Op-ed: The Big Beautiful Bill Won’t Make America Healthy Again

What they do: The administration has proposed slashing NIH research funding by 40 percent, unlawfully terminated thousands of grants (which CSPI successfully challenged in court), and censored NIH research with which the administration disagreed ideologically. The administration is also actively attacking academic institutions and casting doubt on the integrity of the world’s leading medical journals, even suggesting government scientists will be barred from publishing in them.

Food Chemical Safety

What they say: “Children are exposed to an increasing number of synthetic chemicals, some of which have been linked to developmental issues and chronic disease. The current regulatory framework should be continually evaluated to ensure that chemicals and other exposures do not interact together to pose a threat to the health of our children.”

What they do: In April, the Administration fired all 200 employees in the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, which is responsible for preventing exposure to environmental hazards, including lead poisoning in children. Then, in early June, agency staff received emails indicating that they should come back to work, but senior officials in the agency itself advised employees that the decision may not be final.

Given the devastating impacts of the OBBBA, what MAHA will ultimately accomplish under the Trump Administration is questionable.

This back-and-forth in staffing demonstrates a lack of commitment to protecting children from harmful chemicals and seriously undermines the agency’s morale.

We agree with that there is an urgent need to improve children’s health, but the policies of the administration as demonstrated by the passage of the OBBBA do just the opposite. It remains to be seen whether the policies recommended in their upcoming strategy report will align with that narrative, or whether we will continue to see federal actions that directly contradict the MAHA rhetoric.

To Protect Health, We Urge MAHA to Consider These Policies

In the areas of improving diet and reducing chemical exposures in childhood (two of the four drivers of chronic diseases listed in the MAHA report), we urge the MAHA Commission to consider the following evidence-based policies.

1. Publish Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) that adopt and uphold the science-based recommendations of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).

Fifty-five public health and medical organizations, including CSPI, support this recommendation, given that the DGAs are required by law to reflect the preponderance of scientific evidence, which the DGAC has summarized in its recent Scientific Report. However, RFK Jr. has publicly stated that the DGAs will be only four pages long, raising questions about their scientific validity.

The DGAs matter not just for public dietary advice. They are also the cornerstone of federal nutrition programs and policies, directly shaping nutrition standards for national school meal programs, for example, and subsequently affecting the health of more than 30 million children who rely on those meals.

2. Address the food and nutrition security needs of vulnerable children and communities who will go hungry due to cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the OBBBA.

Nearly one in four U.S. children receive SNAP benefits, which help reduce poverty, food insecurity, healthcare expenditures, and risk of chronic conditions later in life. But those children—who are part of the 42.1 million people who rely on SNAP to put food on the table—will suffer due to the OBBBA.

To pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the OBBBA includes clauses creating bureaucratic hoops that roughly 8 million people are projected to be unable to jump through, thus putting them at risk of losing their benefits.

This newfound federal focus on nutrition, chemical safety, and chronic disease could be a dream come true. . . . But the devil is in the details.

The OBBBA imposed new work requirements on both SNAP and Medicaid beneficiaries; removed the SNAP work requirement exemptions for veterans, former foster youth, and people experiencing homelessness; and blocked immigrants who are lawfully present in the U.S., such as refugees and asylum seekers, from receiving SNAP benefits. Work requirements like these ultimately increase costs to states and taxpayers, harm health, and drive struggling families deeper into poverty.

In addition to dealing with new work requirements, starting in 2027 state governments will need to pay an unprecedented share of the food benefits and administrative costs associated with SNAP. To cover these higher costs, states will scramble and likely resort to cutting benefits, limiting state employees’ salaries, raising state taxes, or eliminating funding for other programs. In the worst-case scenario, states could completely withdraw from the nation’s most important nutrition program entirely—a disaster in the making.

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