Long before “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, existed, there was Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine): A self-described hippie, back-to-the-lander, certified organic farmer, and the first woman ever elected to Congress from Maine’s first district.
Since taking office in 2009, she has relentlessly fought pesticide preemption, championed SNAP benefits and school nutrition programs, and pioneered legislation on food waste and organic agriculture. She’s been fighting for healthier lives long before MAHA was a movement.
Now MAHA has arrived, promising to achieve in a news cycle what Pingree has spent decades trying to accomplish legislatively. MAHA Action's president recently sent a memo to Republican Party leadership calling the movement “a once in a generation political gift to the GOP" and pledging $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterms.
Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., once a prominent voice against toxic pesticides, now celebrates executive orders by President Donald Trump expanding glyphosate production, even as former pesticide lobbyists take key positions at the Environmental Protection Agency.
MAHA was pitched as a bipartisan effort – but reality tells a different story. In today’s episode, EWG co-Founder and President Ken Cook talks with Pingree about the contradictions between what the administration says on MAHA and what it’s actually doing on policy.
And that’s the real divide: between those doing the difficult work of governing and achieving real results, and those packaging that work into snappy branding and social media posts. One is measured in years of policy fights and incremental wins. The other is measured in headlines and clicks. Yet only one of them changes the law to protect the public.
Disclaimer: This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors.
Ken: Hi, I'm Ken Cook and I'm having another episode. And I'm wondering if any of you have had an episode like this, because it pertains to MAHA. And specifically I wonder those of you out there who you know adhere to MAHA principles, hope for the success of Make America Healthy again, I wonder if you know that MAHA, that was supposed to be bipartisan and nonpartisan, is anything but now. I'm referring specifically to a memo from the President of Maha Action, Tony Lyons, and this is a memo that he sent to the top political leaders of the Republican Party: the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, the Chairman of the committee that elects Senate Republicans, the chairman of the committee that elects House Republicans. And the subject is, making Maha a permanent part of the GOP coalition. That's right. And it was CC'd also to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the speaker of the house, Republican Mike Johnson, all Republicans. And here's how it starts, the executive summary: just like MAGA Make America Great again was eight years ago, The Make America Healthy Again movement is a once in a generation political gift to the GOP. It promises to expand the Republican base and help the GOP win future elections, in the midterms and beyond.
In sending this memo along to these GOP political leaders, Tony Lyons pledged to raise $100 million, the president of MAHA Action, $100 million for the midterms, solely to elect Republicans.
Now, the reason I bring this up now is because the guest on my show today is one of the revered legislators in the space of trying to make agriculture and our health work together. Everything from organic farming, because she is an organic farmer, to nutrition programs, to reducing pesticide use, to trying to do something about food additives. My guest today, Chellie Pingree, is central in Congress to all of those efforts.
But it turns out she's a Democrat. In fact, she's the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that considered a spending bill earlier this year that had a provision in it that MAHA hated. And that provision, uh, would have eliminated the liability of pesticide companies like Bayer Monsanto, producer, seller, marketer of Roundup, and glyphosate, the active ingredient.
That would've prevented them from being basically exempt from liability by changing the preemption provisions of federal law to make sure that state law couldn't be used, such as failure to warn provisions in state law, that that couldn't be used as the basis of court cases against Bayer Monsanto. That was the foundation of the case by the way, that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. HHS secretary was on the legal team of. Uh, the very first Roundup case, uh, that awarded millions of dollars to a groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Well, this provision would've made it impossible to pursue those kinds of cases under state law because it said basically only what EPA says about cancer or only what EPA insists beyond a label matters, not what states decide, might be relevant to preventing exposure to carcinogens.
Now, the person who killed that was not a MAHA Republican of the sort that Tony Lyons and MAHA Action wants to exclusively elect. It was Democrat Chellie Pingree. Long before she was a lawmaker representative Chellie Pingree was a self-described hippie, a back to the lander, and a certified organic farmer on North Haven Island off the coast of Maine.
