The Make America Healthy Again movement helped carry Donald Trump back to the White House. Now some of its most devoted followers believe he has let them down — and one of the big flashpoints is a weed killer.

Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order prioritizing the U.S. production of glyphosate, the active chemical in Roundup, which has been linked to cancer. He framed the decision as a way to protect the nation’s food supply. To MAHA, it read as a giveaway to the chemical industry and a reversal of the campaign trail promises that had drawn the movement to him.

That sense of betrayal now has a venue. The Supreme Court is weighing Monsanto v. Durnell, a case that will decide whether a federal pesticide-labeling law shields Roundup’s maker — Monsanto, now owned by Bayer — from state lawsuits claiming that the product should have carried a cancer warning. The Trump administration joined the case in support of the company. 

“I was floored that this administration of all administrations would just — given what Trump was saying on the campaign trail — would go to bat to take away our rights to sue,” said Kelly Ryerson, a MAHA activist known online as the “Glyphosate Girl.” “It’s like a direct stab at our freedoms and freedom for recourse and freedom to health.”

The Trump administration’s decision to back Monsanto in front of the high court is “completely contradictory to the goals of MAHA and to the idea of protecting the health of the American people,” said Alexandra Muñoz, a toxicologist who works with many people in the MAHA movement. A ruling for the company, she argued, would strip accountability from a category of chemicals that includes known carcinogens and could clear the way for more hazardous pesticides to reach the market.

But there’s also a potential political cost. Ryerson says this decision will have an impact on how MAHA supporters will vote this year — or if they will even vote at all. 

“If we lose our ability to sue pesticide manufacturers, I wouldn’t say people are going to go and vote for Democrats,” Ryerson told MS NOW. “They’re not going to vote; they’re going to be done with voting.”

Others in the movement see the potential for a Supreme Court ruling to push so-called MAHA moms to get involved in the midterms. 

“In 2026 our children have more of a chance of getting sick than they do of being healthy, and we are pissed all the way off,” said Hannah Dunning, an independent voter and follower of MAHA known as the “Clean Clothing Chick.”“If they want to be disrespectful to the point where they’re going to side with Big Chemical in the Supreme Court, watch out for angry moms, because we’re here; we’re ready.”

In response to a request for comment, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told MS NOW that the president remains “committed to the MAHA agenda with more announcements on sustainable agriculture practices and other policies in store to build on MAHA victories from the past year.” 

Trump’s executive order on glyphosate production “is not an endorsement of any product or practice,” Desai said, but instead is a move to strengthen national security and end U.S. reliance on foreign supply chains — including for phosphorus, which is used in some military equipment. “This is America First in action,” he said.

The administration has reason to take the discontent seriously. MAHA is a political force with money and reach.

A KFF poll released in May found that 41% of American adults say they support the MAHA movement. Those respondents in the poll skew Republican, but their concerns about food and vaccine safety and corporate influence are resonating well beyond the base.

“MAHA speaks to something millions of Americans have felt for years,” said Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the agenda of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “At its core, MAHA is simply a winning vote for every parent who wants their children to thrive.”

The movement has already redrawn partisan allegiances.

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“Before, I was aligned with the Democrats, I always voted Democratic,” said Bernadine Francis, a 66-year-old resident of Washington, D.C. She cites the push for Covid-19 vaccine requirements as a catalyst in changing her political affiliation. Much of her family followed. “I always quote one statement from RFK,” she said. “People have a lot of goals in life that they want to accomplish, but if you’re sick, you only have one goal, and that goal is to get better.”

That search is what led Kerry Giles to the MAHA movement. She has two children with autoimmune conditions and another with asthma, and she began following MAHA when she felt she needed more answers to the causes of their health issues. 

“We are a developed country, and we have all these resources. So why are we decreasing our health capacity, our lifespan?” Giles told MS NOW. “That’s why I became involved in the MAHA movement — to try to find out why this is happening, how I can help my children to live a healthier, longer life, how I can live a healthier, longer life myself.”

But the very thing that draws people to MAHA — the conviction that health is the most personal of concerns, and that you should trust your own judgment over that of authority figures — is what makes the movement so hard to pin down politically. 

And for the Trump administration, that could spell trouble come November.

“I am deeply disgusted and disappointed with rulings like rolling PFAS limits back in our water supply, or in granting an executive order to pesticide and chemical companies. Are you kidding me?” Dunning said. “Even the ‘Great American Cotton Plan’ that RFK Jr. just endorsed is just a calling card for Big Chemicals to be able to continue on with their BS.”

That Kennedy himself has become a target of that frustration is the sharpest turn of all. The HHS secretary, once a fierce critic of chemical herbicides, backed Trump’s order on glyphosate, writing on X that “unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.” 

MAHA followers have not abandoned him, understanding the constraints of his role in the Trump administration, but the fights playing out in Washington and at the court are pushing them to question every politician, Kennedy included.

“I don’t think you should blindly trust RFK,” said Lexi Vrachalus, a 20-year-old MAHA influencer known for creating the hashtag #mahagirls. “You should always take the information you hear and apply it to yourself and see how it will benefit you or potentially cause harm to you.”

What unites them in the end is less a party than a demand to set their own course.

“MAHA represents more freedom to choose, right? You decide your future, you plot your course,” says Juleen Jackson, a MAHA supporter and mother of five from Chevy Chase, Maryland. “I’m not just going to rely on, you know, some executive director of something telling me what’s best for my child. We just have access to way too much information nowadays to turn a blind eye.”

Arielle Hixson

Arielle Hixson is an Emmy-nominated reporter for MS NOW.