On Thursday, President Donald Trump dealt yet another crushing blow to the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement with his latest betrayal of the squadrons of health-obsessed mothers who helped to return him to office despite numerous indictments. Sorry, I should have been more specific–doing things directly counter to MAHA is actually something that Trump does on such a regular basis that we need finer detail on what he’s done this time to thwart their goals to revamp the American health system. Specifically, I’m talking about Trump’s decision to withdraw the nomination of Dr. Casey Means for the post of Surgeon General, depriving the movement of one of its most popular figureheads, a symbol of “MAHA Moms” everywhere.
It was perfectly in character for Trump to do so: After all, his administration has embraced the expanded production of cancer-causing herbicides that MAHA abhors, and is defending those same chemical corporations in a current Supreme Court case that would limit the ability of Americans to sue herbicide/pesticide manufacturers for negative health consequences of being exposed to them. The same administration has loosened numerous environmental regulations keeping toxins such as mercury from being unleashed into our food supply, all while RFK Jr., the supposed leader of the MAHA movement, has utterly refused to disagree with Trump on the dismantling of his life’s work, becoming the saddest single man in the Trump administration in the process.
Not that you would really know any of this, if you were simply following MAHA influencers on social networks like Facebook or Twitter. In those venues, the cheerful conservative sellouts walk a delicate line where they must observe all of the bad things happening that undermine their movement, and then go as far out of their way as possible to avoid blaming Donald Trump or RFK Jr. for decisions made by Donald Trump or RFK Jr. The continuation of the MAHA grift for this particular influencer class becomes a game of finding or making up minor or moral victories to trumpet, while ignoring the massive L’s that are constantly thrust upon them by their movement’s deities. The dumping of doctor and wellness influencer Casey Means is just the latest instance of Trump deciding that he doesn’t give a shit about the priorities of his MAHA coalition, and the latest thing they’ll be forced to largely ignore in order to continue supporting Trump.
It’s a good day when the Senate rejects at least one junk science charlatan.
Good riddance to Casey Means, RFK Jr. is doing enough damage on his own.
I’ll keep pushing for his removal to protect science and common sense in our government.
— Senator Patty Murray (@murray.senate.gov) Apr 30, 2026 at 5:48 PM
It was only a couple of weeks ago, in fact, that the White House, looking to shore up its get-out-the-vote enthusiasm among this specific demographic, specifically invited a cadre of MAHA influencers to the Oval Office, to meet with not only Trump and resident creatures like Stephen Miller, but also Dr. Means. There, MAHA influencers like Turning Point USA’s Alex Clark begged Trump to get the Means nomination for Surgeon General across the finish line of confirmation in the Senate, saying that confirming her was utterly “essential” to prove to the legions of MAHA moms that Trump and RFK Jr. were serious about installing members of the movement in positions of real power. As Clark reportedly put it at the time, “She [Means] is trustworthy to the MAHA base.” Trump responded to those overtures by pulling her nomination today.
One might expect the reaction from an influencer like the aforementioned Clark to be anger toward Trump and RFK Jr., for failing to stand behind Dr. Means, to leverage Trump’s near-total, monolithic power over the Republican party to get the nomination confirmed. Instead, though, Clark and the other MAHA influencer bots received their marching orders to solely blame Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (LA), the chairman of the Senate health committee, with Trump himself declaring that Cassidy had “stood in the way.” This overlooks, of course, the fact that Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AL) also seemed unlikely to confirm Means, likely due more than anything to her RFK Jr.-informed penchant for vaccine disinformation. In confirmation hearings, Means said she believes vaccines “save lives,” but simultaneously refused to say that she supported universal vaccination against diseases such as measles, which has been surging to historic highs in the U.S. within the last two years. It is not yet fully clear where Trump’s new third nominee for the post of Surgeon General, radiologist and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center doctor Nicole B. Saphier, stands on the vaccine issue, but she’s almost certain to be less palatable to the MAHA contingent overall, when Casey Means was regularly touted as being one of their own. Saphier, a regular Fox News guest, has already locked her Twitter account, which is … not at all troubling!
My quick opinions on Saphier…
She’s not as pro vaccine as I would like, she does discuss things like medical freedom and delayed schedules for example. She also uses MAHA buzzwords like “toxins” and “chemicals”. At the same time she’s much better than Casey Means.
Saphier on MMR 2/10/25
— Thomas Nguyen, DO (@tom.medsky.social) Apr 30, 2026 at 1:12 PM
But regardless, there was never a genuine chance that an influencer like Alex Clark could afford to state the obvious, that Trump is the one ultimately making these decisions–he kicked Means to the curb because he wanted to get the confirmation done, and the continued resistance to her reflected poorly on him. At the end of the day, how he is affected by any of these people is his only real concern … and someone who works for Turning Point USA is inevitably going to understand that.
