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A growing rift has emerged within the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, with prominent supporters publicly criticizing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Trump administration over what they describe as broken promises on food safety, pesticides and environmental health.
A scorecard released Thursday by MAHA activists claims the Trump administration has failed to deliver on more than 85% of its commitments to the movement. The document covers food policy, agriculture and environmental health. Its creators include Dave Murphy, a former fundraiser for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, and Charles Eisenstein, who served as Kennedy’s chief speechwriter.
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NBC News first reported on the scorecard, which offers a detailed look at how MAHA activists view the administration ahead of the midterm elections. The document accuses the Trump administration of favoring the chemical industry, pointing to decisions to approve new pesticides and appoint industry lobbyists and executives to key roles.
Activists Say Promises Have Gone Unmet
Tiffany Cianci, a former Kennedy campaign adviser who helped compile the scorecard, said the frustration runs deep. “We’re asking the Trump administration to deliver on even the most basic promises they’ve made to the MAHA movement, and we’ve seen over and over again not just a lack of interest in doing so, but a blatant slap in the face,” she said.
The MAHA movement first took shape during Kennedy’s 2024 presidential bid. After Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump, the movement shifted its support to Trump. It brought together food safety advocates, environmentalists and vaccine skeptics under a shared goal of challenging large corporations linked to chronic disease.
However, many of those same advocates have since become Kennedy’s harshest critics. Covid vaccine skeptics, including Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, have criticized Kennedy and Trump for allowing mRNA vaccines to remain on the market. Food safety advocates argue Kennedy has not pressured companies hard enough to remove synthetic dyes and additives. Meanwhile, pesticide reduction advocates say Trump undermined their cause by issuing an executive order to increase the domestic supply of glyphosate, a widely used weed killer.
Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, described the damage to the coalition in stark terms. “What started out as a hairline crack in the coalition is now widened to be a gaping fissure,” he said.
White House Pushes Back on Criticism
The Trump administration rejected the criticism. White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said the administration “has already secured extensive victories for the MAHA Agenda, including overhauling the dietary guidelines for Americans, axing artificial ingredients in our food supply, and investing in regenerative farming.”
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, added that Kennedy “remains focused on delivering lasting reforms grounded in science, transparency, and accountability.” She said the administration “has moved at a historic pace to advance MAHA across the federal government” in just 20 months.
Cianci acknowledged that many of the administration’s decisions on environmental toxins and food additives fall outside Kennedy’s direct authority. Even so, she argued his time in the administration has done “obvious harm” to his reputation. She noted that Kennedy built his career suing the same pharmaceutical and pesticide companies the administration now works alongside. “To see him not speaking out on the issues that are so obviously against everything that was promised is very hard,” she said.
Movement’s Internal Divisions Run Deep
Kelly Ryerson, a prominent MAHA advocate known as “Glyphosate Girl,” helped develop the scorecard. She said she does not blame Kennedy as much as the rest of Trump’s Cabinet. “I know how deep the forces are in terms of corporate influence on regulators, and it’s something that he himself has criticized for years,” she said. Still, she added, “the actions of the administration have worked really in opposition to everything that we hoped and everything that Trump promised.”
Pamela Herd, a professor of social policy at the University of Michigan, said the MAHA movement was always at risk of internal conflict. She described it as an unusual coalition that includes health-conscious liberal parents, fringe doctors who falsely claim vaccines cause autism, and Trump supporters focused on removing corporate influence from government.
Despite those divisions, the movement’s core priorities have become clearer over time. A March poll from Politico found that removing ultra-processed foods from American diets and reducing exposure to PFAS, microplastics and pesticides ranked as top concerns among people who identify with MAHA. “What the MAHA movement has always been especially interested in is chemicals,” Lurie said.
Much of the scorecard focuses on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department, neither of which Kennedy oversees. It cites the EPA’s decision to weaken mercury emissions standards and roll back drinking water limits for certain PFAS chemicals as examples of broken promises. On the other hand, several promises rated as “partially kept” involve Kennedy’s own agencies. The Food and Drug Administration asked food companies to voluntarily phase out certain dyes and banned two others that saw limited use. The FDA also proposed a rule requiring manufacturers to notify the agency when they determine an additive is “generally recognized as safe.” However, that rule would not remove existing additives from food or stop manufacturers from adding new ones.
Lurie said Kennedy campaigned on fixing these issues but “never took into account the practical aspects on the ground: What do the regulations actually look like? What authority do these agencies actually have?”
The scorecard does not mention Kennedy’s January overhaul of the federal dietary guidelines, which he has frequently cited as a major achievement. It also does not address his vaccination policies, even though both Kennedy and Trump have moved to reduce the number of universally recommended childhood vaccines. Kennedy also dismissed the longtime members of a federal vaccine advisory committee last year, replacing them with vaccine skeptics. A federal judge temporarily blocked that change, and the matter remains in court. Herd noted that Kennedy’s influence on vaccine policy may be his most significant impact. “If you’re going to pick one thing that RFK was successful at, it’s very much how he has influenced government policy on vaccines,” she said.
Despite the mounting tensions, many MAHA supporters insist the movement should remain independent of any political party. Ryerson said she expects many MAHA voters to sit out the upcoming midterm elections. “The disappointments with Obama and Biden are similar to the disappointments with Trump,” she said. “The difference with this administration is that we are promised something very, very different in a very real way, so I think that that burn feels especially raw.”
An April poll from KFF, a nonprofit health think tank, found that about 41% of American adults support MAHA ideals. Most identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. However, the poll found that alignment with Kennedy or Trump personally was not a primary reason for supporting the movement.