Her unique background shaped a career spent taking on some of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. Since she arrived in Congress in 2009, the first woman ever elected to Congress from Maine's first district by the way, she served on both the House Agriculture Committee and the Appropriations Committee.
She pioneered legislation on food waste, fought pesticide preemption provisions year after year, including most recently, a measure sponsored by Republicans only, on the House Appropriations Committee. She championed full SNAP benefits and support, nutrition support for low income families, school nutrition programs, and organic agriculture.
She was doing all this when some others weren't paying attention that should have been paying attention, and she's worked to try and get Democrats to focus more on this. Mostly she's done this without much fanfare and too often without enough company. Of her fellow legislators. Now MAHA has arrived, Make America Healthy Again, promising to do in a news cycle what Pingree has spent decades trying to accomplish legislatively.
The movement talks a big game on ultra processed food, toxic chemicals, the broken food system and pesticides. But the record so far tells a different story. RFK Jr. Cheered a Trump executive order expanding glyphosate production.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the world's most widely used weed killer, made infamous by Monsanto that is now owned by Bayer. Why? Because pesticide lobbyists now run the EPA. Yes, the Environmental Protection Agency, run by pesticide lobbyists in this particular sphere. And no, of course, it doesn't make any sense.
Now SNAP, the single most important tool for getting healthy food to struggling families is in the crosshairs of the Farm Bill Republicans are pushing right now. I've known Congresswoman Pingree for, we're, we're not really sure. We tried to figure it out, but it's certainly decades. We don't wanna do the numbers.
She's really one of my heroes in the realm of food and agriculture and public policy, and where environment and health and agriculture intersect with social justice. Thank you for being with us Congresswoman. I'm also proud to say we've had the good fortune to work with your daughter, Hannah Pingree. Who is also a distinguished public servant in her own right.
Chellie: That is so true. She's a rock star. I'm just glad she's not running against me 'cause I'd have to drop out. She's way cooler than me.
Ken: She is the bomb. Well, thank you for joining. Uh, I know you're so, so busy and there's a number of topics I wanna, I wanna try and cover with you, but I wanna start with something.
Because I, I noted it at the time. It was just over a year ago, you wrote an op-ed for The Hill, in which you asked the question, "Make America Healthy Again, question mark… let's see if they're serious." And you went through a number of issues there. Agreed with MAHA and, uh, their leadership. The food system's broken.
No one has been more eloquent in describing how it's broken and how we should try and fix it than you have been over many years. Congressman Pingree, you've been very vigilant to make sure that we understand that you can't Make America Healthy Again if you have hungry people, and especially hungry kids, that we need to worry about pesticides and microplastics and PFAS, and you mention all of these in your editorial.
You also mention what Kennedy talks about all the time, the, the chronic disease epidemic that we're facing, much of which is related to what we eat and the need to crack down on food, chemicals, and ultra processed food. You laid it all out at the very beginning, just before the inauguration.
So let me ask you now, as you appraise the Trump administration or the, the MAHA movement, Congressman Pingry, what, what do you think? Have they been serious? Where have they been serious? Where have they been producing policy vaporware?
Chellie: Yeah, really good question. Thank you. That could take up about two and a half hours of our time, and in some ways you could say the jury's still out.
And Ken, thank you for the great work that EWG does on these very areas, because I know we're really aligned on so many of these topics. I guess there's two ways I'd look at it. There are times when my colleagues say: hey, RFK, you know, misses the mark on a variety of things. So I can't listen to a thing that he said, you know, earplugs in, he's done.
On the other hand, there's this sort of school of thought, look, we're not in power, we're not in control as a, as a Democrat or even, um, certain ideologies, but what can we win while we have the opportunity? And I guess I would say that's more my side of this equation. There are battles that we've been in.
Whether it's with toxic chemicals or healthy foods that we haven't always been able to get, you know, a win, whether it's the Democratic side or Republican side. Sometimes it's just that nobody sort of cares about this, or we're up against huge lobbying entities that we can never beat. So my feeling is, look, there's some things that they're talking about clearly around the food is medicine side, this idea that you know what you eat really has a huge impact on your health.
