A MAHA Report

The movement to Make America Healthy Again is an unusual political force. Its blunt views about our collective well-being hold a certain countercultural, even courageous, appeal: We eat junk. We stare at our phones too much and move too little. Chemical companies have toxified our lives. Drugmakers aren’t helping. Our children’s health is too important to tolerate all this.

Many scientists and experts back these conclusions and have fretted about them for years. The ideas poll well. And in an age of polarization, the movement draws together all sorts of Americans — MAGA die-hards, libertarians worried about government mandates, liberal parents who don’t want their kids ingesting trash.

At the same time, many MAHA claims defy science, push misinformation or simply do little to address the problems. Its advocates, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., say that common vaccines can be dangerous. That fluoride has no place in drinking water. That chemicals in the environment could be making people gay.

Yesterday — with a long-awaited report about children’s health and a move against drug advertisements — the Trump administration embodied this MAHA alchemy. Today’s newsletter is about the new actions.

A statement

American kids are not all right, the administration says. It cites four reasons: a poor diet dominated by ultraprocessed foods; bad habits like screen addiction and physical inactivity; exposure to pollutants; and “overmedicalization,” in which kids are given unnecessary treatments. Yesterday’s report proposes remedies:

• About 5 percent of children take medication for A.D.H.D. The government wants insurance companies to raise the standard for who gets approved.

• Fluoride in drinking water staves off cavities. And although the levels in American water are safe, Kennedy wants it gone, because too much fluoride can lead to bone and brain problems.

• The government has already limited access to Covid vaccines. Change may come also for other inoculations, including the timing of when kids receive which shots. And the National Institutes of Health will now scrutinize vaccine side effects more closely.

• The government will commission a slew of studies to better understand microplastics, air quality and the cumulative toll of chemicals and electromagnetic radiation.

The report also points to a number of actions the Trump administration has already taken, writes Dani Blum, a Times health reporter. These include cracking down on food dyes, relaunching the Presidential Fitness Test in public schools and studying the causes of autism.

What goes unmentioned. Kennedy supporters hoped he would limit toxic pesticides, but the MAHA statement calls only for more trust in “robust review procedures” and more study about how farmers can use fewer chemicals. It also does not call for direct restrictions of ultraprocessed foods.