representatives of MAHA Action and the MAHA Institute, part of a constellation of groups that support Mr. Kennedy’s agenda, did not respond to requests for comment.

Environmental groups, which had been sidelined under the current administration, said the MAHA movement was to blame for throwing its support behind a president that had proven himself to be disastrous for health and the environment in his first term. “They voted for Trump, and they own this,” said Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that has worked on pesticide issues. “Of course they were betrayed. And they betrayed the rest of us,” he said, adding, “There were plenty of warning signs.”

There had indeed been red flags.

Last year, the Trump administration supported Bayer in a case that seeks to determine whether federal law shields pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits. Republicans in Congress have also proposed measures that would have effectively shielded Bayer and other pesticides makers from payouts to plaintiffs. That measure was defeated by a coalition of environmental groups, but a similar provision has been added to draft of the farm bill.

The Trump administration has appointed former chemical industry executives and lobbyists to senior roles overseeing pesticides and toxic chemicals, angering several prominent MAHA activists who circulated a petition last fall calling for E.P.A. Administrator Lee Zeldin to be fired. Mr. Zeldin has since promised that the agency would adopt a “MAHA agenda,” That agenda has not been released.

Now, there is “a widening disconnect” between the voters who want to reduce chemicals and pesticides and the Trump administration, said Kelly Ryerson, an influencer and former investment banker who attended the meeting with Mr. Zeldin.

A loose confederation that brings together some people on the environmental left and the libertarian right, the movement has rallied around three primary issues: “health freedom,” including skepticism of vaccines and opposition to vaccine mandates; healthy eating; and reducing exposure to toxic chemicals.

In October, a KFF/Washington Post survey of nearly 3,000 parents found that about 38 percent identified as supporters of the MAHA movement. That figure rose to 62 percent among parents who identified as Republican, and to 81 percent among parents who identified as MAGA Republicans.

With polls showing that Mr. Kennedy’s healthy eating agenda is far more popular than his push to scale back the childhood vaccination schedule, the secretary is making a conscious pivot away from vaccines.

Instead, he has been promoting an “Eat Real Food” message with celebrities like the boxer Mike Tyson and the singer Kid Rock, whose recent video with Mr. Kennedy is raising eyebrows on social media. The men, both bare-chested (Mr. Kennedy wears jeans, his standard workout uniform) drink whole milk and perform push-ups and other exercises, while Mr. Rock gives Americans the middle finger.

It is too soon to tell the extent of the fallout from Mr. Trump’s backing of glyphosate, Ms. Hari said. Still, “it is likely going to be something that the Trump administration deeply regrets being part of,” she said.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a correspondent based in Washington for The New York Times, covering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump’s health agenda.

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