RFK Jr. Is Breaking His Two Big Promises to MAHA Diehards

The true believers of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement are fuming over a New York Times report Friday, which reveals that a leaked draft of the White House MAHA Commission’s second report does not endorse directly restricting pesticides and ultraprocessed foods.

When the first report was published in May, Forbes’s Chloe Sorvino notes, many adherents of the MAHA movement championed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believed it “didn’t go far enough” in its 25 mentions of pesticides as potentially harmful to human health. At the same time, the report struck fear in the hearts of many in the agriculture industry.

Last month, ahead of the upcoming second report, the White House reportedly promised farm lobbyists that the administration would side with them over MAHA by refusing to restrict pesticide use. The Times report suggests that the White House delivered on that promise.

The news will be sure to upset the 500 people who signed onto a July letter, by the anti–Big Ag group United We Eat, urging Kennedy to ban pesticides. Some in MAHA land are already up in arms.

“Behold the power of Big Ag & Chemical Co’s,” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham wrote on X.

“Republicans in the pay of Big Food Pharma are thwarting MAHA,” tweeted Jeffrey A. Tucker, a libertarian writer and president of the Brownstone Institute. “Keep it up and they will lose the midterms.”

Nutritionist Marion Nestle wrote this week that the second MAHA report will expose a faultline in Trump’s 2024 movement: “MAHA versus the realities of MAGA.” If the final report resembles the leaked draft, then it would seem that MAHA’s losing this fight.