The 'MAHA Pitch': Deregulation Wrapped in Mom-Friendly Paper

Responding to: MAHA moms are still up for grabs this election. They want more than cheap groceries · 2026-09-30

What the Piece Argues

The piece, written by Clare Ath — head of Vita et Terra, a “conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit” — and published in Fox News Opinion, makes a strategic-political argument to the Republican Party: the MAHA-mom voters who helped deliver the 2024 victory are still up for grabs, and the GOP can lock them in by offering a “conservative environmental-health agenda” rather than abandoning them to Democrats. The author concedes that the Trump administration’s record is mixed — RFK Jr.’s progress on food additives paired with EPA rollbacks of PFAS drinking-water standards and a Supreme Court brief defending Roundup’s manufacturer against cancer claims — but treats that tension as solvable through more deregulatory answers, not by reversing them, and indeed recommends more of the deregulatory policy that produced the tension. The column’s central prescription is private-sector initiative, deregulation, and “light-touch intervention” applied to the food-safety, pesticide, and chronic-disease concerns MAHA moms carry, with cheaper nuclear and solar power treated as the answer to the grocery-bill problem and “perverse” farm subsidies replaced by regenerative-farming incentives. The piece’s central bet is that MAHA moms will accept deregulatory answers to concerns about chemicals and processed food, and that delivering those answers will pay electoral dividends through the midterms and beyond.

Receipts

This is campaign-strategy advice dressed as health advocacy — the chemical industry is the customer, MAHA moms are the market. The receipts below show how the wrapper works.

The framing wants you to believe

• That “conservative principles” (deregulation, private-sector initiative, “light-touch intervention”) can deliver MAHA moms the cleaner food, cleaner water, and healthier kids they say they want.
• That the answer to MAHA concerns about pesticides, food additives, and ultra-processed food is less regulation, not more.
• That the Trump administration’s mixed environmental record — RFK Jr.’s food-additive scrutiny paired with the EPA’s PFAS-rollback and the administration’s Supreme Court brief defending Roundup — can be reconciled through “better conservative policy” rather than reversed.

What’s really going on

• The column is campaign-strategy advice published in Fox News Opinion; the explicit ask is voter retention for the GOP, not chemical-exposure reduction for the moms it addresses. The piece names “Republicans,” “the GOP,” and “the midterms” more often than it names the children whose health it claims to be protecting.
• The “conservative environmental-health agenda” the column promotes structurally serves three concentrated beneficiaries: (1) the pesticide industry — the column reads the Trump administration’s 2025 Supreme Court brief defending Bayer/Monsanto in Durnell v. Monsanto as the “conservative” position on glyphosate; (2) the nuclear industry — the deregulatory agenda “points the same direction” as cheaper power, which the column treats as the answer to MAHA grocery-bill concerns; (3) the GOP donor class — the column is openly advising the party on how to keep a key 2024 coalition segment.
• The MAHA-mom-friendly regulatory agenda the column points away from — strict glyphosate limits, restored PFAS standards, processed-food restrictions, food-additive bans — is the agenda that would actually reduce the chemical exposures MAHA moms say they worry about. The piece concedes the tension and then recommends more of the policy producing it.
• Anchor citation: In April 2024 the U.S. EPA, under the Biden administration, finalized the first national primary drinking-water regulation for six PFAS compounds, setting maximum contaminant levels for PFOA and PFOS at 4 parts per trillion. In 2025 the Trump EPA, under Administrator Lee Zeldin, finalized a rule rescinding portions of that 2024 standard. In 2025 the Trump administration filed an amicus brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in Durnell v. Monsanto urging the justices to side with Bayer against plaintiffs whose non-Hodgkin lymphoma they attribute to Roundup exposure. The IARC, the international cancer-research arm of the WHO, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A) in 2015; the U.S. EPA’s cancer record on glyphosate has been contested ever since, with international authorities and the U.S. regulator reaching opposite conclusions. The piece does not contest any of this. It asks the reader to trust that more of the same policy will produce a different result.

The Response Ladder

Polite Reframe

When to use: A persuadable MAHA-mom-leaning voter, a family member at the dinner table, or a moderate who is genuinely worried about their kid’s food and is open to hearing that the deregulatory “answer” is not actually aimed at their concern.

Marissa is thirty-four. She lives outside Columbus. She has two kids — eight and five — and the five-year-old has been breaking out in eczema the pediatrician cannot quite explain. Marissa has started reading the backs of packages. She has started filtering the water. She has started buying organic strawberries when the price lets her. She voted for Donald Trump in 2024, in part, because the chronic-disease talk from RFK Jr. finally sounded like somebody in Washington was listening. She is a MAHA mom, and she is exactly the person the piece you just read is aimed at.

I want to talk to Marissa directly, because the column she read is using her.

The column is called “MAHA moms are still up for grabs this election.” It is by Clare Ath, who runs a “conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit” called Vita et Terra. It was published in Fox News Opinion. The argument the column makes is that Republicans can keep Marissa and women like her by offering them a “conservative environmental-health agenda.” That is a long phrase. The short version of it is less regulation.

