In early December, prominent voices in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement took an expected political step: The activists, many of whom are allies of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., publicly urged Donald Trump to fire Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
In a petition circulated online, MAHA proponents made a straightforward case: The EPA chief has prioritized corporate interests “over the well-being of American families and children.”
A month later, their case against Zeldin got even stronger. The New York Times reported:
For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution, using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules.
Not anymore. Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The Times’ report, based on EPA materials that have not been independently reviewed by MS NOW, added that the change represents “a seismic shift” that’s plainly at odds with the reason the EPA exists.
Zeldin slammed the newspaper’s report as “dishonest,” but the Natural Resources Defense Council’s John Walke, a clean air advocate and former EPA lawyer, shredded Zeldin’s response to the Times’ article.
The obvious significance to developments like these is the effect the administration’s environmental policies are likely to have, both on public health and the planet. But there’s a political dimension to this too: Team Trump purportedly wants to “make America healthy again,” and it wants to make things easier on polluters.
But it can’t do both. Indeed, these conflicts are becoming increasingly common. When RFK Jr. campaigned for the Republican ticket in 2024, for example, the conspiracy theorist delivered a promise to voters: If he joined Trump’s team, he’d “ban the worst agricultural chemicals.” A year later, the Trump administration is approving agricultural pesticides containing “forever chemicals” as an active ingredient, despite concerns raised by some scientists and environmental activists. Or put another way, the MAHA crowd is getting what it wants on vaccines, but little else.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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