{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://pingree.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=6724", "The 19th: This Democrat built a farm-to-politics career. Now she\u2019s working with MAHA moms.", "2026-03-09", "2026", "2026-03", "Democrat", "House", "ME", "Chellie Pingree", "P000597", "pingree.house.gov", "pingree", "https://pingree.house.gov/media-center/press-releases", "scraper", "Published in The 19th\n\nLong before entering politics, Rep. Chellie Pingree was a self-described hippie, a back-to-the-lander and an organic farmer.\n\nIn the 1970s, after attending college in Maine, she saw an opportunity to live a more sustainable life there. She decided to stay, and moved to an island off the coast where she and her husband started a small farm and sold their produce at a local market.\n\nPingree\u2019s passion for farming influenced her legislative work at the state and federal level. Representing Maine\u2019s 1st District in Congress since 2009, the 70-year-old Democrat has focused on bolstering organic food production, creating better access to healthy foods for kids and fighting pesticides.\n\nIf her priorities sound familiar, it may be because much of her life\u2019s work on these issues aligns neatly with certain facets of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which is led by current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. but gained momentum through the support of moms on social media.\n\nBut while the Democratic lawmaker is far from a supporter of Kennedy, she saw early into the second Trump administration the potential of working with MAHA activists. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a no-brainer in many ways,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a lot in common.\u201d And as MAHA moms, in particular, are conflicted about some of Kennedy and President Donald\u2019s Trump\u2019s recent decisions, it\u2019s an even better opportunity to find common ground.\n\nMost sustainable agriculture-related issues are populist and bipartisan at their core, she said, adding: \u201cI really don\u2019t think that these are necessarily left or right. I think the questions around toxins in our food and food is medicine, and the opposition to Big Ag and big chemical companies is very universal. This just really broadens the coalition of people.\u201d\n\nPingree had also seen how Kennedy\u2019s message resonated with farmers in her district. When he visited her state as a presidential hopeful, \u201cA lot of people went to hear him, and it was partly because of his interest in alternative medicine and healthy food,\u201d she said.\n\nSo, after Trump\u2019s return to office, she started reaching out to members of the movement: people like Kelly Ryerson, better known by her social media handle, The Glyphosate Girl, and Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, a grassroots group focused on healthy foods. Both are big supporters of Kennedy\u2019s role at HHS and the MAHA agenda he\u2019s pushed there.\n\nBut over the past few months, they\u2019ve also expressed disappointment about Kennedy\u2019s shifting stance on pesticide use. While he has championed some of the issues that animate MAHA, including his decisions around vaccine recommendations and his fight against food dyes and ultra-processed foods, Kennedy has distanced himself from his position on glyphosate \u2014 the same herbicide he fought against as an environmental lawyer.\n\nIn late February, when Trump issued an executive order to expand domestic production of glyphosate, which is found in the week killer Roundup, and that potentially shield pesticides companies from lawsuits, Kennedy announced his support, stating the \u201corder puts America first where it matters most \u2014 our defense readiness and our food supply.\u201d\n\nThough most MAHA activists still view Kennedy favorably, the executive order has exposed a widening rift for some in the movement. \u201cUnfortunately, Trump\u2019s action to issue this executive order on glyphosate broke a lot of that trust,\u201d Honeycutt said. \u201cIt may be permanently broken.\u201d\n\nBut where MAHA and the current administration don\u2019t see eye to eye they\u2019ve found an ally in Pingree. In late December, she worked with MAHA to strip a pesticides rider in a spending bill that would have shielded companies like Bayer, which produces Roundup, from health-related lawsuits and stopped states and localities from being able to regulate pesticides.\n\nRyerson said Pingree has been a key partner over the past few months and applauds the work she did to remove the language from the spending bill.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re finding our friends, and it\u2019s like, can we get even more? I don\u2019t care even which side they\u2019re from,\u201d she said. \u201cCan we get even more on board to just prioritizing this issue?\u201d\n\nAnd Honeycutt said that on one of her recent visits to Capitol Hill, she was impressed that Pingree met with them in person. Every other lawmaker sent a staff member to hear her concerns.\n\n\u201cWe loved learning that she is an organic farmer in Maine, and has been for quite some time, and is a huge supporter of organic farming,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we had a lot of things in common to talk about.\u201d\n\nFor Pingree the alliance has been mutually beneficial.\n\n\u201cFrequently, I would be kind of a lone voice in fighting to take that out, but we were able to remove that language from the bill just before it passed at the end of the year,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd a lot of that was due to the help of the MAHA moms.\u201d\n\nRecently, the Democratic lawmaker introduced an amendment to strip similar language from this year\u2019s farm bill, which the House Agriculture Committee advanced out of committee last week. While her efforts ultimately failed, she plans to take up other opportunities to continue the fight when it goes to a floor vote in the House. And a few weeks ago, she and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced the bipartisan No Immunity for Glyphosate Act, which aims to undo Trump\u2019s executive order.\n\nAll of this work has been bolstered by MAHA advocates who have a powerful platform to keep pressure on GOP leaders. She says they\u2019ve helped raise the profile of wonky issues like pesticide regulations and the dangers of PFAS chemicals, better known as forever chemicals. They are able to reach everyday moms who might not know much about environmental policy but care about the foods their kids are eating.\n\nThe veteran lawmaker has watched the movement amplify the reach of its message on TikTok and Instagram. \u201cThey are reaching many more people than maybe your average organic farming blog or environmental group.\u201d\n\nAs a result, Pingree said she\u2019s also started to post on social media more, sharing reels on Instagram, for example, to gain visibility among potential supporters.\n\nFor environmental groups, the MAHA movement has also helped make some of these issues relevant to Republicans who need to keep their constituents happy ahead of midterms, said J.W. Glass, an Environmental Protection Agency policy analyst at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.\n\n\u201cNow that the dialogue is wider and bipartisan there is lots of pressure on the Republicans,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is more of a world where Republicans are sweating across the aisle. There is a lot more attention on them.\u201d\n\nFor environmental organizations, it\u2019s also a welcome change to see bipartisan support for some of these issues. \u201cIt\u2019s safe to say that MAHA shares a lot of the same views as the mainstream environmental movement,\u201d he said.\n\nMoving forward, Pingree hopes to raise the profile of the work she said Democrats have been doing all along and sees the potential of forming a bipartisan MAHA caucus.\n\n\u201cI think my feeling has always been, if you could win on some of these important issues, then you build a coalition to win. You don\u2019t make everything a litmus test on whether or not you\u2019ll have a conversation.\u201d", 1, "2026-04-04T05:28:40Z", "2026-04-04T05:30:10Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://pingree.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=6724"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9818659164011478, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}