But we have to make sure that it's not just window dressing and it's not just, you know, some, some great applause lines, but it never comes to anything. And we have to be sure that they don't dismantle the good things we already have at the USDA or other programs that we care about.
So, on the one hand, I mean, I'm thrilled they're talking about ultra processed food and saying, you know, how do we actually regulate it? What do we go about doing? I'm glad that they're talking about toxics in the environment and you know, eliminating pesticides. I'm concerned when they say things like, “Hey, we're gonna just really support regenerative agriculture at the USDA,” but on the other hand, maybe don't support organics or don't support some way of determining, when you say regenerative agriculture, are you still saying you can use glyphosate to kill the weeds?
You know, how are you gonna go about doing this? So you gotta have some specifics there. And I'm also really worried about this administration overall, which doesn't come through RFK necessarily, these proclamations. But they've already done a lot of damage to our SNAP benefit program, which is really the fundamental way that people who are barely making ends meet afford more healthy food.
And we're just about to go into a markup of the Farm Bill finally. And I am worried that, you know, SNAP could be harmed, programs like GusNIP, which is, you know, the way people get access to healthier fruits and vegetables and adds to their SNAP benefits aren't being enhanced.
And some of the things that we've already lost at the USDA, one of which was the program that helped pair up farmers producing healthy foods, going into school lunches and food banks was already destroyed in an earlier program, and we haven't been able to get it back. So that's a long, sort of chaotic way of saying, hey, the jury's out.
I'm gonna be with you anytime. You know, we can make some improvements here, and if you're willing to take on the pesticide industry with me, you know, RFK, I'm all in. But if this is just window dressing as it has been in some ways with this administration at the EPA level where they've backed down on some things like both glyphosate and pfas, dicamba, you know, like we've already seen them sort of backtracking.
Then I don't want them getting all the glory and it just being kind of bullshit.
Ken: Yeah. I, I'm with you on that. And you know, Jane Black recently wrote a great piece for the New Republic, uh, for TNR. Where she sort of asked the question, where are Democrats? Why are they letting this issue be taken away from them?
And of course, the Democrats I think of immediately that deserve the credit and I think have not gotten it, are people like you and Cory Booker and you know, Jim McGovern, who was on the podcast a couple weeks ago. And so many others that I've worked with, EWG has worked with in some cases for decades.
And it is frustrating. It's also frustrating. I, I know that you were a big supporter of First Lady Michelle Obama when she was saying many of the things that, uh, Kennedy has been saying recently. Uh, saying them from the, really, with the strength of the Oval Office behind her and alignment of agencies.
But at that time, Republicans weren't having it. It was the nanny state. Uh, you know, you can't help but think the person who was saying it determined their views, uh, to a, a disturbing degree more than the the substance of what she was speaking about. How do you think about the issues generally?
Mostly it's been Democrats standing up and I'll give a great example, and you were the exemplar of it recently. I don't know how many times and how many Farm Bills we've had to fight back preemption types of provisions invariably offered by Republicans. Sometimes it was on animal welfare in California or Prop 65 in California.
It last, uh, couple of years, it's been pesticide preemption. But you're the one in the appropriations process, a Democrat who stood up, and I don't think any Republicans, correct me if I'm wrong, stood with you to stop that preemption provision from just moving through on a spending bill. How do Democrats sort of step back into what I think they deserve, as, you know, certainly work to be done, but you've been there, Democrats have been there on these issues for many years.
Chellie: Yeah, it's an interesting case study and, and you're right, I just read the Jane Black, uh, story myself, and in there I say you know, I spend a lot of time trying to convince my colleagues that this is an important and relevant issue, and that has actually been true since I came to Congress.
Ken: I've watched you do it in rooms with your colleagues.
Chellie: Yes, I have. Yeah. And when I first came, you know, I had worked on a lot of prescription drug pricing issues and I thought, oh, you know, this is gonna be my fight. And I got in there and there were a hundred people in the Democratic caucus lined up to fight on healthcare and prescription drugs. And virtually nobody wanted to go to the agriculture committee in those days.
