MAHA Betrayed Once Again: Public Health Project Newsletter

“Livid. “Angry”. “Feel betrayed.” “Burned.” “Widespread frustration.” That’s just some of the less-than-cheery reported sentiments from MAHA moms and leaders in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday granting the chemical industry blanket immunity from state-based liability claims involving the cancer-linked glyphosate found in pesticides. MAHA is clearly mad, but no one is happier about the decision than Donald Trump who’s gone out of his way to make glyphosate great again to the delight of his big chemical donors, including making his own DOJ lawyers defend the industry before SCOTUS. That cozy relationship raised alarm with public health experts and MAHA activists alike.

As Alex Clark, ‘a MAHA podcaster who works for Turning Point USA’ bluntly put it: “The Trump administration URGED and PLEADED the Court to reach this result to protect a FOREIGN chemical company—and it did at the expense of Americans. What happened to America First? For an administration that promised to take on corporate capture and Make America Healthy Again, this is a STUNNING betrayal. Farmers, families, and cancer patients currently in litigation with Bayer will never forget this.”

At some point, the shock will wear off that Trump routinely treats MAHA activists as disposable political pawns whenever he’s faced with the choice of advancing their agenda or protecting profits of the GOP’s big polluting corporate donors. Protect Our Care continues to document the many ways Donald Trump has sold out MAHA’s agenda to the highest corporate bidder. It will happen again, and again.

Guy Who Insulted Autistic Kids Put In Charge of Special Education: Not long ago, Trump health secretary RFK Jr. shared his fringe, widely condemned views on the abilities of autistic children: “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” That’s why Trump’s decision to now put Kennedy Jr. in charge of special education programs has understandably “sparked a sharp backlash from advocates for students with disabilities, who say the move will hurt children and that his views on autism make him unfit for the job.” To Donald Trump, the fact that RFK Jr. routinely and falsely uses autism as an excuse to flack his unfounded anti-vax agenda somehow makes him a special education guru, when really it only further exposes his incompetence and contempt for strong public education.

What A Sick Joke: This week, Secretary Kennedy penned a self-congratulatory op-ed claiming he and Trump are “restoring America’s position in clinical research”. Just a few problems with that: he’s mass fired clinical researchers under HHS, wrapped up countless research grants in bureaucratic red tape and requested billions less for research in the latest Trump budget. A race to the bottom, more like it.

What About His Emails? This was not a good week for the White House political team who’ve desperately tried for months to keep the deadly and politically toxic Trump-RFK Jr. anti-vax agenda out of the headlines. First came the reports that Lackland Air Force Base in Texas suffered a major flu outbreak and military readiness setback after drunken Defense Sec. Hegseth weaponized RFK Jr.’s anti-vax ideology by nixing the military’s universal flu vaccine mandate. Then came the high-profile Washington Post editorial echoing what Protect Our Care has stressed for months: ‘RFK Jr. has not abandoned his anti-vaccine agenda’. Then came the NYT report today on unearthed Trump CDC emails showing on day one as Secretary, Kennedy recklessly ordered a pull-down of all flu vaccine public service ads in the middle of an exceptionally bad flu season, likely getting Americans killed.

But the free pass RFK Jr. has been given from Republicans in Congress to assault public health with impunity may be coming to an end. Politico reports U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA-42), the ranking member on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has Kennedy in his sights as a “prime target for investigation if Democrats regain control of the House.”

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