Maha’s Perfect Villain

This morning, a crowd gathered near the Supreme Court to protest the weed-killer Roundup. Inside, justices heard arguments for Monsanto v. Durnell, weighing whether to exempt the company that created Roundup from lawsuits alleging that it failed to warn users that its herbicide causes cancer. Outside, the protesters rehearsed long-running grievances against Monsanto: One man was passing out flyers about “the hidden truth” of genetically modified food, and one speaker railed against “Mon-Satan.”

Developed by Monsanto and now owned by the German conglomerate Bayer, Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, have long been concerns for left-leaning environmentalists; now the MAHA coalition has taken up the cause with enthusiasm. The headliners of “The People vs. Poison” rally were a who’s who of MAHA: The HighWire’s Del Bigtree; the host of the Turning Point USA podcast, Culture Apothecary, Alex Clark; the founder of Moms Across America, Zen Honeycutt; and the “Food Babe” and the rally’s organizer, Vani Hari.

In this way, the event was a very public demonstration of MAHA’s horseshoe politics. The rally’s roughly 30 speakers included environmental activists and politicians from both parties. “This is not a left or right issue,” Democratic Senator Cory Booker, a surprise guest speaker and potential 2028 presidential candidate, told the crowd. “This is a right or wrong issue.” If Democrats have balked at MAHA’s rejection of vaccines, battling glyphosate has a chance of locking in the movement’s wider base of support.

The safety of glyphosate is still contested. Bayer continues to emphasize that scientific assessments have not definitively linked glyphosate to cancer. It says that because pesticides are federally regulated and the EPA has deemed glyphosate safe, the company should not be subject to state-level lawsuits such as Durnell. The U.S. government, meanwhile, as Booker would tell it, has been on the “wrong” side of the issue. In February, President Trump passed an executive order to boost domestic glyphosate production; later this week, the House is expected to vote on the Farm Bill, which contains provisions that would also limit pesticide manufacturers’ legal liability. Earlier this month, the White House invited MAHA leaders, including Clark, for a roundtable to discuss their views on the issue. “We gave them ideas of things that they could do that would be an olive branch for moms that are upset about the glyphosate executive order,” Clark told me. She is hopeful, but said “it’s up to them if they’re going to do something or not.”

For the moment, MAHA is still waiting, although the White House spokesperson Kush Desai told me that the administration has “more announcements on sustainable agriculture practices and other policies in store to build on MAHA victories from the past year.” He also stood behind Trump’s glyphosate order, which he said “simply seeks to strengthen our national security and end America’s decades-long reliance on foreign imports and supply chains,” adding, “This is ‘America First’ in action.” (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

In theory, today’s MAHA rally was another nudge for the administration. Clark told me that she truly believes that MAHA won the presidency for Republicans in 2024, so for the administration to do anything to “jeopardize that or let it slip through your fingers is just moronic.” (The back of her jacket read: I Turn Into Erin Brockovich When I’m Angry.)

As my colleagues have reported, Trump does seem to believe that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his followers will be an important electoral force in the midterms, whether or not that’s true. Hari had previously told Politico that she expected more than 1,000 people at the protest, and judging by the number of babies in strollers and children holding handmade signs, the so-called MAHA Moms were out in full force. But by my count, the crowd capped out at a couple hundred. “I wish more people were here,” Sharon Juraszek, who’d traveled from Florida for the rally, told me. She owns an organic-food company and has been speaking against glyphosate for years because her mother died of cancer that she believes was brought on by Roundup. She is a fan of Kennedy and hoped he would be one of the day’s surprise guest speakers. (He was not.)

Still, Clark thought that the crowd should show the administration that “this is extremely serious,” she said. “I mean, you’ve got moms and babies out here.” And despite MAHA’s frustrations with Trump’s recent actions, the rally today ultimately aligned with the administration’s goals before the midterms. The White House has reportedly encouraged Kennedy to focus more on the healthy-food aspects of his MAHA agenda this year instead of his divisive anti-vaccine policies. The rally basically did the same. Besides Hari, Bigtree seemed to be the unofficial headliner of the protest; several people told me they’d come to see him. His organization, Informed Consent Action Network, is known for opposing vaccines, but today, his speech didn’t mention any of that. Instead, he talked about “the food that sits on the table before us.” That, he said, is “an issue that is bringing America back together.”