Trump's Bayer Backing Splits MAHA Voters
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- Bayer won a Supreme Court case limiting states' ability to mandate cancer warning labels on Roundup, after the Trump administration urged the Court to take up the case and sent a lawyer to argue on the chemical company's behalf.
- In February, Trump signed an executive order classifying glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup as key to national security and calling for increased domestic production of the chemical.
- Just hours after the ruling, Trump signed an executive order framed as boosting regenerative agriculture and American farm resilience, though National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy director Mike Lavender said it includes "nothing really new or substantive or meaningful."
- Inside the Oval Office, HHS officials clashed with a top farming lobbyist who feared the regenerative agriculture order would imply there are safety issues in the U.S. food supply.
- MAHA-aligned farmers Mollie Engelhart, Jonathan Lundgren, and Kelly Ryerson say the administration's dual actions have shifted their midterm voting plans, with Engelhart declaring "MAHA voters are homeless" and Lundgren saying food safety is now weighing more heavily on his politics than ever before.
- A POLITICO poll found 47% of self-identified MAHA respondents who voted for Trump believe the administration has not done enough to "Make America Healthy Again," while 94% of MAHA adherents favor reducing exposure to harmful chemicals.
- The EPA recently approved another batch of pesticides containing PFAS, or "forever chemicals," compounding MAHA voter disillusionment alongside the Roundup ruling and the glyphosate executive order.
Why it matters: MAHA-aligned voters were a critical part of Trump's winning coalition, drawn in by RFK Jr.'s endorsement and the promise to clean up America's food system. With 47% of self-identified MAHA Trump voters already saying he hasn't done enough, and movement figures now publicly declaring they can no longer blindly vote red, the White House is alienating its own base to defend Bayer's legal and commercial interests ahead of midterm elections that could decide control of Congress.
