Trump administration releases long awaited MAHA roadmap

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Trump administration releases long awaited MAHA roadmap

The new strategy stops short of surprise regulations and leaves pesticides alone.

The Trump administration’s highly anticipated policy strategy to improve children’s health outcomes targets ultra-processed food, vaccine use and exposure to chemicals but doesn’t go as far as some industry groups feared in proposing new regulations.

The Make America Healthy Again Commission report, released Tuesday, largely mirrors the draft plan officials shared with industry representatives last month.

maha-strategy-report.pdf

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It stops short of restrictions on pesticide use, focusing instead on changes like reforming FDA regulatory pathways, investigating food ingredients, modernizing American vaccines and improving the childhood vaccine schedule. In some areas, it advances long-held industry priorities that public health advocates say could increase the very health risks that have fueled the MAHA movement, such as accelerating reviews of new chemicals.

The final strategy represents a significant win for the farm industry, which successfully lobbied the White House and President Donald Trump to temper Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal to crack down on common agriculture production practices. The document bookends an error-ridden May report that laid out what the Trump administration sees as the root causes of children’s growing rates of chronic disease.

“This strategy represents the most sweeping reform agenda in modern history — realigning our food and health systems, driving education, and unleashing science to protect America’s children and families,” Kennedy, who chairs the MAHA Commission, said in a statement Tuesday. “We are ending the corporate capture of public health, restoring transparency, and putting gold-standard science — not special interests — at the center of every decision.”

Some of Kennedy’s MAHA allies, who’ve pushed for bans on pesticide and vaccine use, immediately disparaged the report as being soft on industry.

“This report is a major missed opportunity for the Trump administration and a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House and intentionally short-circuiting Trump’s campaign promise to the millions of MAHA voters who helped him return to power,” said David Murphy, a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and an advocate for stricter pesticide regulation.

While it doesn’t propose new pesticide regulations, Kennedy’s strategy calls for the federal government to research consumers’ chemical exposure levels and promote precision technology with the goal of reducing use of herbicides.

But it also leans into several priorities for the chemical and pesticide industries, from accelerating EPA reviews of new pesticides so they can be brought to market more quickly to increasing the use of non-animal testing to evaluate chemicals’ risks. Already, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is transferring many of the agency’s independent scientists to the office tasked with swiftly reviewing new products.

Documents obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News reveal that the White House stacked its internal team responsible for helping craft the report with several former industry lobbyists, including one that’s now the political official overseeing EPA’s chemicals office.

On the food side, the outline lists steps to ramp up nutrition research and calls for a new Administration for Healthy America in HHS. It also includes proposals that Kennedy has previously announced like updating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, defining ultra-processed foods, reforming the FDA’s Generally Recognized as Safe designation and pressing companies to drop artificial food dyes.

Though the report has few surprises for the food industry, its focus on labeling and additives represents a marked turn from previous administrations that supported a more incremental approach. If the Trump administration follows through with stricter rules, that will be a major headache for food companies, which are already facing headwinds from inflation, weight loss drugs and changing consumer preferences.

Kennedy’s long-held criticism of immunization safety is also reflected in the report, which says the White House Domestic Policy Council and HHS will create a framework to ensure “America has the best childhood vaccine schedule,” that vaccines are modernized “with transparent, gold-standard science” and that vaccine injuries are addressed. The framework calls for correcting conflicts of interests and misaligned incentives and ensuring scientific and medical freedom.

The Trump administration additionally plans to increase oversight of drug advertising to consumers, with a focus on harmful practices stemming from online influencers and telehealth companies, the report says.

The National Institutes of Health will play a key role in the MAHA team’s chronic disease strategy and will develop a real-world data platform that will help study the causes of autism — with the first studies expected this month, Kennedy has promised.

The report also reups Kennedy’s battle against fluoride, which he believes shouldn’t be added to drinking water, by directing the CDC to update its recommendations and appears to nod at a years-long campaign by abortion opponents to cut off access to pills used in pregnancy terminations because of their alleged impact on water pollution.

The battle over Kennedy’s health agenda — and rifts over pesticides and vaccines in particular — could have long-term implications for Trump’s coalition. Farm-state Republican lawmakers have rushed to defend U.S. producers and pesticide companies worried about how MAHA will impact their business even as top Kennedy advisers like Calley Means have reminded frustrated MAHA supporters that sweeping change takes time.

“The May MAHA assessment described a hellscape of environmental toxins that were threatening the very existence of humanity. The September MAHA recommendations not only fail to address the harms posed by toxic chemicals in our food and water and air, but instead defend the current pesticide review system and suggest the real problem is we’re not approving new pesticides fast enough,” said Scott Faber, head of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group. “Up is down. Day is night.”

Erin Schumaker, Alice Miranda Ollstein, Sophie Gardner and Ruth Reader contributed reporting.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/0 ... e-00552849