Let me be plain about what the column actually says, because Marissa will not catch this if I do not. The column acknowledges, in its own words, that the Trump administration has done some good things on food additives. Then it acknowledges that the same administration has filed a brief at the Supreme Court defending Roundup’s manufacturer against cancer claims, and that the EPA has moved to roll back drinking-water standards for PFAS. The column calls this a “tension.” Then it tells Republicans the way to resolve the tension is more conservative policy. More conservative policy, on this question, means: deregulate nuclear energy, let the private sector keep building solar, replace “perverse subsidies” with regenerative-farming incentives. It does not mean: restrict glyphosate. It does not mean: bring back the PFAS drinking-water standards. It does not mean: do what Marissa has been told, by every label she now reads, that she should want done.

Marissa, the column you read is telling your party that the way to keep your vote is to do less of what you actually want done.

The column invokes Catholic environmentalism in its first paragraph and then recommends its opposite. The version of Catholic environmentalism the column gestures at — Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, the broader creation-care tradition — runs through the Hebrew prophets and the Sermon on the Mount, and it does not start with deregulation. It starts with what is being put into Marissa’s kid. Care for creation is not a left-wing idea. The earth was given as a trust, not as a resource to strip. Good stewardship means protecting the water Marissa filters and the soil the strawberries grow in and the air her five-year-old breathes. That tradition is older than either political party. It cuts against the version of conservatism the column is selling.

Here is what the public record shows. The EPA in 2025 finalized a rule rescinding portions of the 2024 national primary drinking-water regulation for six PFAS compounds — the same compounds the column says MAHA moms want kept out of their water. The Trump administration in 2025 filed a Supreme Court brief in Durnell v. Monsanto urging the justices to side with Bayer against plaintiffs who say Roundup gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The IARC classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015; the U.S. EPA’s own cancer record on glyphosate has been contested ever since, with international authorities and the U.S. regulator reaching opposite conclusions. The column does not contest any of these. It simply asks Marissa to trust that more of the same policy will produce a different result.

Marissa does not need to be told her concerns are real. The chronic-disease epidemic is real. The label-reading is justified. The water-filter is justified. What she needs is to know that the column calling itself MAHA-friendly is not, in fact, aimed at the things MAHA moms are worried about. It is aimed at locking in her vote with deregulatory answers to regulatory questions.

If Republicans want to actually keep her — and not just her vote, but her trust — they can do what the column says they cannot. They can restrict the chemicals. They can restore the drinking-water standards. They can stop filing briefs at the Supreme Court for the pesticide industry. They can fund the regenerative-farming research the column gestures at but does not specify. They can do the things the prophets and the Sermon on the Mount and Laudato Si’ all point toward: protect the water, protect the soil, protect the children.

That is not a left-wing agenda. It is a creation-care agenda. The column knows it; that is why it invoked Catholic environmentalism in its first paragraph. The question is whether Marissa’s party will actually do it, or whether it will keep selling her the deregulatory version and calling it MAHA-friendly.

Mockery and Ridicule

When to use: A bystander in a debate who needs the framing revealed — the deregulatory “MAHA pitch” exposed as a sales job for the industries producing the chemicals MAHA moms worry about — without cruelty to the voter, who is shown being used.

Picture the pitch.

A “conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit” leader writes a column in Fox News Opinion telling the Republican Party how to keep MAHA moms in the coalition. The column acknowledges, in its own words, that the Trump administration has rolled back drinking-water standards for PFAS and filed a Supreme Court brief defending Roundup’s manufacturer against cancer claims. Then the column recommends that Republicans solve this problem by deregulating nuclear energy, accelerating private-sector solar, and ending “perverse” farm subsidies.

The pitch, translated for the rest of us, is: the way to keep mothers worried about chemicals in their kids’ cereal is to make sure the chemicals in their kids’ cereal are deregulated.

Picture the scene at the grocery store. A MAHA mom with a basket of organic strawberries. Behind her, on the shelf, a label she cannot quite read — in the kind of font the column itself admits is intelligible only to “a small subset of food scientists.” Behind that label, somewhere in the supply chain, is a herbicide defended by the same administration that wants her vote. Behind that defense, somewhere in a courthouse, is a Supreme Court brief. Behind that brief, somewhere in a lobbying firm, is a check. Behind that check, somewhere in this column, is the word “conservative,” which is what the chemical industry has started calling deregulation because the old word was getting bad press.

The column calls this a “conservative environmental-health agenda.” This is the same word — environmental — that the column’s own author, who runs a Catholic environmental nonprofit, ought to know means protecting the water Marissa filters and the soil the strawberries grow in. The column knows what the word means. The column is using it for cover.

To the MAHA moms being recruited: you are the customer. You are not the audience. The audience is the donor class that pays for the columns and the lobbying and the Supreme Court briefs. You are being marketed to. The product is your vote. The wrapper is “conservative environmental-health agenda.” The contents are the deregulatory policies your concerns are asking to be reversed.

