The MAHA Promises Scorecard

Nancy Beck, a former lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council, was brought back to the EPA. She had also worked for the agency during Trump’s first term, during which she rewrote safety rules to cater to the chemical industry, blocked bans on dangerous chemicals like asbestos and methylene chloride and weakened regulations on PFAS “forever chemicals.” A House committee called her conduct during Trump’s first term “very disturbing.”

Lynn Ann Dekleva, a career chemical industry insider who formerly worked for Dow-Dupont for thirty years and lobbied for the American Chemistry Council, was appointed to oversee chemical regulation at the EPA. In the past she had pushed for weaker regulations of cancer-linked formaldehyde.

The EPA skirted ethics standards to give Kyle Kunkler, a former Big Ag lobbyist with the American Soybean Association, a top post overseeing pesticide regulations. Kunkler had previously lobbied for more uses of dangerous pesticides like dicamba. One government ethics expert noted of Kunkler’s appointment, “It’s sort of like hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.”

A Public Citizen and Revolving Door Project analysis revealed that 68% of nominees to the EPA, Department of Energy (DOE), and Department of the Interior (DOI) in Trump’s first nine months in office had documented ties to the industries they were appointed to regulate. The administration didn’t drain the swamp – it gave the swamp regulatory authority.

Doug Troutman was a chemical industry lobbyist who pushed for weaker safeguards from toxic chemicals before being appointed to oversee chemical safety and regulation at the EPA.

An explosive investigation from U.S. Right to Know found that 22 key administration officials had ties to pesticide giant Bayer’s lobbying or legal network. Bayer and its lobbyists have access to people in power at the White House, USDA, EPA, and even those in high level positions closest to Trump.

The MAHA Commission, created by President Trump and chaired by Secretary Kennedy, released a sweeping assessment which highlighted the health risks of pesticides to children, naming atrazine and glyphosate as pesticides of concern. However, after lobbying by the pesticide industry, the MAHA strategy released by the Commission four months later contained ZERO meaningful action on pesticides and clearly put industry interests ahead of human health. All mentions of atrazine and glyphosate had been dropped.

Since the 1990s, the USDA has required farmers to keep basic records of their applications of certain hazardous pesticides, such as paraquat, atrazine, dicamba, and more. But Trump’s USDA ended that requirement, leaving the government and the American public in the dark about when, where, and how much of these toxic chemicals are being used.

In a Tweet, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin falsely claimed the EPA was advancing “MAHA progress” by taking new action on the hazardous pesticide paraquat. In truth, the EPA had done nothing new to protect people from this chemical linked to Parkinson’s disease.

Despite opposition from family farmers and MAHA moms, the EPA approved the use of dicamba, a dangerous pesticide linked to crop damage and cancer. Federal courts have twice held its prior approvals unlawful, but the EPA – staffed with former pro-pesticide lobbyists – fought to put dangerous dicamba back on the market.

Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to issue an Executive Order aimed at ramping up the domestic production of cancer-linked glyphosate. The Executive Order also aimed to give glyphosate manufacturers – like Bayer-Monsanto – immunity from lawsuits. Kennedy issued a supportive statement calling it an “America First” move, despite the decades he spent warning people about the harms of glyphosate.

Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Monsanto v. Durnell. In the brief, the DOJ sided with chemical giant Bayer-Monsanto over farmers, gardeners, and other cancer victims, backing Bayer-Monsanto's push for immunity from lawsuits over the health harms of Roundup and other toxic products.

In November 2025, the EPA approved two new PFAS-based pesticides for use on food crops like tomatoes, peas, and lettuce as well as on lawns and golf courses; in July 2026, the agency approved three more PFAS pesticides for use on crops like wheat and citrus. PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” can linger in our bodies and our environment for years, and they are linked to cancer, reproductive toxicity, and more serious health harms. They are currently found in the bloodstreams of 98% of Americans. Approving five new PFAS pesticides for food crops directly contradicts any credible claim to protect people from pesticide harms.

The EPA cancelled $1.7 billion in grants earmarked for clean air and clean water, slashing funding for an issue that President Trump and Administrator Zeldin promised the public they would address.

The EPA announced plans to weaken or roll back 31 different regulations that protect people from toxic pollution. Experts found that this plan was likely to undermine health and increase the exposure of everyday Americans to carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde.

The EPA took down a public database that Americans could use to find information about toxic chemical spills in their area. Without this database, it’s harder for people to find out about disasters and how to protect themselves and their families.

