Health Care Newsletter

The MAHA movement’s wild week

by Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi - 05/01/26 6:29 PM ET

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by Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi - 05/01/26 6:29 PM ET

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The Big Story

The MAHA movement’s wild week

The “Make America Healthy Again” movement flexed its muscle this week by successfully pushing a pro-pesticide provision out of the farm bill but lost a chance for higher influence when the Trump administration dropped one of its top influencers as a nominee.

Thursday marked a tumultuous day of highs and lows for MAHA supporters.

The day began with a major win for MAHA supporters when the House stripped an amendment from the farm bill that would have protected pesticide makers from legal blowback.

The provision would have helped Bayer avoid thousands of lawsuits over cancer and glyphosate—the same issue that the Supreme Court heard arguments about earlier in the week.

MAHA activists turned up the heat on lawmakers, and Republicans threatened to oppose the farm bill unless the provision was removed. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who led the GOP revolt with Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) said she would “slaughter” the farm bill unless her amendment got a floor vote.

Seventy-three Republicans backed Luna’s measure, while 142 GOP lawmakers rejected it.

But even as MAHA activists were taking a victory lap, President Trump announced that he was dropping Casey Means, a darling of the movement, as his pick for surgeon general. She was replaced by Fox News contributor and radiologist Nicole Saphier.

MAHA movement leaders had pushed hard for Means’s nomination, but she couldn’t overcome opposition from key lawmakers, especially about her stance on vaccines.

Trump choosing Saphier represents a shift towards more mainstream medical views. Saphier is a licensed physician, unlike Means. She has also previously been critical of some of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s actions, including how the updated, reduced childhood vaccine schedule was rolled out earlier this year.

Saphier’s past comments also show her to be much more pro-vaccine than Kennedy and his allies at HHS, even as she’s opposed the idea of mandates. Kennedy in a social media post called Saphier a “long-time warrior for the MAHA movement.”

While she may not have the same online influencer bonafides as Means, Saphier wrote the book on MAHA before MAHA existed: “Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis” was published in 2020.

Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter, we’re Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi — every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.

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