MAHA Voters Turn on Trump Over Roundup Embrace
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- The Trump administration backed Bayer at every turn on Roundup: urging the Supreme Court to take the case, signing a February executive order classifying glyphosate-based herbicides as key to national security, having EPA officials meet with Bayer's CEO about "litigation," and sending a government lawyer to argue on Bayer's behalf at SCOTUS.
- The Supreme Court ruled in Bayer's favor, holding that states cannot mandate additional cancer warnings on Roundup labels and sharply limiting legal recourse for the tens of thousands of plaintiffs who alleged glyphosate caused cancer and other illnesses.
- Trump signed a regenerative agriculture executive order within hours of the ruling, witnessed firsthand by South Dakota farmer Jonathan Lundgren in the Oval Office — but National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy director Mike Lavender called it "nothing really new or substantive," noting it introduces no new funding or regulations.
- MAHA-aligned farmer Mollie Engelhart, who hosted an HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at her Texas ranch, called the contradiction "schizophrenic" and declared "MAHA voters are homeless," while Lundgren described pesticide drift sickening his family with asthma, headaches, and fatigue — an illness his community calls "The Spray Flu."
- Polling shows the depth of the rift: 94% of MAHA adherents favor reducing chemical exposure, yet a spring Politico poll found 47% of Trump-voting MAHA respondents say the administration has not done enough to "Make America Healthy Again," and a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 28% disapprove of its food and vaccine policy handling.
- Leading MAHA mom Kelly Ryerson, co-founder of American Regeneration, said the combined ruling and order make it "really hard to come back from," and multiple farmers told Grist the administration's actions have changed how they plan to vote in the midterms.
- The EPA recently approved another batch of pesticides containing PFAS — "forever chemicals" — compounding MAHA's grievances alongside the Roundup fight.
Why it matters: MAHA voters were a Trump coalition pillar: 74% identify as Republican and 59% as MAGA supporters. Now nearly half of Trump-voting MAHA respondents say the administration hasn't delivered on its health promises, and 28% disapprove of its food and vaccine policy. For a president defending thin congressional margins in the midterms, losing even a slice of this movement to single-issue candidates — as Ryerson and Lundgren described — narrows his buffer with a constituency he explicitly recruited.