Secretary Kennedy directed the CDC to stop recommending the addition of fluoride to local water systems. This guidance was delivered two months later than the promised January 20th deadline and was legally non-binding. In the same week, the CDC's 20-person Division of Oral Health was eliminated – removing the infrastructure that would have managed any community transition away from fluoride. In the same month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would accelerate its review of the health effects of fluoride in drinking water.

The EPA rolled back drinking water standards for four types of PFAS “forever chemicals.” This happened right as EPA's own testing data revealed that 176 million Americans drink PFAS-contaminated water. PFAS are linked to cancer, reproductive toxicity, and more serious health harms.

The administration gutted the Office of Research and Development at the EPA, laying off hundreds of scientists who provided critical expertise about how to protect human health from toxic chemicals. Without that office, the government and everyday Americans are left much more in the dark about which chemicals are harmful and how to avoid exposure.

The EPA cut $15 million in funding for research into PFAS “forever chemicals” that are tied to cancer and birth defects, undermining Administrator Zeldin’s claim that PFAS was an important issue that the EPA would tackle.

The EPA closed a one-of-a-kind research lab dedicated to understanding how air pollution harms human health and contributes to chronic disease. This happened in spite of the fact that the MAHA Strategy report from the MAHA Commission promised that the EPA and NIH would “study air quality impacts on children’s health and utilize existing research programs to improve data collection and analysis.”

The EPA conducted a safety assessment of phthalates, a toxic chemical that leaches into food from plastic. But the assessment was based on very outdated science and ignored over 1,000 studies on the health harms of phthalates, including studies showing links to infertility. So much for Administrator Zeldin’s promise that the EPA would uphold “gold-standard science” under his leadership.

The EPA rolled back the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule, which protected people from mercury pollution. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can cause brain damage, particularly in vulnerable children.

Trump announced that he would exempt 20 polluting facilities from a rule meant to curb chemical exposure and prevent cancer in nearby communities.

For months, the EPA Administrator Zeldin promised to release a “MAHA Agenda” for his agency. He even met with MAHA leaders to talk about the agenda, and a group of over 30 MAHA organizations sent him a letter with recommendations about what to include. Then he stunned and infuriated MAHA by announcing that the agenda had been dropped.

In April 2026, the EPA announced that they were proposing to add microplastics to a list of priority pollutants for the agency to tackle. Microplastics, now found in human brains, organs, and bloodstreams, are a key MAHA concern. Then, mere months later, the EPA left microplastics off the list of chemicals that the agency will monitor in drinking water – angering members of the public and pleasing the plastics industry.

FDA cut 3,500 staff, or nearly 20% of the agency’s total workforce, within months of Trump taking office. These devastating cuts make it structurally impossible for the agency to expand food chemical oversight or food safety in the ways that Secretary Kennedy promised. These cuts included, for example, 89 staff from the Human Food Program who had specific expertise in nutrition, infant formula, and food and chemical safety.

The USDA eliminated the $660 million Local Food For Schools program and cancelled the 2025 Patrick Leahy Farm-to-School Grants program, making it harder for schools to put healthy food sourced from local farms on kids’ plates. While Secretary Rollins eventually reinstated and provided a record $20 million in Farm to School Grants in FY26, this investment is dwarfed by the $660 million Local Food for Schools Program that she cancelled in March 2025.

The FDA formally banned two dyes (Citrus Red 2 and Orange B) – but they were both already virtually abandoned by industry. For six other synthetic food dyes that are widely used, the FDA asked food companies to agree to voluntarily phase them out by the end of 2026. Kennedy admitted: "We don't have an agreement, we have an understanding." FDA has the authority to ban the dyes outright – but chose not to use it. The dyes remain widely used in children’s food such as cereals a year later.

Trump’s budget for 2026 proposed reducing monthly fruit and vegetable benefits for families in need by as much as 75%. The program he wants to slash – WIC – serves pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children, and is proven to lead to better nutrition and child health outcomes.

USDA permanently terminated the Household Food Security Report, which it had been releasing for over thirty years. The decision eliminates one of the only federal measurements of whether American families have access to adequate meals and nutrition.

Despite the fact that Congress rejected his proposed cuts last year, Trump again proposed reducing monthly fruit and vegetable benefits for families in need by as much as 75%. Cutting programs that are proven to get healthy food on families’ tables is the opposite of protecting health.

