{"id":93740,"date":"2026-07-10T07:32:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/epas-maha-agenda-still-missing-eight-months-after-promise-activists-say\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T07:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:32:23","slug":"epas-maha-agenda-still-missing-eight-months-after-promise-activists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/epas-maha-agenda-still-missing-eight-months-after-promise-activists-say\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA’s MAHA Agenda Still Missing Eight Months After Promise, Activists Say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Back in December, after Make America Healthy Again activists drafted a petition calling for his removal, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin made a pledge: his agency would release a formal MAHA agenda outlining specific priorities, including protections from harmful chemicals and other public health concerns.<\/p>

Eight months have passed since that first promise, and despite repeated assurances that the document was being drafted, no such agenda has been released. When reporters asked for an update this week, an EPA spokesperson said MAHA is an ongoing effort \u2014 not a single report.<\/p>

That apparent reversal is the latest in a string of letdowns for supporters of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement. Many say they’ve lost confidence that the Trump administration will take meaningful action on pesticides, chemicals, or other issues they believe are driving America’s chronic disease crisis. The situation also highlights how the EPA has continued rolling back environmental regulations even as pressure mounts from a voting bloc that helped put President Donald Trump back in the White House.<\/p>

“I had really hoped that there would be specific steps that were taken through a MAHA agenda,” said activist Kelly Ryerson, who runs the social media account “Glyphosate Girl,” which focuses on nontoxic food systems. “We haven’t had any of the wins that we were requesting.”<\/p>

A broad and diverse group of MAHA supporters \u2014 whom Trump has credited with helping him reclaim the presidency \u2014 say they intend to vote based on issues rather than party in November’s congressional elections, adding political weight to their growing public clashes with the Republican administration.<\/p>

“People are done with the profits of corporations being prioritized over public health,” said Alexandra Mu\u00f1oz, a molecular toxicologist who works alongside activists on certain issues. “And I think that will have an important role in the midterms.”<\/p>

The EPA under Zeldin \u2014 which he frequently refers to as “Trump’s EPA” \u2014 has aggressively pursued deregulation. Earlier this year, Zeldin proposed overturning the longstanding finding that climate change poses a threat to human health. He moved to dismantle dozens of environmental rules in what he called “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” froze billions in clean energy funding, and disrupted agency research operations.<\/p>

The agency has also been working to ease restrictions on pollution from smokestacks, vehicle exhaust, and oil and gas producers during Trump’s second term.<\/p>

At the same time, Zeldin has pointed to what he calls multiple “MAHA wins” \u2014 though activists dispute many of them. As one example, he announced the agency plans to regulate certain chemicals known as phthalates for environmental and workplace risks, but the announcement did not address the thousands of consumer products that contain those chemicals.<\/p>

This week, the EPA walked back earlier statements that a MAHA report was in its “final stages,” telling the Associated Press via email that the agency’s actions should speak for themselves.<\/p>

“The notion that MAHA is a single document waiting to be unveiled fundamentally misrepresents how we operate,” an agency spokesperson said, adding that work on MAHA priorities is “active and expanding every day.”<\/p>

Ryerson and fellow MAHA activists say they have engaged directly with agency officials and occasionally made headway. Her network of farmers, for instance, worked with the administration on a recent executive order aimed at advancing regenerative agriculture. But she said the EPA then used that same order to justify new proposed uses for various herbicides \u2014 a move she described as “a slap in the face.”<\/p>

That same week, the Supreme Court handed MAHA supporters another setback, ruling in favor of pesticide manufacturer Bayer in a case involving its legal liability for alleged health harm caused by its Roundup weedkiller. The Trump administration had sided with the company.<\/p>

Environmental advocates say the rise of Kennedy and the MAHA movement has had a ripple effect across the administration, bringing greater public attention to pesticide concerns \u2014 and raising expectations for action.<\/p>

“If RFK and the MAHA movement hadn’t put that issue in the center of the public spotlight, no one would be scrutinizing this nearly as closely,” said Sarah Starman, a senior food and agriculture campaigner at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth.<\/p>

In a high-profile move seen partly as an outreach to MAHA supporters, Zeldin added microplastics and pharmaceuticals in April to a list of contaminants that could potentially be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Activists had spent months pushing the EPA to crack down on microplastics and other environmental contaminants.<\/p>

But in a reversal at the end of June, the EPA excluded microplastics and pharmaceuticals from a list of chemicals it plans to test for under a mandatory program designed to identify concerning substances in drinking water that may be harming public health.<\/p>

That reversal made the EPA’s earlier public health commitments “functionally toothless,” according to Betsy Southerland, a former senior official in the EPA’s water office.<\/p>

Zeldin posted on social media that “the technology to test and treat for microplastics in drinking water is still in development.” The EPA stated in a Federal Register notice that it was “not feasible to develop a drinking water analytical method within the statutory timeframe.”<\/p>

Southerland called the situation a “classic Zeldin bait-and-switch,” saying that after making “a big splash in the press” on microplastics, “EPA has quietly stalled that momentum.”<\/p>

A White House Make America Healthy Again Report, released a few months into Trump’s second term, identified long-term exposure to environmental chemicals \u2014 including those commonly found in plastics \u2014 as a leading contributor to chronic disease in children.<\/p>

Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network \u2014 a group made up of former EPA employees and political appointees critical of the Trump administration \u2014 said Zeldin “pays lip service to MAHA, but sadly he is actually making Americans less safe from toxic chemicals.”<\/p>

While MAHA advocates have tried to influence the EPA, industry lobbyists have also made significant inroads at the agency.<\/p>

Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the soybean industry, now heads pesticide policy at the EPA. The agency recently approved continued use of dicamba, a weedkiller that has been linked to an increased risk of certain cancers.<\/p>

Zen Honeycutt, a MAHA activist and founding executive director of Moms Across America, said the decision is “what happens when the EPA allows itself to be pressured by corporations and by business.”<\/p>

The EPA also employs other former industry figures. Nancy Beck, previously an executive at the chemical lobbying group the American Chemistry Council, holds a top position in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Lynn Dekleva, another former executive from the same council, serves as Beck’s deputy.<\/p>

The EPA said Kunkler and other political appointees have consulted with agency ethics officials to address any potential conflicts of interest. A spokesperson said the MAHA movement has “driven this agency’s work since President Trump’s first day in office,” pointing to initiatives including $945 million in grants to help states and communities reduce PFAS \u2014 so-called “forever chemicals” \u2014 in drinking water, and identifying 30 drinking water contaminants proposed for nationwide monitoring.<\/p>

But for Ryerson and others, the absence of a promised MAHA agenda looks like a deliberate strategy to sidestep accountability.<\/p>

“It absolves them of any failures, especially when it comes to midterms,” Ryerson said. “They won’t have to point to some list that they haven’t been able to achieve really anything on.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator pledged last December to release a formal Make America Healthy Again agenda, but eight months later, no such document exists. Activists who supported President Trump say they’ve grown frustrated with what they see as broken promises on pesticides, chemicals, and public health protections. The EPA now says MAHA is an ongoing effort rather than a single report, a shift that critics call an attempt to avoid accountability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-1783683143261.jpg?fit=1000%2C666&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbtNqq-onW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":25904,"url":"https:\/\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/health-chief-kennedy-supports-pesticide-production-despite-past-opposition\/","url_meta":{"origin":93740,"position":0},"title":"Health Chief Kennedy Supports Pesticide Production Despite Past Opposition","author":"Admin","date":"February 23, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert F. 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