The corporate capture of MAHA: How the chemical lobby is stealing our health again

By Lee Evslin

MAHA has been played.

For months leading up to the 2024 election, the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement captivated a nation overwhelmed by chronic diseases. I found hope in a powerful promise regarding our food supply: we would finally stop poisoning our own people.

We were told that the new administration would take a sledgehammer to the corrupt alliance between federal regulators and the chemical industry. We were promised a war on the health epidemic that is sickening our children.

But as the dust settles in Washington, the slogan has revealed itself to be exactly what The New Lede questioned in December: a “Trojan horse.” The very voters who turned out to demand safer food and water have been handed a policy agenda that protects the poisoners.

I write this not only as a pediatrician who has spent a career treating children but as a former member of the Hawai`i state-sponsored Pesticide Task Force. I know firsthand the power and the necessity of local action. Our work, bolstered by research from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Environmental Working Group, played a significant role in Hawai`i becoming the first state in the nation to ban the toxic insecticide chlorpyrifos. We took action because we uncovered the data. We found developmental delays in our schoolchildren and higher rates of spraying in our fields.

We refused to wait for a federal government paralyzed by corporate influence. That victory, and the right of any state to protect its own citizens, is now being dismantled. What we are witnessing is not accidental; it is a coordinated war on the very science that keeps us safe.

Prong 1: Supreme Court nuclear option

According to reporting from the New York Times, the administration has thrown its full weight behind Bayer in the Supreme Court case Monsanto Co. v. Durnell. On Jan. 16th, the Justices officially agreed to hear the case.  The Department of Justice is arguing for “pre-emption,” a legal theory claiming that because the EPA approved a pesticide label, no state court or jury can blame a company for not adding warnings beyond what the EPA required.

This is a stunning betrayal. The MAHA movement was built on the premise that the EPA is captured by industry. Yet now, the administration is arguing that this same captured agency should be the supreme authority, overruling every state judge and jury in America.

If the Supreme Court accepts the administration’s argument, it will effectively grant Bayer immunity. It will deny people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after decades of using Roundup of their day in court. But worse, it handcuffs every state legislature. If this standard had been in place when we fought for Hawai`i’s children, our ban on chlorpyrifos would have been impossible. It transforms the EPA from a safety baseline into a regulatory ceiling.

Prong 2: Rewriting state laws

Bayer has not waited for the courts alone. For the last several years, they have lobbied aggressively in multiple statehouses across the country to pass legislation that grants them statewide immunity from lawsuits. They even succeeded in North Dakota and Georgia.

They are trying to change the rules of the game so that they can never be held accountable for the harm their products cause. They are leveraging Republican-driven efforts to decrease EPA oversight, creating a regulatory vacuum where the federal government doesn’t protect us, and the state governments aren’t allowed to.

Prong 3: The “zombie science” of the 20th century

Perhaps most insidious is the attack on science itself. The administration is defending a regulatory system that is scientifically obsolete.

Our current regulations are based on 20th-century toxicology: “Does this chemical kill a rat immediately?” or “Does it cause a visible tumor?” But 21st-century science tells us that health is far more complex. We now know that the microbiome, the trillions of bacteria in our gut, is a vital component of our immune system and the producer of critical neurotransmitters.

Glyphosate is not just a weedkiller; it was patented as an antimicrobial agent. Specifically, the patent highlights its effectiveness against the spirochete parasite that causes malaria. In that same patent application, over 100 species of bacteria were identified as susceptible to the formulation. Numerous studies now confirm the significant adverse effects glyphosate formulations have on the microbiomes of all types of lifeforms, from bees to humans. This means that when we spray glyphosate on our food crops, we are introducing a broad-spectrum antibiotic into the human diet that targets the very biological pathway our gut bacteria rely on.

It significantly affects the beneficial bacteria in our gut, promoting systemic inflammation, a driver of our chronic disease crisis. Yet, the EPA’s regulatory framework has no mechanism to measure this microbiome damage. They are using a flip phone to diagnose a supercomputer.

Worse, the “safety” data they do rely on is often corrupted. Just recently, a major scientific journal retracted a 25-year-old review widely viewed as the landmark study proving that glyphosate was safe. It was retracted after emails revealed that Monsanto scientists had essentially ghostwritten the research and cherry-picked the studies they reviewed. This is the “science” the administration is now defending in the Supreme Court: fraudulent, ghostwritten, and dangerously outdated.

Conclusion

The MAHA vote in 2024 was a cry for help. It was a demand for regenerative farming, for the removal of toxic chemicals, and for a government that feared parents more than it feared lobbyists.

Instead, the movement has been hijacked. The final MAHA policy drafts barely mention pesticides. The administration is asking the Supreme Court to shield Bayer using fraudulent science. And the “health” movement is being used to entrench a system where regulatory agencies ignore 21st-century medicine to protect 20th-century profits.

As a pediatrician, I have disagreed with the MAHA movement’s position on vaccines. Yet, I applauded their long-overdue willingness to finally take on the powerful agribusiness forces that have poisoned our children for profit. I believed they were addressing one of the most important public health issues of our times. But that critical mission has been co-opted and corrupted by industrial forces far more powerful than the movement itself.

Given this betrayal, it is time to retire the slogan. Based on these recent actions, we should rename the movement to something far more accurate: Make America Sicker Than It Has Ever Been.

(Opinion columns published in The New Lede represent the views of the individual(s) authoring the columns and not necessarily the perspectives of TNL editors.)

Featured image is AI generated.