And if they did, it was because they represented a particular commodity or a state, or they felt it was their obligation. Now that has changed and you see a lot more Democrats who wanna be on the Ag Committee, and many of them really stand up and fight for SNAP benefits and fresh, healthy local food. And we are the ones who sign on to issues, like you said, the pesticide preemption.
When that came up in my subcommittee, I'm the ranking member on the interior. An environment subcommittee, you know, I just said, we're drawing a line in the sand here. I am not standing for this. But it was tough, because there are always those times when people even on my side of the aisle say, hmm, you know, I don't know how that's gonna go with the farmers in my district and I wanna take it on.
All that said, we are the majority of the people who have been in this fight with groups like yours over the years. And the interesting thing about the story was saying, you know, now the attention is coming through MAHA and this idea that this is sort of RFK and the MAHA groups that thought of this for the first time when we've been toiling in the, you know, sort of organic regenerative, healthy food spear for a long time.
Now, for me, I've just said, as I said earlier, look. If there are MAHA moms or people who feel they identify with the MAHA movement, they're gonna stand up and care about this. You know, let's have a conversation and let's work together. So one of the things we really did in that committee hearing and, and during that debate.
Was to make sure that we were contacting all of the activists on the MAHA side that we could find and saying, let's talk about this. Let's talk about how we can win on these issues. And for many of them, you know, they came at it through being moms. They came at it through, you know, learning this on social media, on the internet, and didn't really know that, you know, there was a Democratic side or a Republican side.
They really thought that Donald Trump and RFK brought these things up for the first time, and the rest of us were all just sitting in the pocket of the chemical companies. And I was very pleased to see that many of them, highly knowledgeable, you know, just were activists because they cared about these health issues.
And so we've had great success really working with them on amendments and ideas and you know, questions around the Farm Bill or around EPA measures. And I think some of it is just, you know, figuring out, like you've gotta find your allies on both sides of the aisle. You gotta fight to win here. You can't just be like, well I wanna make sure the other side always loses and my side never aligns myself with them because I just think that can be a mistake in politics when our politics is so volatile and it switches back and forth.
All the time. But as to the topic of like getting my own colleagues to understand what a important issue this is to their constituents, it is my eternal crusade, and I'm in the middle of it again right now. 'Cause we're going into another election cycle, and when I had the chance and caucus to explain to the broad cross section of our caucus, like how did we win the pesticide preemption thing.
You know, plug your ears if you're one of the few people who's on the other side of this, but for the majority of my caucus, these are just issues they don't pay attention to or think about.
Ken: Yeah.
Chellie: And they have to be reminded, you know, your district is full of moms, of people who are really worried about what their kids are eating, of people who are worried about their own personal health and why toxic chemicals are appearing in our diet more often, or fertility rates are changing and you need to speak directly to them.
And so I've just been, you know, crusading through my colleagues and saying, if you want my help, I will help you think about what issues matter in your district, how to make connections with those, uh, moms and others, and you need to understand this is a bipartisan or a nonpartisan issue.
A lot of people come into politics because they're mad about you know, sewage sludge being spent near their house or some other toxics issue. And then they start to see like, ooh, look at all the money that gets spent on this. Or how people get co-opted for their vote, or how often, you know, members vote without really thinking through the issue. So I truly believe it's a, it's just a shortcoming right now of, of my side.
And I'm sure you'll agree with me, if you had told me this 10 years ago, that somehow the world would be fully turned upside down and rather than us being the champions of, you know, organic, clean, healthy food, it would be the other side and we would look like we were in the pockets of industry. I wouldn't have believed you, you know?
Ken: Yeah.
Chellie: I grew up in sort of the organic, back to the land movement, and this has always been one of the things I've worked on, but I've seen the conversion of people to the other side because they think we're not paying attention.
Ken: Yeah, it's, it's very frustrating and a lot of it does relate to social media and the fact that that's where people get their information and I think, you know, certainly, um, Kennedy and his followers have been very aggressive and very adept at making this case and finding a villain.
