MAHA Voters Wanted Fewer Toxins — They’re Getting More

The contradiction at the heart of the MAHA movement

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order expanding domestic production of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used weed killer Roundup, framing it as a matter of “national security” and food supply stability.

This move runs counter to one of the defining issues for a major faction of Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) voters, a bloc that helped propel Trump back into office believing the administration would reduce chemical exposures and make America healthy. That tension is especially notable given that the administration has explicitly aligned itself with the MAHA movement by appointing RFK Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In the hours following the announcement, frustration surfaced quickly within parts of the MAHA coalition who feel most strongly that glyphosate causes cancer and is harmful to health. Some supporters said they felt misled, arguing that expanding glyphosate was in direct opposition to what they believed they had been promised. Others described the move as a clear break from MAHA’s core values, with many framing the decision as a surprising betrayal.

But this should not be surprising.

From the beginning, there has been a clear mismatch between the MAHA movement’s rhetoric around environmental toxins and the Trump administration’s long-standing, overt deregulatory agenda. MAHA leaders and influencers have repeatedly warned that Americans are being “poisoned” by chemicals in food, water, and the environment, often framing chronic disease as the result of a growing “toxic burden” from pesticides, industrial chemicals, and additives in the food supply.

Expanding chemical production while weakening environmental oversight is not a departure from the Trump administration’s agenda. It is entirely consistent, and reflects the predictable outcome of aligning a toxin-focused health movement with a governing philosophy centered on deregulation.

During Trump’s first term, environmental and public health protections were repeatedly scaled back, with regulatory agencies directed to reduce oversight and ease restrictions on industry, particularly in sectors such as fossil fuel production, petrochemicals, and industrial agriculture. Air pollution standards were loosened, water protections narrowed, and enforcement actions declined, reflecting a governing philosophy that prioritized industrial and economic expansion even when doing so increased exposure to pollutants linked to long-term health risks.

That pattern has continued into his second term through a series of decisions that have further weakened environmental and public health protections. Shortly after taking office last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced what it described as the largest deregulatory initiative in its history, outlining a sweeping effort to roll back environmental rules governing air, water, and industrial pollution.

Many of these regulations were originally designed to limit population exposure to harmful contaminants and reduce long-term health risks associated with pollution, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease.

Since then, additional actions have followed. Efforts have moved forward to weaken limits on hazardous air toxics, including mercury emissions from power plants. The EPA is abandoning a strengthened rule limiting fine particulate air pollution, widely considered the deadliest form of air pollution in the United States, a change experts warn could increase exposure and lead to measurable rises in asthma, heart disease, and premature death.

The administration is also narrowing the scope of the Clean Water Act, which could strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams that play a critical role in filtering drinking water and protecting communities from pollution. Protections aimed at addressing PFAS contamination in drinking water have likewise come under rollback pressure, despite growing evidence of harm such as decreased fertility, increased cancer risk, and increased cholesterol.

At the same time, enforcement capacity has declined through staffing and budget cuts, scientific and regulatory functions within environmental agencies have been scaled back, and the EPA’s Office of Research and Development — the agency’s core scientific arm responsible for studying environmental risks and guiding evidence-based protections — has been eliminated.

This month, the administration moved to reverse the EPA’s long-standing determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health, the legal basis for regulating emissions from vehicles, power plants, and the oil and gas sector. This matters because if greenhouse gases are no longer treated as a threat to health, the foundation for limiting those emissions weakens. That opens the door to broader rollback of pollution controls, which could worsen air quality, increase respiratory and cardiovascular disease, intensify extreme heat, and contribute to growing risks to food, water, and infectious disease patterns.

Days later, the administration weakened limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants, increasing the likelihood of greater population exposure over time, a notable move given the MAHA movement’s long-standing rhetoric around mercury. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can cause tremors, insomnia, memory loss, and motor dysfunction.

Taken together, these decisions reflect a consistent direction toward reduced environmental oversight and increased population exposure to harmful pollutants. For a movement centered on improving the health of Americans, this matters because environmental policy is inseparable from public health. Decisions about air quality, water safety, and chemical regulation shape population health in profound ways. In fact, over the past century, some of the largest improvements in human health have come from environmental protections that reduced exposure to pollutants and toxic substances.

Air pollution — which increases when emissions standards are relaxed and enforcement declines — is linked to higher rates of asthma, COPD, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. Water contamination, which becomes more likely when water protections are weakened and pollutants are less tightly regulated, contributes to cancer risk, developmental harm, and long-term health disparities.

Climate-related environmental changes, exacerbated by weakened climate and pollution safeguards, worsen air quality, increase heat-related illness, expand the spread of infectious disease, and place growing strain on global food and water security. Because of this, improving health at a population level requires strong environmental protections, since many of the most effective safeguards against harmful exposures are established through environmental regulation.

This is where the tension at the center of the MAHA movement becomes quite visible. The movement has framed itself around reducing toxins, limiting chemical exposures, and improving environmental and human health, while aligning with an administration that has repeatedly weakened environmental protections, embraced a deregulatory approach within environmental governance, and eroded the institutional and scientific capacity required to sustain meaningful chemical oversight.

Some of that tension might be explained by the movement’s focus on taking personal ownership of health and exposure risk — people are encouraged to adjust their diets to avoid processed foods and eliminate toxins, conduct their own research about vaccine safety and decide for themselves whether to opt out, and use at-home water and air filtration systems to protect against harmful substances in the environment. The insistence on personal responsibility removes the government’s responsibility to protect the health of the nation. And in practice, it aligns a movement focused on reducing harmful exposures with a governing approach that systematically weakens the very protections designed to limit those exposures.

If a movement is built around the idea of reducing toxins and improving health, then strong environmental policy must be central to its governing philosophy. Reductions in lead exposure, particulate pollution, and industrial contaminants have prevented illness, extended life expectancy, and reduced disparities in disease. Those gains came from environmental protections designed to limit harmful exposures across entire communities.

Supporting an administration that is weakening those protections while claiming to pursue a holistic approach to health creates a contradiction that is impossible to ignore and undermines the very public health goals this movement claims to champion.

If the goal is truly to make America healthy, environmental protection cannot be secondary. Clean air, safe water, and strong chemical oversight are not optional components of a wellness or public health agenda. They are foundational to it.