Rural health is the next MAHA frontier
As a Virginia farmer, I have spent years fighting regulatory overreach and corporate consolidation that hollow out rural America.
So when Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) recently led the effort to remove a pesticide-liability shield from the House farm bill, rural families had reason to cheer.
If we are serious about children’s health in rural America, we should examine whether newer technologies can reduce toxic exposures.
The provision would have given pesticide manufacturers such as Bayer broad protection from “failure to warn” lawsuits brought by Americans who allege glyphosate caused their cancer. It also would have limited the ability of states and local communities to establish no-spray zones near schools and weakened protections for waterways.
In other words, it was top-down federal overreach and a corporate handout disguised as “regulatory uniformity.” It had no place in legislation meant to serve farmers and rural families.
Luna’s amendment passed 280-142, with more than 70 House Republicans joining all but six Democrats.
Republicans such as Luna deserve credit for refusing to grant blanket immunity to corporations at the expense of American families. They also showed that Make America Healthy Again can become a governing philosophy — one that puts children, families, and farmers ahead of well-connected industries.
More than three years after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his presidential campaign and later joined forces with President Donald Trump, the MAHA movement continues to secure policy victories with consequences that families may feel for decades.
The pesticide fight is only one part of a much larger question. Once policymakers begin examining preventable chemical exposures, the issue does not stop at the edge of the field.
Former Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), a nurse and Tea Party leader, has noted that many of the same rural children whose schools and waterways Luna’s amendment would protect also spend hours each week riding older diesel school buses. Exposure to diesel exhaust has been linked to pediatric asthma, ADHD, and other health and developmental concerns.
If we are serious about children’s health in rural America, we should examine whether newer technologies can reduce those exposures.
That does not mean Washington should dictate transportation choices to rural districts. It means farmers and small-town families should have a seat at the table and access to resources when cleaner options, including electric school buses, become practical.
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The American Lung Association projects more than $43,000 in health savings per electric bus through reductions in asthma attacks and respiratory illness. Electric buses are also substantially quieter than diesel models, which could benefit students with autism or sensory sensitivities.
Each community should weigh the costs and benefits for itself. But the issue deserves serious local consideration.
Rural water quality deserves the same attention.
A recent national analysis found that more than one in five Americans receive drinking water from systems with elevated nitrate levels associated with cancer and birth defects. Many of the hardest-hit communities are in agricultural regions.
Researchers and public health advocates have also raised concerns about PFAS “forever chemicals” contaminating farmland and groundwater, sometimes forcing farming operations to shut down.
Farmers understand better than anyone that stewardship has consequences. The land, water, and infrastructure we pass to the next generation will shape rural health long after today’s political battles are forgotten.
Reducing unnecessary exposures and modernizing aging infrastructure where it makes sense are practical, pro-family goals that fit squarely within the MAHA vision.
Luna and her colleagues showed that Congress can still deliver for rural American families when lawmakers put them ahead of corporate interests.
They should keep going.
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Kennedy’s new educational program could change the course of America’s health crisis, one medical student at a time.Republicans should take the easy win and stop medical testing on animals
The federal government has spent decades funneling taxpayer dollars into animal testing programs that are increasingly cruel, scientifically obsolete, and wholly unaccountable. Almost no one in Washington has had the courage to say so until now.
In April, roughly 1,000 animal welfare activists stormed Ridglan Farms, a Wisconsin research and breeding facility that has been supplying beagles for biomedical testing. Police fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd, and the group's leader was arrested.
Why were people willing to get arrested over a dog farm? Because of what was happening inside.
Washington has the images of 2,000 beagles crammed into cages in rural Wisconsin. But the checks keep getting written.
Ridglan housed an estimated 2,000 beagles bred specifically to be sold to research laboratories. The facility had been cited for hundreds of animal welfare violations and ultimately agreed to surrender its state breeding license as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on animal mistreatment charges. However, it continued supplying animals to federally funded labs.