I thought St. Linda Lake's comment in the TNR story that Jane wrote was right on that, you know, Democrats have not been muscular enough.
Chellie: Mm-hmm.
Ken: And we have not been willing to call out villains.
I've, I've always found that, you know, Democrats are, they're sort of shy about taking on or worried about taking on the agricultural establishment. And at the same time, kind of hopeful that if we give them enough subsidies, whether, whether it's solar farms in rural districts or increased subsidies for ethanol or whatever, it may, may be that, that, that farmers will come home.
I don't know.
Chellie: No, it, it hasn't worked. Let's just be clear. It hasn't worked. And I think when you're talking about on the food side of it. You know, we think about the agriculture issue, the Farm Bill and the Ag Committee as farmers, and we talk endlessly about, you know, capturing the hearts of farmers.
But 85, 80 to 85% of it is nutrition and really impacting what people eat. And when you come down to eating, everybody eats, everybody's worried about their health. Everybody's being told by their doctor that they gotta, you know, take more tests or pay more attention to their health or cut back on the foods that are bad for them.
I mean, it's in everybody's vocabulary and we walk away from something really important when we miss that. So it's just stupid not to get this one right.
Ken: It's frustrating. Right?
Chellie: Yeah.
Ken: You know, I, I'm willing to be much more critical of MAHA and Kennedy maybe than, than you are at this juncture.
Just because I think, he made a lot of promises during the campaign and during the transition he was gonna ban all these pesticides. He was gonna ban all these food chemicals. Hasn't done that. In fact, quite the opposite. And you have Lee Zelin, as you mentioned, over at at EPA. I think a lot of MAHA influencers are now realizing that he's in charge of pesticides and that he hired pesticide lobbyists
Chellie: Right
Ken: To run the agency. Uh, how they missed that first time around? I'm not really sure. We all saw it unfolding. And, you know, Zelin has, um, been a, a big advocate of, uh, deregulation, getting the government out of climate change just last week, of course, the greatest deregulatory act in history. He is always very modest about, um, what he's doing and supporting of, of Trump and modest about his environmental ambitions.
And as Churchill once said of a rival, he has much to be modest about in that regard. But, but I find it frustrating that we've replaced authority with influence and authority, meaning knowledge and competency and so forth. Until there's an appetite for that as opposed to more clicks or more engagement and more followers, until there's a real substantive focus, I think it's gonna be very, very easy for people to be duped.
And I, I think a lot of MAHA followers have been duped. I mean, look what's happened at the Supreme Court now. We have the Department of Justice weighing in on the side of Monsanto.
Chellie: I wanna be a thousand percent with you on this. I don't wanna, I don't wanna be misleading. ‘Cause I agree. We now have an administration run by incompetent people who are, uh, for the most part, especially when you're talking about the EPA and the USDA, of ill will are using their power to, you know, damage these systems we've built up over the years.
And going back to DOGE and Elon Musk, they decimated these departments and we got rid of so many competent, knowledgeable people, and particularly at places like the EPA, where they've now eliminated all of the research that they do there and just taken the teeth out of what they're able to do. And the American public expects the federal government, that's one thing, is to take care of, you know, our environment and our health.
And they lie through their teeth about things like the endangerment clause. And you know, I mean, there's so much bad going on over there. And I do think one of the problems with RFK is that he sort of came in as a crusader running a presidential campaign. And then said, I'm gonna fix agriculture and the chemical system and, you know, make food healthier for people again.
And he has absolutely no ability to influence any of those other agencies. They're just doing, you know, the bidding of this administration. So RFK is sort of the ultimate huckster in that kind of way. It's been interesting talking to the, uh, some of the MAHA advocates who came into my office and said, “wow, you know, we were really surprised that they signed onto this Supreme Court brief in favor, you know, of Bayer” and exactly what you said.
You know, they started a petition, some of them, to fire Lee Zeldin because all of a sudden I think it did occur to them again, you know, earnest citizens in a sense who didn't have, you know, a huge like, you know, handbook of civics and how these things work came in thinking, well, RFK has told us this stuff and it's gonna work.