In March 2025 Kennedy directed the FDA to "explore rule-making strategies" to close the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) loophole – a loophole that allows new food additives to completely bypass the FDA safety review process. In August 2026, the FDA proposed a new rule requiring companies to notify the FDA when it concludes that a substance or use in one of their products is GRAS. While this rule will bring much-needed transparency to a system that has allowed companies to introduce new additives without even informing the agency, it does not do anything to keep unsafe additives out of the food supply. Companies would still largely be responsible for determining that their own ingredients are safe. Stronger FDA oversight and safety review is still needed to meaningfully protect consumers.

In an exciting move this August, USDA announced the Harvest to Hallways program, aimed at connecting local farms to schools, investing in school kitchen infrastructure, and making school meals healthier. The resources for this program, however, are small. For example, the $25 million investment in farm-to-school grants is dwarfed by the $660 million cut from farm-to-school programs last year; the $50 million allocated to scratch-cooking infrastructure is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $5 billion needed to give all schools scratch cooking capacity in California alone. Nor has USDA reformed its own procurement program. Instead of mostly subsidizing fresh, healthy, and minimally processed foods, USDA continues to heavily subsidize commodity meat and dairy products that are routinely diverted to processors like Tyson and JBS and transformed into heavily processed school food products.

When USDA eliminated more than $1 billion in Local Food For Schools and Local Food Purchase Assistance funding, that didn’t only make it harder for schools and food banks to provide healthy food for students and families – it also destroyed regional food systems and took away an important market opportunity for small farmers and ranchers.

Trump unleashed sweeping tariffs that he promised would benefit the economy. For farmers, however, these tariffs caused devastating price hikes for key farm inputs. One analysis found that the costs borne by farmers far exceeded any revenue generated by the tariffs. A farmer who says Trump’s tariffs likely caused his farm to lose 30% of its profits on some crops commented, “We’ve been told a lot of promises, but the promises haven’t been delivered on.”

USDA cancelled a staggering $1 BILLION of funding that would have gone to farmers to help them build soil health and terminated a $3 billion initiative targeted for conservation projects and supporting farmers to implement regenerative practices, undermining promises made to transition the country to regenerative farming.

Despite promises to support family farmers, the USDA closed the Regional Food Business Centers, which helped small farmers, ranchers, and food businesses in rural America get support with market infrastructure and business development.

Organic food is produced without 900 pesticides otherwise allowed in agriculture and is also free of artificial dyes, antibiotics, and growth hormones. Every family deserves clean, safe organic food for their families. Yet the USDA reduced the National Organic Program's workforce by roughly one-third, significantly weakening the agency responsible for supporting organic farmers and protecting the integrity of the USDA Organic label. This could make it harder for small and independent organic farmers to compete in the market.

USDA announced $700 million directed toward existing conservation programs for regenerative practices in December 2025. Critics immediately noted the administration had cut billions in similarly-allocated conservation funding earlier that same year – meaning the "new" investment largely cancelled out the damage already done. Representative Chellie Pingree commented that the USDA initiative was "just moving the money around but not making a huge commitment." Then in August 2026, Senate Republicans – backed by the Farm Bureau and Big Ag – advanced a Farm Bill that didn't strengthen the pilot. It gutted it. The bill stripped whole-farm conservation planning from the pilot's design, restricted USDA's ability to fund soil-health testing and measure outcomes, and limited USDA's flexibility to prioritize genuine regenerative combinations of practices. At the same time, it cut more than $2 billion from EQIP and CSP – the very conservation programs farmers depend on to implement regenerative practices on the ground. The White House – which ordered USDA to maximize the pilot – said nothing. The Senate Farm Bill embraces "regenerative agriculture" in name while stripping away everything that makes it regenerative in practice. This promise is broken.

Note: Previously partially kept.

In 2025, USDA farmer-serving agencies lost thousands of frontline staff through buyouts, firings, and other workforce reductions. Forty-two Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices ended 2025 with zero county staff. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost 23% of its staff in 2025 and 141 counties lost all NRCS staff entirely. These employees provide farmers with the financial, technical, and on-the-ground assistance that is critical for implementing conservation and regenerative farming practices. These staffing cuts undermine USDA's own stated goal of expanding regenerative agriculture since there is realistically no way to transition to a healthier, more regenerative food system without this support for farmers.

USDA invested $560 million in two initiatives to strengthen independent and regional beef processing, which could help reduce market concentration, improve supply chain resilience, and create more opportunities for independent ranchers. These initiatives are narrowly focused on the beef sector and do not represent a broader investment in local and regional food processing infrastructure across fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other healthy foods. And while USDA has invested in independent beef processing, the administration has simultaneously undermined and angered independent ranchers with policies to increase beef imports, including from Argentina. Expanded imports could undermine domestic ranchers already competing in a highly concentrated marketplace.