If you're wondering why beagles are the preferred breed for animal testing, it's because of their docile nature. This means they can be tortured without fighting back as other dog breeds might. These dogs never saw a home, a yard, or a family. They lived their entire lives in cages, underwriting a research pipeline that Washington has never seriously scrutinized.
The issue finally started picking up steam last year when RFK Jr. said that reducing unnecessary animal testing would become a priority. While Kennedy has made the right noises, the lag still needs to be addressed.
The FDA announced last year that it would phase out animal testing requirements for monoclonal antibodies. The NIH shut down its last in-house beagle lab in May. In May 2025, the Navy announced it would no longer use dogs or cats in research. Those are serious wins, but the fight is far from over.
White Coat Waste launched a national ad campaign this April calling out Secretary Kennedy directly, documenting how NIH has renewed funding for deadly tests on dogs, cats, and primates. This NIH funding was first approved under Dr. Anthony Fauci and doled out millions more to those same projects. The message to Kennedy is simple: The rhetoric is there. Now show us the receipts.
A 2024 Morning Consult poll commissioned by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that 80% of Americans agree the federal government should commit to a plan to phase out animal experiments. Roughly 85% agreed that government funding should prioritize non-animal research methods and that animal experimentation should be phased out in favor of modern alternatives.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), backed by GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and more than a dozen colleagues, announced his push to ban federal funding for animal experiments in the FY2027 spending bill. The push was prompted by revelations that NIH awarded $584,117 to UC San Diego in FY2026 alone to continue experiments on mice. These taxpayer dollars are being used to surgically mimic transgender humans, subjecting nearly 10,000 animals to invasive surgeries, hormone injections, and skull drilling.
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Just last week, Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) led 34 House members in sending a letter to Secretary Kennedy urging him to close the loophole that allows facilities like Ridglan to receive federal contracts after losing their state licenses for documented welfare violations, simply because they hold a USDA Class A license.
Recent studies have confirmed that the majority of drugs that work on animals ultimately fail in humans, driving up research costs while producing unnecessary animal suffering. AI-driven modeling, organoids, and human cell-based testing are not futuristic concepts. They are available, cheaper, and more accurate.
HHS has acknowledged this fact, with both the FDA and NIH releasing updated guidelines this spring advocating for phasing out live animal models in favor of alternative technologies. The bureaucracy is just moving too slowly to match its own stated goals.
Washington has the data. Washington has the images of 2,000 beagles crammed into cages in rural Wisconsin. But the checks keep getting written.
These programs do not reflect our values, they do not produce real results, and they do not deserve another dime of taxpayer money.
Now, do I think every politician rushing to take a stand on this issue is doing so out of the goodness of their heart? Absolutely not, but here's the thing: I don't care. If political self-interest is what finally gets Washington to stop funding the torture of beagles, then so be it. Use the issue. Grab the headline.
At the end of the day, if the outcome is that fewer animals suffer, fewer taxpayer dollars are wasted, and a broken system gets reformed, then the motivation behind it doesn't matter one bit to the dogs still sitting in cages waiting for someone to act.
Republicans, take an easy win and keep the animal lovers in your corner. Get it done.
Trump’s new Moms.gov site rocks ... except for this one flaw
While BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey applauds the Trump administration’s new Moms.gov initiative for offering support and resources to mothers and pregnant women — she argues that one of the website's goals raises serious ethical questions.
“Moms.gov is a good and new initiative by the Trump administration, and it’s a website that supports mothers and families,” Stuckey explains, noting that it helps expectant moms find nearby pregnancy care centers.
“God is working through these pregnancy care centers to give women truth, to give them resources, to connect them to believers, and to lead them to the gospel. It’s amazing what God is doing through these pregnancy centers, and I am so glad that the Trump administration is shining a light on that,” she says.
The website also provides information on nutrition and wellness for healthy pregnancies as well as breast feeding education and mental health support.
“If the left were really about supporting women and they were really about moms and babies, it would have been the Biden administration who created Moms.gov. It would have been a Democrat-led effort to make sure that moms have the resources that they need,” Stuckey says.
However, Stuckey doesn’t believe the website is as pro-life as it's made out to be.