Still, there are points when Trump’s deeply anti-MAHA moves have clearly frustrated even a dyed-in-the-wool political operative like Clark. The most notable was no doubt his February executive order in which he commanded that production of the MAHA boogeyman herbicide gylphosate be boosted and protected under the Defense Production Act, calling it “critical to the national defense,” despite the fact that his own head of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had been one of the key lawyers who first secured a judgement against Roundup weedkiller (made with glyphosate) producer Bayer on behalf of a client who claimed the product was responsible for his cancer. Worse still, his total control over RFK Jr. resulted in the head of the MAHA movement putting out a statement in support of the move to boost production of the stuff that Kennedy had long called carcinogenic.
“Women feel like they were lied to, that MAHA movement is a sham,” said Alex Clark at the time, venting frustration that she has now tried to walk back. “How am I supposed to rally these women to vote red in the midterms? How can we win their trust back? I am unsure if we can.”
Note the wording, and the priorities here. Clark doesn’t question how the MAHA movement can achieve its objectives, or question “which candidates actually represent our stated views?” Instead, it’s simply “How am I supposed to rally these women to vote red in the midterms?” She tips her hand in the process, not even bothering to ask or answer the question of why “voting red” is meant to inexorably be seen as the outcome that is best for their goals. Why should it be the default, when the MAGA Republicans represented by Trump consistently demonstrate that they’d rather be allied with Big Ag and Big Chem than with the priorities of the MAHA believers? Are we so certain that, at least on issues like pesticides/herbicides (vaccines are a non-starter), congressional Democrats might not make for more receptive potential allies for these constituents?
Tens of thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Bayer for failing to warn people about the risks of glyphosate exposure.
Now, EPA Administrator Zeldin and Trump are pushing for legal immunity to protect Bayer from being sued by Americans getting cancer from their product.
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@ocasio-cortez.house.gov) Apr 29, 2026 at 3:19 PM
Such is the perennial issue at the heart of MAHA, an ideology that is inherently in conflict with itself due to its embrace of a “big tent” of conspiracy and genuine science. On one hand, the food-based views of MAHA are generally widely popular with the American population, especially when it comes to topics like an increased presence of clear labeling, warning labels and limited use of scary “chemicals,” although good luck in actually getting most of these people to voluntarily pay more for organic food. But on the other side of the equation, MAHA’s trademark vaccine hesitancy is deeply unpopular with the rank and file American, the vast majority of whom, for instance, still get their children vaccinated with the full childhood vaccine schedule despite concerning declines.
On Thursday, even as they were trying to put the best possible face on the dismissal of Dr. Casey Means, MAHA influencers were reveling in another small victory: An amendment was successfully tacked on the House passage of the 2026 Farm Bill, to remove language that would have shielded pesticide and herbicide manufacturers from legal action by American consumers. Effectively, the amendment would allow states to be able to do things like add warning labels to products in which pesticides might have been used, although it’s very unclear what this would actually look like–presumably we are not talking about warnings laser-etched into the sides of tomatoes and bell peppers. Any gain here could likewise be undone by the results of the U.S. Supreme Court case involving glyphosate that is currently being argued … in which the federal government is on the side of Roundup maker Bayer.
What is so interesting about the amendment to the Farm Bill, however, is how the MAHA influencers and media framed it as a Republican-led victory. Because the amendment was sponsored and written by Republican Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (FL) and Eli Crane, it allowed those influencers to ignore that said amendment was actually adopted almost entirely because of Democratic support. In fact, of the 280-142 vote in favor of the amendment, 207 of the “yea” votes were Democrats, and only 73 were Republicans. Meanwhile, 136 Republicans in bed with Big Ag opposed the measure.
BREAKING: The House just voted to remove the pesticide provisions from the farm bill that would have protected Bayer from lawsuits over cancer-causing glysophate in Roundup.
The amendment passed 280-142.
— More Perfect Union (@moreperfectunion.bsky.social) Apr 30, 2026 at 11:09 AM
Does that not perfectly sum up the utter confusion of the MAHA headspace, in terms of which party it is actually represents their political home? The very name of the movement was borrowed from Trump’s own slogan, but Trump’s administration is cheerleading Big Poison in a Supreme Court case to not allow Americans with cancer to continue suing herbicide manufacturers. Trump is signing executive orders that violate everything MAHA believes in, and withdrawing nominations from their favored candidates, while the supposed leader of their movement, RFK Jr., is so unwilling to disagree with Trump on a single thing that he’s afraid to take a stance even on an issue as inconsequential as daylight saving time. Meanwhile, who is backing MAHA-favored amendments in the U.S. House of Representatives? It’s members of the Democratic party, ignored by the MAHA influencers whose true, self-stated priorities are “getting women to vote red in the midterms.”
If you count yourself as MAHA, it might be time to ask whether the leaders of your movement should be people who actively seem to despise both you and your goals.
