MAHA Activist Tells Brian Kilmeade Two Trump Admin Moves Are 'Unforgivable'

Vani Hari, the food activist known as Food Babe and one of the best-known faces of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, said Sunday that the food industry is holding the Trump administration's unfinished food policies "hostage" inside the White House.

Hari made the charge on Fox News' One Nation with Brian Kilmeade.

Kilmeade read off what had not been done yet: a federal definition of ultra-processed food, school lunch rules and dye bans. Hari disagreed with how he put it.

"That's not what's left to do. That's what's being held up right now and held hostage by the food industry at the White House," she said. "They should be rolling out these policies every single week."

She gave no evidence that industry lobbying is holding up any particular rule.

"If they want the women vote, if they want to continue to have MAHA be a Republican thing, they better start rolling out these policies." — Vani Hari

Where the Stalled MAHA Rules Stand

On August 10, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed that the FDA and USDA had sent a proposed definition of ultra-processed foods to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final review, Food Safety Magazine reported. The agencies have not released its text.

Hari still credited the administration with real progress. "The genie is not going back in the bottle," she said, praising Kennedy and the FDA for warning publicly about dyes and glyphosate.

Vani Hari Faults Trump's Glyphosate Moves

Hari was harsher about glyphosate, the weedkiller in Roundup. She said "Bayer worked specifically with this Department of Justice and this administration to have the Department of Justice argue on their behalf at the Supreme Court."

The administration did side with Bayer. In December 2025, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to take up Bayer's Roundup appeal. He argued that federal pesticide law preempts state failure-to-warn claims, Fox Business reported. The Court agreed with Bayer on June 25. In Monsanto v. Durnell, it ruled 7-2 that such claims are preempted when the EPA has approved a label without a cancer warning (Supreme Court docket). Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence.

She also said President Donald Trump signed an order "giving glyphosate a national defense priority and giving it some immunity." The record bears that out. On February 18, Trump signed Executive Order 14387, invoking the Defense Production Act to secure supplies of glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus (White House). The order "confers all immunity provided for in section 707" of the Act, which shields companies from damages for acts taken to comply with orders issued under it (Federal Register).

"Those two things are unacceptable and unforgivable," Hari said. She added that this is "something that is happening in every administration no matter who's been president."

The glyphosate timeline:

• December 2025: The solicitor general urges the Supreme Court to hear Bayer's Roundup appeal
• February 18, 2026: Trump signs an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act for glyphosate-based herbicides
• June 25, 2026: The Supreme Court rules 7-2 for Monsanto in Monsanto v. Durnell

The Poll Vani Hari Disputed

Kilmeade cited a poll finding that most MAHA voters said Trump's health policies had not helped their communities. It was an Associated Press-KFF survey released Wednesday. It polled 2,241 rural registered voters from August 12 to 24, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, STAT reported. About half identified with MAHA. Of those, 68 percent said the administration's health policies had made health in their communities worse or had not affected it.

Hari called it "actually an inaccurate poll because it was polling people on healthcare costs and hospitals and Medicare and Medicaid." The survey did ask about costs and access to care. But its headline finding was about the health of people in voters' own communities.

The argument comes as Democrats court the same voters. Kilmeade aired a clip of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed pitching Medicare for All to MAHA voters. El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers by 3.7 points in PolitiKool's polling average.

Hari said she welcomed it. "I've been waiting for the Democrats and Republicans to out MAHA each other," she said.

Whether the White House releases the ultra-processed food definition before November is now the clearest test of her complaint.