So yeah, I don't wanna think we can let our guard down at any moment. I'm only trying to win a few things here and there and make sure we, we do that and, and again, make sure, whoever gets credit for it, you know, that the Democrats realize these are important issues. And that's sort of what brought them in.
I mean, again, another thing that story said is that for many of these people, they're sort of saying like, “Oh, well I voted for Trump, but maybe, you know, maybe I should consider the other side.” I mean, one person actually said to me, are there Democrats who would be in favor of these issues we care about, you know, that we should consider in the next election?
And I was like, you know, what the hell? You know, like, yeah, just to be clear, let me show you this letter, you know, with a hundred of my colleagues on here who are mad about these, you know, pesticide preemptions or whatever it is. So yeah, I mean, it's just a reminder that we all have our work cut out for us on this stuff and that this election will be really critical and we can't let people get hoodwinked again by these guys who are just the worst possible intent.
Ken: No, I, I think that's exactly right. And one of the things that really sort of bothers me now there, you know, there's sort of the MAHA rank and file, lots of mom. Some are there for the vaccine hesitancy or oppositions. A lot of 'em are just there for the food.
A lot of 'em are republicans, some are independent. There’s polling on all of this. So it's a very diverse movement, but at the top of it, that's political. They are dedicated and they have a rally on the, on a Zoom call almost every Wednesday. They're dedicated to maintaining GOP control. I mean, that is the objective that they talk about, rallying around Bobby, making sure we retain the House and the Senate.
So that we can continue forward with this winning agenda. And I think that's where I'm, you know, I'm wanting to see more crossover for MAHA rank and file to think about that in exactly the way you just described.
Like, well, you know, there is another alternative and if you were to go down the list of people who've actually done things: introduced legislation, tried to get things passed opposed, bad things, most of that column is gonna be with Ds next to their names. And to me to say, well, we're, you know, we're, we're in play, we might go Republican or we might go Democratic. At this juncture in this administration, how on earth could you see a choice?
Chellie: But I do think you're right. It's partly because of the politics of this administration and strong arming people and saying, hey, you know, you're either with us or against us. You gotta stick with us here. And sort of this weakness of Democrats not standing up and saying, but this is our agenda.
You know, we are the ones fighting for your ability to have good health. And to make sure your kids are safe and that they get a healthy school lunch and that you can afford to eat these fresh fruits and vegetables and the healthy foods that are gonna make you feel better. We lose that at our own peril, or we don't talk about that at our own peril.
You know, we're coming up to a, a Farm Bill markup, and I give Angie Craig credit because one of the things she's done. From the start is to say we're drawing a line in the sand on the pesticide preemption thing,
Ken: Which is in the house Republican bill, right?
Chellie: Yeah. They've put that in the bill. Yeah. So we'll have an, I'll probably do the amendment and we will fight back on it, and we're hoping that there have been enough MAHA calls into some Republicans on that committee who actually feel, you know, that they don't need it in the bill.
And there'll be, you know, a lot of fighting in that markup about SNAP benefits and you know, the ability to afford healthy food. And a variety of other things that I think are really important part of this agenda. Now, very little of America tunes into a Farm Bill markup, let's just be clear.
But yeah, again, you know, it all depends on, you know, what gets clipped and recycled on social media and what do people see, and I think it's a really important time for us to make those statements and people to be able to say like, who's fighting for you and who's going against you? And then keep up that drumbeat as we go into the, you know, next round of elections.
Ken: Well, I know where you'll be, you'll be at the front leading along with other Democrats on that committee. And Angie's a good example. Jim McGovern's on the ag committee too. It's gonna be a time to, I, I'm not saying pull out the popcorn, I'm thinking, it's better to show up rather than just to watch. Let's, let's encourage everyone to participate, call your members and, and weigh in please. Because it is hard for people to pay attention.
