Top MAHA activist tells Trump to partner with Democrats on food reform

Make America Healthy Again activist Calley Means is encouraging President Donald Trump to partner with Democrats to advance food reform goals after the sweeping losses for Republicans in the midterm elections.Means, who quit his post as Trump administration health policy adviser in late October, said on CBS News’s Face the Nation Sunday that he would like to see the Trump administration work with Democrats on key food reform legislation where there is much common ground.“I think there are specific bills, specific issues that they’re literally saying the same thing,” Means said. Means has been on a postelection media tour criticizing former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and others within the White House for bowing to lobbying interests and blocking MAHA priorities, such as setting a formal definition for ultra-processed foods and regulating pesticides.On Face the Nation, Means praised Trump’s new chief of staff Stephen Miller and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying they share many of the same goals on tackling corruption as Sen.-elect Abdul el Sayed (D-MI) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).“Stephen Miller wants to get transformative things done with Bobby Kennedy and President Trump that are not partisan, but structural,” Means said. “He wants to get the same things done that Elizabeth Warren and el Sayed and other people are running on. And I think there is a major opportunity to come together and get some big things done, which, quite frankly, we have to do.”Means has also said that the Trump team should work with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the current ranking Democrat on the influential Senate health committee that oversees the Food and Drug Administration and other health agencies.“I think Stephen Miller and Bobby Kennedy would be very amenable to meeting with Democrats, meeting with Republicans who aren’t beholden to special interests like John Thune,” Means said, referring to the current Senate majority leader.Means is not alone among MAHA activists encouraging cooperation with Democrats on core issues.Tony Lyons, head of the MAHA Action PAC, during the midterm election campaign encouraged his supporters to vote Republican, but on Wednesday said his organization will “partner with absolutely everyone” including politicians “from any party.”“There are good people across the political spectrum who want to be part of this, and we’re going to find every last one of them and fight with them,” Lyons said.In the weeks leading up to the election, Democrats courted voters who would like to see greater regulations on ultra-processed foods and nutrition-based preventive medicine.MAHA ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE REPLACEMENT OF SUSIE WILES AS WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFFThe Center for American Progress, a Democrat-aligned policy group, published a document in late October calling on “progressives to reclaim leadership” on food, nutrition, and agriculture reform issues that have been subsumed into the MAHA agenda for the Trump administration.CAP President Neera Tanden, a former adviser to the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations, told Politico that, because of the Trump administration’s broken promises on food reform, “Democrats have a more open field to attract the MAHA voters who were important to President Trump’s election in 2024.”