“On Moms.gov, the administration is promoting in vitro fertilization,” Stuckey says, pointing out that it’s being treated as a fertility treatment.
“IVF is not a fertility treatment, like it doesn’t solve infertility actually. It kind of tries to get around the issue, but it doesn’t solve the underlying cause of infertility,” she says.
And there are also “many ethical considerations” to make when discussing IVF.
“IVF almost always creates extra embryos that are stored, that are thrown away, that are frozen forever or used in experiments. Very often, this is a eugenic-type process where a couple will create more embryos than they could possibly transfer,” Stuckey explains.
“The vast majority of cases make as many embryos as you possibly can. Those embryos are then graded. If there is any kind of chromosomal abnormality ... those embryos are discarded. Sometimes the couple doesn’t even know that those embryos are being discarded,” she continues.
“And morally for us, this is no different than abortion,” she says, adding, “because we’ve been saying in the pro-life movement for a very long time that Dr. Seuss line, ‘A person is a person no matter how small.’”
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. corrected the record during his testimony before Congress on Friday morning after Democrat lawmakers spread false information about the Trump administration's health care policies.
'It is the Democratic policy to benefit billionaires.'
Kennedy appeared before the House Education and Workforce Committee to answer questions about the HHS' priorities.
Following his opening statement, Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) posed the first question to Kennedy, asking whether he was "responsible for the measles outbreak."
Kennedy acknowledged that he had been accused of that but said the accusation was "not science-based."
"The measles outbreak began in January 2025, before I took office. ... The measles outbreak is not an American phenomenon; it is global," he replied.
He explained that in 2025, the U.S. had approximately 2,200 measles cases, while Mexico had more than three times that amount, despite having one-third of the U.S. population. Canada reportedly had twice as many cases, even though its population is just one-eighth of that of the U.S. In Europe, the number of cases was nearly 10 times that in the U.S., despite having twice the U.S. population, Kennedy said.
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"Two little girls died tragically in the Mennonite community in Texas. Mennonites have not vaccinated since 1796. So, this has nothing to do with me," Kennedy stated.
He mentioned attending the funeral of one child and spending the day with the family of the other.
"Both of them told me that when they took their children to the hospital, they were treated as pariahs. They were shamed. They were not given proper treatment. Both families believed their daughters, and their own doctors believe, their daughters could have been saved if the hospital gave them proper treatment," Kennedy continued.
"There's a lot of people in this country who, for religious reasons or other reasons, are not gonna vaccinate. And I believe that we need to treat them with compassion and understanding and empathy and get them the treatments they would get anywhere else in the world except for this country," he added.
Kennedy was later questioned by Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), who pressed the secretary about "kicking 15 million Americans off of their affordable health care."
"Have you met with everyday Americans who have lost their health insurance just this last year?" Casar asked.
"I meet with everyday Americans every day," Kennedy replied. He also noted that he spoke with the advocacy community "on virtually everything that we regulate" and "more tribes and tribal leaders than any HHS secretary in history."
Casar then asked whether Kennedy had met with Americans who would be impacted this year by "cuts to Medicaid."
"There are no cuts to Medicaid. ... We are increasing Medicaid spending by 47% over the next 10 years. ... How is that a cut? That is only a cut in Washington, D.C.," Kennedy responded.
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Casar ignored Kennedy's comments and pushed forward with his line of questioning.
"Have you met with any of the 1.4 million people who have lost their health insurance just this last year from dropping off of Obamacare?" he asked.
"They're almost all illegal immigrants. ... We found 1.5 million illegal immigrants illegally collecting Medicaid," Kennedy remarked.
Casar attempted to corner Kennedy into admitting he had dedicated time to meet with billionaires but not with everyday Americans. However, Kennedy repeatedly denied this and turned it back around on Casar by slamming Democrats for Obamacare.
"It is the Democratic policy to benefit billionaires," Kennedy said. "The insurance companies' stocks raised by 1,000% after Obamacare was passed. The money was not going to Americans; it was going to them."
"It was you who did it," Kennedy declared.
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