The Right’s Wellness Lies Are Worse Than You Think

Their actual policies will make us sicker

A lot of you have been asking me how to convince people to change their mind in the three weeks before election day. I want to be honest here, people who are decided Trump voters probably won’t change their mind. But there are a few groups out there that I think we might have some sway with and the wellness warriors who have moved right because of RFK Jr. just might be one of them.

Do you know a crunchy mama who would have been a Dem voter just four years ago who has shimmied over to the other side?

There are a lot of them out and they are being blatantly lied to by the right in order to get their vote right now. I want to help arm you with some real, fact-based information that might just change their minds.

Robert Kennedy Jr., anti-vax conspiracy monger and wellness warrior, posted a video on IG this week with a caption that read: 

“The Democrats, who claim to be all about healthcare have stood by watching other countries ban these poisons that make our kids sick. Enough is enough. President Trump and I are going to stop the mass poisoning of American children.”

And I thought to myself … what exactly is their plan? Or even their concept of a plan.

And so I looked at Project 2025 to see what it was plotting for the wellness industry.  It’s always a good place to look when you’re confused about the Trump platform for anything. 

That’s because Project 2025 is a multi-part strategy to stack the next Trump administration with conservative loyalists who have signed up to execute the Mandate for Leadership, their nearly 1,000 page policy manual.  (See here for my no bullshit explainer on Project 2025.)

So what did I learn? A lot. 

Big picture, in the MAGA world wellness is just a trojan horse for deregulation.  

Let’s break it down and look at the plan for our food, our environment and our medicines:

Food

Project 2025’s section on the USDA opens with the idea that the feds don’t need to transform the food system. 

They say the problems with the USDA are the focus on climate change and equity and expressly point out a problem with a program to help move farmers to organic farming, which Project 2025 says is land-intensive, expensive and doesn’t recognize that farmers know more about farming than DC politicians. The policy recommendations boil down to deregulation, the “ideal policy should remove obstacles imposed on American farmers.“

This flies in the face of actual wellness influencers who want organic foods, free of pesticides. Healthy food is not cheap. Sadly, when we are talking about farmers these days we aren’t thinking about sweet, humble Old MacDonald. We are talking about big agriculture, multibillion dollar corporations that are beholden to shareholders and you can bet they will cut whatever costs are necessary to increase their stock prices if they are allowed. This means more of the things that actually MAKE US UNHEALTHY. Things like growth hormones in all of our meat, modified crops and pesticides. 

Agribusiness has employed over 1,200 lobbyists this year and spent over $87 million on lobbying.  

Trust farmers really means trusting huge corporations like Tysons, sugar giants etc. with no oversight.

What about baby formula?

Baby formula shortages are very real. But if there is one industry we want regulated it is definitely the one making food to feed our most vulnerable population. 

The Environment

I think one of the problems people have with Project 2025 is that it all seems so unbelievable - 1000 pages of actions is impossible for any one person to internalize. It’s almost ridiculous to think that people would actually want to reverse things like removing lead pipes when we know that lead pipes can leach into drinking water and lead poisoning is proven to cause brain damage in children.  Earlier this year “Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach lead a coalition of state attorneys general in opposition to an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would require the replacement of more than 9 million lead pipes across the country.”

This is in direct opposition to anyone who actually cares about real “wellness.”

Interestingly, given the wellness industrial complex’s intense focus on glyphosate, Project 2025 says that the regulation process needs to be changed to take into consideration  “ the beneficial effects of pesticides.”

The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention is, according to Project 2025, “constantly pressured to ban the use of certain chemicals, typically based on fear as a result of mischaracterized or incomplete science.” 

I absolutely love it when the right suddenly decides they respect the scientific method. 

According to Project 2025 they want to privatize the Safer Choice program which is a certification and labeling program from the EPA that helps consumers and businesses find safer products for people and the environment. They want to eliminate the Integrated Risk Information System which is an office that conducts risk assessments on the effect of chemicals in the environment on humans. 

They want to roll back Biden Administration changes and return to the Trump-era approach to preventing industry from releasing dangerous chemicals into the environment, one that allows corporations to withhold information about hazardous or toxic substances by categorizing the information as "sensitive information."  

We all cheered when the Biden Admin issued regulations controlling PFAS (forever chemical) pollution, but Project 2025 says they want to “revisit”  the definition of PFAS as a “hazardous substance.” 

Medicines

Something I’ve spoken a lot recently is how a future Trump administration would use FDA regulations to limit access to abortion. This summer the Supreme Court threw out a case in which conservative Christian groups tried to get the court to overturn the FDA authorization of mifepristone, which has been on the market for more than 20 years, with numerous studies demonstrating its safety.   In Project 2025, they want the FDA to withdraw approval of this drug for use in medical abortions - forget about waiting until the next case trickles up to SCOTUS.. 

Moving to other conservative groups, the deregulation mandate takes a backseat to the moral mandate. According to Politico “Students for Life is pushing for the EPA to classify the chemicals in the abortion pill mifepristone as “forever chemicals” subject to stricter regulations, and to require any doctor who prescribes the pill to be responsible for collecting and disposing of the aborted fetus.”

It’s so funny which chemicals the right wants to regulate and which it wants to deregulate. And it is important for anyone who truly believes in actual wellness, in actually making the citizens of our country healthier to dissect the plans the Trump-Vance administration will be following. 

Some good ideas!

There are some good wellness ideas in Project 2025 and it is only fair to talk about those.

According to the documents, “The FDA should prohibit pharmaceutical companies from purposely sitting on their legally available right to be the first to sell generic versions of their drugs. Additionally, Congress should create legal remedies for generic companies to obtain samples of brand-name products for their generic development efforts and should prohibit meritless “citizen petitions” submitted by manufacturers to delay approval of a generic competitor.” (p. 456)

They also want to end the revolving door way that pharmaceutical companies capture the agencies that regulate them. The FDA should impose a lengthy cooling off period for reviewers, preventing them from working for companies they regulated. (p. 460)

All in all, there is more bad than good here. There is absolutely no sane reason that anyone who truly believes in wellness would support a candidate who will enact the majority of these policies. The wellness contingent is being hoodwinked here by charisma and blatant lies. That’s what we need to be talking about right now when we are trying to win their vote back.