ELC 2025: The Pessimism of MAHA by Margot J. Pollans

There is an indelible appeal to opting out.  In every generation since industrialization, pockets of back-to-the-landers, homesteaders, and commune members have rejected some aspects of modern technology, mass production, and the complexity of modern life. Participants have described a variety of motivations, including a desire to “live close to the land and simplify [] lives” (Salstrom; Gould) or to “heal[] the physical and mental maladies caused by congestion, pollution, and the stresses of everyday urban life” (Edgington). For some homesteaders and some back to the land communities, religion provides the core moral framework. In others, it is environmentalism, itself a religion of sorts. For some, red sky thinking is a driver—society is beyond repair, the only solution is to opt out. The draws of retreat are obvious: simplicity, transparency, belonging.  So are the drawbacks: arduous physical labor, isolation, vulnerability. 

Homesteading is currently on the rise in the U.S. It is part of a broader cultural moment emphasizing traditional gender roles, DIY living, fear of modern science and technology, and personal responsibility. These values have also found a home in a much more mainstream movement: “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA), which coalesced around Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign. Consisting of a loose coalition of anti-vaxxers, homesteaders, wellness gurus, and conservative moms, MAHA draws on two key “opting out” themes. First, skepticism about modern technology (and medicine in particular) drives many proponents. Second, many MAHA advocates emphasize self-reliance and personal responsibility (Armour). Tying declining children’s health to the industrialized food system, chronic toxic exposure, increased use of technology, and overprescription of medication (including vaccines), the May 2025 MAHA report calls for a “coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative that embeds real-world randomized trials—covering integrated interventions in movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing.” The message is clear. To be healthy, people must opt out of the modern industrialized food and health care systems. 

As a long-time critic of the modern food system, there is, at first glance, a lot for me to like in MAHA. The May 2025 report and the follow up August 2025 strategy document call attention to a number of concerns that I and others have been writing about for years: the inability of the modern environmental apparatus to address cumulative toxic exposures, the failure of the FDA’s food additives regime, and corporate capture of nutrition science and regulation, among other things.

Yet, MAHA terrifies me. Why? 

There are the obvious concerns: The conspiracy theories dressed up as science.  The science rejected as a conspiracy.  The ableism. The mischaracterization of statistics to exaggerate the plight of chronically ill children (often by ignoring the role of improved disease detection and monitoring). The emphasis on the risks of toxic chemical exposure at the same time that other branches of the Trump Regime are gutting environmental regulation. But there are two additional structural features of the movement that I find particularly troubling.

First, MAHA is a marketing vehicle, embracing a framework in which the “good life” is available for purchase only for those with sufficient time and money. Many of its proponents are selling something: a supplement, a home in an intentional community, diet and lifestyle advice. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. even sought to trademark the term MAHA in December 2024. (The application is still pending, and RFK Jr. has since transferred it to Del Bigtree). In other words, MAHA is not really about opting out of an industrialization health care and food system. It is instead about buying in. The movement is fundamentally consumerist, operating within, instead of rejecting the economic structures of modern life. The “good life” is expensive and exclusive. It is a profit opportunity. 

The U.S. health system is already highly dichotomized along racial and socioeconomic lines. Claiming to identify the “root causes” of chronic disease and to “spur a conversation about how we can build a world – together – where . . . disease is prevented and reversed, not just ‘managed,’” the MAHA Report barely acknowledges this reality. By grounding health in individual responsibility, particularly in ways that are time consuming and expensive, MAHA seems poised to exaggerate these existing disparities.

Second, MAHA purports to offer a refreshing liberation from the status quo broken health care system (and don’t get me wrong, our current health care system is atrocious in so many ways). MAHA is dangerous not because it challenges the status quo, but because, having assumed control of the federal public health apparatus, it seeks to force everyone to out of the existing health care system.  The September 2025 strategy report describes a variety of policies—making vaccines and certain medications harder to get, limiting fluoride in drinking water, etc.—that take fringe ideas about health and make them national policy. The strategy document also emphasizes the need to shift research dollars from things that seem promising (mRNA vaccines) into investigation of fringe health ideas (electromagnetic radiation and seed oils). As the federal government winds down decades of environmental and public health law in the name of economic growth, MAHA withdraws federal support for the medical technologies that have kept so many people safe—from Covid 19, from measles, from cavities. In other words, just as our environments are poised to become even more dangerous, MAHA seeks to dismantle the frameworks that have, for decades, helped people face danger.

This is no longer about a small group of individuals opting out to seek simplicity. Or even fringe conspiracy theorists deciding not to hold cell phones to their ears. This is the U.S. national health apparatus forcing these views on the rest of us.  And it does so in the name of freedom. As the “MAHA moms” explain, “parents must have the right to make health decisions for their children—not governments or corporations” (nevermind that many of the so-called MAHA moms and RFK Jr. himself have spoken up in favor of state bans of gender affirming care to minors). But getting to choose if my children will be vaccinated or not does not make me feel more free. It feels overwhelming. I have no medical training; I am not versed in reading and assessing the quality of scientific journals; and I have four children and a full-time job. I am fortunate that none of my children are immunocompromised and they are all old enough to be fully vaccinated, so I do not face the horrific decision of isolating them from society because so many communities no longer have herd immunity. A primary purpose of investing in public health expertise and infrastructure is to free people from these kinds of burdens. That is the world I want to opt into. As one legal scholar pointed out, MAHA’s populism is not truly libertarian; instead it seeks to shift power from one set of elites (the older public health infrastructure) to another (the religious right). And I suspect that at least some of the architects of this movement are counting on the fact that many people will be too distracted by their new part time jobs as health care researchers to notice.

Margot J. Pollans is the Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.