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Published in The 19th

Long before entering politics, Rep. Chellie Pingree was a self-described hippie, a back-to-the-lander and an organic farmer.

In the 1970s, after attending college in Maine, she saw an opportunity to live a more sustainable life there. She decided to stay, and moved to an island off the coast where she and her husband started a small farm and sold their produce at a local market. 

Pingree’s passion for farming influenced her legislative work at the state and federal level. Representing Maine’s 1st District in Congress since 2009, the 70-year-old Democrat has focused on bolstering organic food production, creating better access to healthy foods for kids and fighting pesticides.

If her priorities sound familiar, it may be because much of her life’s work on these issues aligns neatly with certain facets of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which is led by current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. but gained momentum through the support of moms on social media. 

But while the Democratic lawmaker is far from a supporter of Kennedy, she saw early into the second Trump administration the potential of working with MAHA activists. “It’s kind of a no-brainer in many ways,” she said. “We have a lot in common.” And as MAHA moms, in particular, are conflicted about some of Kennedy and President Donald’s Trump’s recent decisions, it’s an even better opportunity to find common ground. 

Most sustainable agriculture-related issues are populist and bipartisan at their core, she said, adding: “I really don’t think that these are necessarily left or right. I think the questions around toxins in our food and food is medicine, and the opposition to Big Ag and big chemical companies is very universal. This just really broadens the coalition of people.”

Pingree had also seen how Kennedy’s message resonated with farmers in her district. When he visited her state as a presidential hopeful, “A lot of people went to hear him, and it was partly because of his interest in alternative medicine and healthy food,” she said.  

So, after Trump’s return to office, she started reaching out to members of the movement: people like Kelly Ryerson, better known by her social media handle, The Glyphosate Girl, and Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, a grassroots group focused on healthy foods. Both are big supporters of Kennedy’s role at HHS and the MAHA agenda he’s pushed there.  

But over the past few months, they’ve also expressed disappointment about Kennedy’s shifting stance on pesticide use. While he has championed some of the issues that animate MAHA, including his decisions around vaccine recommendations and his fight against food dyes and ultra-processed foods, Kennedy has distanced himself from his position on glyphosate — the same herbicide he fought against as an environmental lawyer. 

In late February, when Trump issued an executive order to expand domestic production of glyphosate, which is found in the week killer Roundup, and that potentially shield pesticides companies from lawsuits, Kennedy announced his support, stating the “order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply.” 

Though most MAHA activists still view Kennedy favorably, the executive order has exposed a widening rift for some in the movement. “Unfortunately, Trump’s action to issue this executive order on glyphosate broke a lot of that trust,” Honeycutt said. “It may be permanently broken.”

But where MAHA and the current administration don’t see eye to eye they’ve found an ally in Pingree. In late December, she worked with MAHA to strip a pesticides rider in a spending bill that would have shielded companies like Bayer, which produces Roundup, from health-related lawsuits and stopped states and localities from being able to regulate pesticides. 

Ryerson said Pingree has been a key partner over the past few months and applauds the work she did to remove the language from the spending bill. 

“We’re finding our friends, and it’s like, can we get even more? I don’t care even which side they’re from,” she said. “Can we get even more on board to just prioritizing this issue?”

And Honeycutt said that on one of her recent visits to Capitol Hill, she was impressed that Pingree met with them in person. Every other lawmaker sent a staff member to hear her concerns. 

“We loved learning that she is an organic farmer in Maine, and has been for quite some time, and is a huge supporter of organic farming,” she said. “So we had a lot of things in common to talk about.”

For Pingree the alliance has been mutually beneficial. 

“Frequently, I would be kind of a lone voice in fighting to take that out, but we were able to remove that language from the bill just before it passed at the end of the year,” she said. “And a lot of that was due to the help of the MAHA moms.” 

Recently, the Democratic lawmaker introduced an amendment to strip similar language from this year’s farm bill, which the House Agriculture Committee advanced out of committee last week. While her efforts ultimately failed, she plans to take up other opportunities to continue the fight when it goes to a floor vote in the House. And a few weeks ago, she and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced the bipartisan No Immunity for Glyphosate Act, which aims to undo Trump’s executive order. 

All of this work has been bolstered by MAHA advocates who have a powerful platform to keep pressure on GOP leaders. She says they’ve helped raise the profile of wonky issues like pesticide regulations and the dangers of PFAS chemicals, better known as forever chemicals.  They are able to reach everyday moms who might not know much about environmental policy but care about the foods their kids are eating. 

The veteran lawmaker has watched the movement amplify the reach of its message on TikTok and Instagram. “They are reaching many more people than maybe your average organic farming blog or environmental group.”

As a result, Pingree said she’s also started to post on social media more, sharing reels on Instagram, for example, to gain visibility among potential supporters. 

For environmental groups, the MAHA movement has also helped make some of these issues relevant to Republicans who need to keep their constituents happy ahead of midterms, said J.W. Glass, an Environmental Protection Agency policy analyst at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.

“Now that the dialogue is wider and bipartisan there is lots of pressure on the Republicans,” he said. “There is more of a world where Republicans are sweating across the aisle. There is a lot more attention on them.”

For environmental organizations, it’s also a welcome change to see bipartisan support for some of these issues. “It’s safe to say that MAHA shares a lot of the same views as the mainstream environmental movement,” he said. 

Moving forward, Pingree hopes to raise the profile of the work she said Democrats have been doing all along and sees the potential of forming a bipartisan MAHA caucus. 

“I think my feeling has always been, if you could win on some of these important issues, then you build a coalition to win. You don’t make everything a litmus test on whether or not you’ll have a conversation.”