Even when you look at the complexion, sort of, of the Democratic caucus, as you say, until recently, people didn't wanna necessarily get on the Ag committee if they represented suburban and mostly urban constituencies. And the Farm Bill vote was for many years, kind of a throwaway or you know, they'd make a deal in exchange for something they wanted. Very natural part of everyday politics. But now I think we see the stakes are pretty high. And a lot is riding on the leadership position.
Mr. Thompson has a very different set of views about agriculture than MAHA when you lay it out and um, I'm, I'm hoping those contrasts come through.
Chellie: Yeah. And he got in a fight with one of the MAHA people because he, he stated in a, a political article or something that the people who were opposing the pesticide preemption were extremists and that really upset a lot of MAHA moms, which created a lot of social media attention.
So, and there's already setting it up for a fight. And, uh, I think they're already feeling a little bit of the pain, you know, maybe they should change the language or something else. And again, that's just one small issue, but we have to be making, you know, a real serious point on every one of those kinds of issues so that people can hear over and over again.
Who's worrying about your health? Who's really fighting the chemical companies? You know, these are fights that you don't have to do a lot of persuasion because people generally don't like chemical companies and don't wanna have toxics in their food or their environment, but you gotta make sure they know what's going on and, and how they fight back.
I mean, politics has gotten so just exhausting for people right now because it's a daily assault of, you know, ICE in the streets or international issues, or just so much conflict in the Epstein files. You know, it just sort of reins down on you every day.
But also I think it's been helpful to try to help understand a little bit that, for instance, people who have been struggling with this healthcare cost problem, which is, you know, affecting more and more people. Whether it's through the loss of the tax exemptions or what's coming with Medicaid and the impact on rural hospitals or everything else, everybody feels a, a problem with the cost of healthcare, but a lot of that happened in the big ugly bill.
And, you know, they took away the money for healthcare and gave it to ICE. They took away the money for, you know, things that you cared about, like, um, SNAP benefits and food for people who are struggling and gave it to ICE. So suddenly people are like, wait, that's why there's so many of 'em in the street.
You know, that's why they wanna build this detention center in, you know, Southern New Hampshire or Eastern Oklahoma or wherever it is you are. So it's complicated, but you kinda have to pull people into all these issues and say, hey, I know you're just focusing on this ICE detention center, but the reason they've got all this money is they took away the money from hungry people.
Ken: Yeah. People talk all the time about kitchen table issues? Well, there's no place where the kitchen table is centered more than the Farm Bill debates. Look into the crystal ball. Now you've been pretty good at looking into crystal balls. Over the years, you've been someone who's, you, you, you have really seen a lot of these issues over the horizon that other people have not seen.
Where do we end up after the Ag Committee finishes its work? They report a bill out. It goes to the floor. Obviously we have a parallel process in the Senate. And we wanna remind people that that's, as that unfolds, many of the same fights will have to be waged over there as well. But how do you think this is going to end up, and one of the, this is the, this is a little bit of a nerdy question.
You know, but back in the day, and I really am dating myself, there was a time when enough Republicans and enough Democrats could come together to at least threaten a floor amendment to make a change in the Farm Bill, to preserve SNAP benefits, to move money out of the big subsidy programs, or at least limit them so we have enough for conservation and rural development and other issues.
That was always, uh, to me, the, the antidote to a kind of not great bipartisanship, which was let, let's just get as much money Democrats and Republicans to the farm subsidy lobby, and the rest will be rounding errors or will hold steady.
But the bipartisan push for reforms, I mean, this goes back to, you know when Sherry Boehlert, people like that around Ryan Kind, obviously on the Democratic side. Talk a little bit about how you see the post-committee process unfolding in the House. They'll probably try and move the bill to the floor pretty quickly, I would, I would guess, if they can. But what do you think it will look like and do you think there will be any opportunity to stage some at least protest votes?
If not, try and win some amendments on the floor if there's bad things we need to fix.
Chellie: Yeah. Very good questions. You know, the, the crystal ball is more murky than it ever was. As you might recall, you know, we've had. I think the most recent Farm Bill, where we really couldn't come to an agreement in the House.
