The Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement notched a win Thursday when the House voted to strip a pesticides provision from the farm bill. 

The amendment was introduced by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who has bolstered the concerns of MAHA activists in the House. It removed language from the bill that Democrats say would have shielded pesticide companies like Bayer from health-related lawsuits. The language would also have prohibited states from creating their own labeling requirements to warn consumers about the health effects of glyphosate, a chemical found in pesticides such as Roundup. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said that glyphosate, which has been in weedkillers since the 1970s, is not carcinogenic. But in 2015 a World Health Organization agency classified the pesticide as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It has been the subject of numerous lawsuits in recent years from people who allege exposure to the pesticide caused their cancer.

Rep. Glenn Thompson, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, had defended the provision, saying that states would still have the ability to change labeling; they would just need to request that change from the EPA. 

“As far as I’m concerned, if someone’s trying to give something to my kid that causes cancer, I would hope to heck that Congress would block that,” Luna said on the floor during amendment debate.  

Earlier in the week, Luna had posted on X that she would “BLOW UP the farm bill” if the pesticide provisions were not taken out.  

The news of the amendment passage was met by celebratory posts from prominent MAHA activists like Kelly Ryerson, known by her social media handle, Glyphosate Girl. She fired warning shots against Republicans headed into the midterms. “What sorry souls the 134 Republicans are that voted to prevent us from suing when we get sick from pesticide exposure. We look forward to getting you out of office,” she wrote on X. 

Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who has been working with MAHA activists to raise awareness over the pesticide language and introduced an identical amendment to Luna’s, said the activists have had a “huge impact” on getting Republicans to care about an issue that has historically been a progressive one. 

“I think we can say they’ve definitely had a big impact on our ability to attach this amendment to the farm bill,” she said. “I give them credit, and am glad we’ve had this opportunity to work together on an issue that really isn’t partisan. It crosses over both sides of the aisle.” 

The farm bill still needs to go to the Senate, where it faces an uphill battle due to policy disagreements over issues like cuts to SNAP, also known as food stamps.

Over the past year, MAHA activists have worked to strip similar language out of other pieces of legislation, including a spending bill last December. The movement, which is made up of a grassroots coalition of moms — many with large social media followings that they’ve used to mobilize supporters to pressure Republicans — have increasingly found themselves at odds with some of the Trump administration’s policies around pesticides.

In February, the president issued an executive order that would bolster the domestic supply of glyphosate, which many in MAHA saw as a slap in the face to the movement. 

“Unfortunately, Trump’s action to issue this executive order on glyphosate broke a lot of that trust,” MAHA activist Zen Honeycutt told The 19th at the time. “It may be permanently broken.”

And this week, those tensions have once again surfaced. In addition to the farm bill in Congress, the Supreme Court heard a case against Bayer, the company that produces Roundup, that centers on whether it should be held liable for failing to warn of cancer risk in its labeling. The Trump administration filed an amicus brief in support of Bayer. If the company succeeds it could be effectively shielded from health-related legal claims; the company is facing tens of thousands such lawsuits. 

In response, prominent MAHA activists held a small rally in front of the Supreme Court on Monday. “You cannot claim to care about health while protecting poison,” Vani Hari, also known as the “Food Babe,” said in front of the crowd at the “People Versus Poison” rally. “You cannot tell Americans to eat real food while protecting the cancer-causing chemicals sprayed on it.” 

Marissa Martinez contributed reporting.