To the chemical industry, the energy industry, and the GOP donor class: thank you for the column. It was a good pitch. It will probably work, because the wrapper is good and the customer is busy and the customer has two kids and a job and does not have time to read the fine print on the deregulatory syringe. But the fine print is right there. The EPA rolled back PFAS drinking-water standards in 2025. The Trump administration filed a brief at the Supreme Court defending Roundup’s manufacturer in 2025. The deregulatory agenda is what MAHA moms are complaining about. Calling it MAHA-friendly does not make it MAHA-friendly.

That is what is happening in this column. Now you have a name for it.

Nuclear Satire

When to use: A Substack reply, a longer comment thread, or any forum where the reader has the attention for the receipts laid out in order.

Clare Ath, the head of a “conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit” — a phrase I want you to set on the table and study, because it is the verbal equivalent of painting a coal mine green — wants MAHA moms to understand that the answer to industrial-agriculture chemical capture is the GOP’s deregulatory agenda, the same agenda that, in the piece she wrote, she concedes has rolled back PFAS drinking-water standards, weakened mercury protections, and filed a Supreme Court brief on behalf of the goddamned Roundup manufacturer.

The concessions are right there. Paragraph six. Paragraph seven. She names them, names them again, and then she pivots to ask you to trust the apparatus that produced them. The cosmetics are real: a 1,400-contaminant screening study, a proposed GRAS-loophole closure, a working definition of ultra-processed food. The operational policy is also real, and it is the rollback. The deregulatory Congress Ath is asking MAHA moms to deliver a midterm to is the deregulatory Congress that has, in its first year, undone the underlying rules the cosmetics are sitting on top of — the way a hospice covers the IV stand with a cheerful curtain while the patient underneath is being unplugged.

This is not a strategy. It is a marketing operation. It is a coalition-building exercise in which the coalition’s stated concerns are the cover for the coalition’s actual operational agenda. It is the political equivalent of a mugger patting your shoulder while the other hand is in your purse. It is the diagnostician telling you the X-ray shows nothing while the X-ray is sitting on the light box behind him with the tumor clearly visible. MAHA moms are not being asked to vote their values. They are being asked to vote their values’ opposite, on the promise that the values will be honored by the people currently gutting them.

By any means necessary — and the only means available are the receipts and the vote — MAHA moms should read the deregulation record before they let the deregulators tell them the deregulation is for them. The record is the receipt. The receipt is the receipt. And the receipt, in this case, is the deregulation itself.

Profane Scorched-Earth

When to use: When the reader needs full catharsis, the receipts are already in the room, and the polite register has done its job and failed.

This is the deal, and we are going to call it what it is.

The goddamned deregulatory pitch — written by the head of a “conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit,” which is a phrase I want you to sit with for a second because it is doing a shitload of work — is telling MAHA moms that the answer to their fucking concerns about pesticides and PFAS and food dyes is the same goddamned administration that filed a Supreme Court brief on behalf of the goddamned Roundup manufacturer. That is not a paraphrase. That is the piece. It says it. It says, in paragraph six, that the Trump administration filed the brief on behalf of the pesticide’s manufacturer. It says, in paragraph seven, that the EPA under Zeldin moved to roll back the PFAS drinking-water standards and weaken the mercury protections. And then the piece pivots — paragraph eight, paragraph nine, paragraph ten — to tell you that what MAHA moms really need is more fucking deregulation, more private-sector initiative, more “light-touch intervention,” more nuclear, more solar, fewer federal regulators, and a midterm vote for the people who just did the things the piece just conceded they fucking did.

This is the oldest scam in the American political playbook, and it is running on fumes and MAHA-mom anxiety and the good faith of women who are tired of being lied to by every side. You take the constituency’s stated concerns. You announce a cosmetic version of one of those concerns — a screening study, a working definition, a public-comment period. You let the operative policy — the rollback, the brief, the deregulation — do whatever the donor class fucking paid for. Then you tell the constituency that the cosmetic version is the policy, and the operative policy is, what, a misunderstanding? A process question? A pause while the lawyers work it out? And you ask them to deliver you a midterm on the strength of the cosmetic version while the operative version is what is actually in the fucking water.

Fox News knows what it is doing. Clare Ath knows what she is doing. The chemical-industry lobbyists who wrote the deregulatory framework know what they are doing. The only people in this transaction who do not know what they are doing are MAHA moms, and they do not know what they are doing because the people who are doing it to them spent the entire piece telling them it was being done for them.

By any means necessary — and the only means that work here are the receipts and the goddamned vote — MAHA moms should treat this pitch the way they would treat a fucking label that lists every ingredient they are trying to avoid and then calls the product “clean.” It is not clean. It is the same goddamned product with a different label. And the people who put the new label on it are the people who put the old label on it, and they are laughing all the way to the deregulatory Congress they want MAHA moms to deliver them. The deregulation record is on the EPA’s own press-release archive and on the public Supreme Court docket — the receipts are there, public, in the goddamned light.

The arc bends, but only if MAHA moms read the fucking receipts before they cast the goddamned vote.