And it took the Senate to write a more, hospitable Farm Bill that then had to come back to us, which isn't usually how it happens. 'cause usually we do find this sort of coalition of people who, you know, take a little from the subsidies, a little from here. And had we been able to do the Farm Bill prior to the Big Ugly Bill, Big Beautiful Bill, it was called, we might have had a little more latitude for that because I think GT was getting pretty close to, you know, making a deal. 'cause we could move some money around.
You know, the, SNAP program had a little bit of money that we didn't wanna give up, but might've gone over here. There was extra conservation funds that were gonna go over here. And then you had the CCC, which is this big sort of pot of money
Ken: Big piggy bank for Trump.
Chellie: Right, exactly. Well, and a lot of that got taken away in the big ugly bill. So the cash that usually sort of softens the blow on some of these things has disappeared.
Ken: It's spent.
Chellie: Yeah. They spent the money. It's, and then, then you've got the tariff problem where Trump has just created himself an enormous nightmare that has been really damaging to so many farmers.
He's already had one bailout. I mean, we've heard that maybe the total bailout is closer to like. $40 billion. I mean, it's lots and lots of money that they actually need to do these bailouts to help out all the commodities that have been harmed by his kind of crazy and unpredictable tariffs. So you throw that into the mix, it's much harder to figure out how we could have a floor strategy, how this does anything, but just get through the floor perhaps on a partisan basis.
Or maybe they don't have the votes again, to do it. Because we don't have as many Democrats who will say, yeah, I need to pass a Farm Bill, I'll just bite my tongue and go along with it. Because they've put so many either poison pills in there, maybe some of them will come out, or they've done so much damage to the SNAP program. Now whether the Senate can actually, you know, make this all, make the magic happen and try to come together with something, I mean, I, I think they could get the poison pills out, but whether there's enough money in there to make everybody whole, I'm not sure.
But you know, it's sometimes not revealed till it's revealed. So, you know, we kind of have to see what the tenor of the markup is. Does anything, you know, come out after that. You know, that, you know, GT and the Republicans really wanna move this Farm Bill. I mean, it's, it's getting pretty old and it really is time we're working on the next farm bill, honestly.
So it's like a lot of other things that have just lost their functionality with this administration. With less competent executive branch secretaries and others, and with this sort of bleeding of the funds and staff to do the thing. So it's hard to tell.
Ken: Yeah. Well those are all the question marks over this process after assuming the fireworks end in the, in the committee, but I don't think they will.
I think we'll see more spill over into the floor and we'll see if anything can be done about it. I just want to thank you for, uh, and again, just point out to people that when you think about leadership on an agenda that you might call the Michelle Obama agenda, you might call the Michael Pollan agenda, you might call the organic agriculture, sustainable agriculture.
Any agenda that you would associate with progress on our food system going after processed food, encouraging more fruits and veg, you have been the leader, Congresswoman. You have been the leader time and time again, and I know you have, you're gonna give credit to lots of other people because that's your nature.
But I just want to single you out right now, 'cause I got you on a, on camera, to thank you. It's been an honor to work by your side for many years. And we're still right there, so, uh, let's try and get something done.
Chellie: Well, we're, uh, once again in the fight of our lifetime. So, Ken, thank you for, for taking the time to chat with me and for all of your gracious compliments, but really I am so grateful for EWG and the work that you do and the unique niche that you guys occupy because it's really been so critically important on so many of these issues and in a very broad spectrum of the things that we care deeply about.
So thank you for that. I look forward to continuing this fight and we will somehow navigate this and I do believe in the end, you know, we're gonna win here. We're gonna win on these things, but it's a tough slog right now.
Ken: I agree. Well, I, Congresswoman Pingree, I will see you in the foxhole.
Chellie: I look forward to it. Thank you so much.
Ken: Thank you to Congresswoman Chellie Pingree for joining me today, and thank you out there for listening.
If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional link. To take a deeper dive into today's discussion, make sure to follow our show on Instagram at KenCooksPodcast. And if you're interested in learning more about ewg, head over to ewg.org or check out EWG's Instagram account @EnvironmentalWorkingGroup.
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Thanks for listening.
