Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is telling Democrats not to ignore the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Booker, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, made an explicit appeal to MAHA during a speech focused on combating the unhealthiness of the American food diet at the Center for American Progress’s Ideas Conference on Tuesday.
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“Some of you might be surprised that I came here to talk about food. Don’t be,” said Booker. “Because while we’re debating other big things, millions of American moms and dads turned their attention to what is on their dinner plate, and a movement called MAHA caught fire in the vacuum we left behind.”
MAHA moms, as they are infrequently known, have pushed President Donald Trump’s administration to make the American diet healthier by focusing on whole foods, fruits, and vegetables, and less on ultra-processed foods, which have led to higher obesity rates and chronic illnesses.
“We should not be fighting that movement,” Booker told fellow liberals at the conference. “We should be telling those loving moms and dads that they are right, right about the chemicals, right about the ultra-processed foods, right about the chronic disease, right, that something in America is profoundly broken.”
The New Jersey senator alluded to current tensions between MAHA and the Trump administration over a case being considered by the Supreme Court.
“We need to talk about how those moms and dads are being betrayed by the current administration,” he said. “Who says it supports them while its lawyers walk into the Supreme Court to protect pesticide companies, while they cut funding for school lunches and betray those moms and dads.”
Earlier this month, more than 1,000 MAHA advocates descended on the Supreme Court to protest the administration’s support for Bayer in a case on the handling of the herbicide glyphosate, the main chemical in RoundUp.
The high court is considering, in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, whether Bayer, the maker of RoundUp, should be held legally liable for not informing its customers that glyphosate could cause cancer.
The Trump administration has attempted to appease the MAHA movement in other areas, such as reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana from a Schedule I to a less-regulated Schedule III ahead of the midterms.
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But Booker’s comments may indicate Democratic willingness to peel away MAHA support from the GOP as they seek to retake control of the House and the Senate.
“I’ve said it before about other issues. This is not left or right, it’s right versus wrong,” said Booker about supporting MAHA.
